Ten Favorite Holiday Traditions.
- Listening to Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving Day. Somehow we missed that one this year. Maybe we will do it on Christmas instead. One year #1 Son spent T'day with a friend and her family who had never heard Alice's Restaurant. He introduced them to the tradition.
- Not having turkey on Thanksgiving or Christmas. I am the only one who likes turkey, so we go non-traditional these days. In the years when #1 Son came home for Thanksgiving we had ribs and sauerkraut. Last year it was enchiladas. One year only #2 Son and I were home, so we volunteered at local church that serves a free will turkey feast. This year it was a beef roast in the crock pot (the meat is nothing special, having given up all its flavor to the gravy, but the gravy is to die for) and roasted root vegies, cheesecake (purchased) with blueberry sauce (homemade).
- Addressing the Christmas cards on the evening before Thanksgiving while the pies are baking. This one was just me and was relatively short-lived, only for a few years in the early 1990s. Then we started writing a Christmas letter instead, and that takes weeks.
- Smokey writes the first draft of the Christmas letter and I edit, add, and insert photos. He is so much more verbal than I, and I am an excellent editor if I do say so myself.
- Taking turns opening Christmas gifts one at a time so everyone can see and admire. I love watching everyone open their gifts.
- Christmas dinner sponsored by a local civic group at a beautiful lodge in the next village over. The boys and I have done that several years. (I used to love to cook, but big holiday meals are too much work for my lazy a$$ these days.)
- Spending Christmas with both sons here together. Who knows how many years we will able to do that? Now we have added BGFE to the mix, and it is better than ever.
- Watching Love Actually. Such a sweet movie that happens to be set at Christmas.
- Not decorating for Christmas. I used to do the whole enchilada -- a lighted wreath on the door, one year a lighted swag around the entrance, the tree, a Christmas village on the mantel, a couple of framed needlepoint nutcrackers (made when I was in my needlepoint phase) on the wall where the clock usually hung, mistletoe in the doorway, electric candles in the all the windows. Now all that work makes me tired just to think about. I hang a wreath on the door and Smokey brings home a poinsettia or two in late November. Some years we have a tree, some years we do not. The tree is still up from last year (obviously an artifial one; prelit and still decorated); I need to blow the dust off it.
- Not traveling far, far away for the holidays. From the mid-80s to the mid-90s we went to Florida for two weeks every year to spend the holidays with Smokey's parents. Some years we also spent part of those two weeks camping in the Keys. Imagine doing all the usual getting-ready-for-Christmas stuff, plus packing for a two-week trip with two small children, plus sometimes also packing for a camping trip. I know it may be difficult for you to feel sorry for anyone who gets two weeks in Florida in the winter, but the whole thing was a lot of work. I loved being there and being with my in-laws and having my children spend lots of time with their grandparents; it was the weeks beforehand that were annoying.
