Family Holiday Traditions

Let’s talk family holiday traditions. As a military family, I find traditions to be so important for creating a sense of normalcy, especially for the kids. They say that the only constant when it comes to military life, is change. I like to think that having certain traditions makes the change more bearable. We may not know where we’ll be living or if Daddy will be there, but we’ll always have these traditions to fall back on.

As a kid, one of the biggest traditions that I can recall was getting our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. We’d all load into my dad’s truck and head down to “the far” Publix (man, I miss Publix) to choose a tree. From their parking lot. None of that fresh-cut stuff. I never really knew how to choose the ideal tree, so I’d mostly just keep an eye out for the tallest looking tree. Tree would get tossed into the bed of the truck and we’d head home, where my dad would hose the tree off (this was in Florida) and we’d take it inside when dry.

Since moving away from home five years ago, getting our Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving has been a must-do. John has been amazing with complying with my wishes, so every Black Friday, we’re on the hunt for a tree. He’ll even humor me by hosing it down. In my defense, I’m pretty sure it’s to get the bugs off or something like that.

Growing up as part of a Hispanic family in Miami, Christmas Eve was always when our huge celebration happened. Everyone would come together with tons of food, and usually we had a pig that had been roasting all day in a “caja China”. You can read all about Latino Christmas Eve here. It’s interesting that Hawaiian have a similar pig roasting tradition at their big celebrations, such as luaus. Since we’re not currently around family, we’ve developed our own scaled back Christmas Eve traditions.

A new tradition that we’ve started in our little family nucleus, is to drive around on Christmas Eve, looking at Christmas decorations in our neighborhood. As a child, my parents always took us for a drive to see lights, but it was always a random trip. We’ve been going on Christmas Eve, since Veronica could see out the window, and I get excited every year trying to scope out the best houses around us.

This year, we got extremely lucky. There are TONS of lights on our street. The plan for this year is to have the girls open up a Christmas Eve gift, which will include: Christmas jammies, a mini bag of popcorn, and some hot chocolate. All to enjoy on our drive, since I don’t do Christmas movies.

From Christmas jammies to decorations to artificial trees, it can all be found at Sears. Their fantastic prices make holiday prep and gift giving affordable for any budget. So whether you’re looking for stocking stuffer or to deck the halls, make sure to check out Sears.

What are some of your favorite family traditions?