It’s that time of year again. That’s right, the Holidays. Let me ask you, what’s one thing a lot of people look forward to during these festive times? If you said presents, that’s one answer, but not the one I’m looking for. I’m talking about the Holiday traditions friends and families look forward to every holiday, not just the ones in December. Pretty much everyone has things that they look forward to doing every year in some shape or form, and they’re enjoyed so much that those things have become part of their holiday traditions. My family has had many traditions through the years, feel free to sit back as I list a few.
Appearances
Regardless of whatever holiday comes up, my mother always wants to go out and make an effort to make our home look festive for whatever it is we’re celebrating. Let me tell you, we have no shortage when it comes to decorations. Heck, one of our storage units is pretty much nothing but holiday knick-knacks. We’ve got a couple of things for Halloween, some for Easter, a few for Valentines, even some for Thanksgiving. Don’t even get me started on our Christmas stash, we’ve got more yule tide decorations than any other holiday. My Mom’s loved to make any part of our home look like it’s in the spirit for as long as I can remember from when I was a kid in Houston. Sadly, we’ve gotten so many decorations for the holidays that in recent years we’ve run out of room to put everything out, so we usually have to pick and choose what comes out each time while the rest stays in storage. Let me tell you, it’s a lot of work handling so many large crates.
Halloween
Like any kid, one major holiday tradition I used to love was going out to trick-or-treat on Halloween night. After all, who wouldn’t want to go out on the one night a year where it’s okay to dress up like a nut and get free candy from just about anybody. Of course, ever since my mid to late teens, I grew out of the trick-or-treat phase and moved on up to being one of the guys that gives out the candy. Sadly, the neighborhood we now live in doesn’t really get trick-or-treaters, so instead we usually spend Halloween night at the house of my mom’s best friend who lives in the local country club neighborhood nearby. One new holiday tradition I always look forward to for Halloween is getting a weird costume and coming up with a gimmick of some kind to give a festive freak out to someone. This year I put on a scary mask and cut out a cardboard box, so it looked like I was a costume severed head. It really freaked out a dad when I turned my head, his wife wished she’d been recording it. One other Halloween tradition is of course the Jack-O-Lanterns. My parents tend to carve their pumpkins by following a paper diagram from a book, but I like to let my imagination do the work and usually carve out a really freaky face with all kinds of weird features.
Thanksgiving
Turkey Day, the holiday everyone with an empty stomach looks forward to, there’s all kinds of great traditions with this one. Normally, my folks and I go to my mom’s friends for dinner when she has guests over, or sometimes my brother and his family in Fort Worth come to our place or we go to theirs. Our Thanksgivings usually start off in the morning for the Macy’s Parade. I’ve always enjoyed the floats and ballons going by in New York. The parade is usually followed by the Westminster Dog Show, or we normally go right to the annual Football games all day. Then of course there’s the signature feast everyone works on all week followed by hearty desserts and a food coma. Then, in the evening, if we’ve got room in our guts, leftovers. That’s a traditional Thanksgiving for my family, but this year was a little different. We had 16 people plus two dogs visiting us! My mom’s best friend’s son brought some relatives and my brother decided to bring his family over at the last hour. It was really a Turkey Day to remember.
Christmas
The big one. There is no shortage of holiday traditions when it comes to Christmas. The decorating alone takes days. Plus, there’s so much to bring back we usually need to have our yard guys help bring the decorations over in their trailer. When I said earlier that we had to pick and choose what to bring out, this is what I was talking about. Back when I was a kid in Houston, we used to get a Christmas tree the old-fashioned way, the tree lot. Eventually, we decided caring for a real tree took too much time and effort, so for many years we’ve gone with artificial ones. Of course, one of the most struggling traditions for Christmas is the shopping. It’s getting trickier and trickier to find the right gift for everyone each year, and the prices in this economy don’t help. But eventually it’s always worth it in the end, we all get some really great stuff. One major tradition my mom has is giving me certain gifts every year. Ever since 1999, I’ve always gotten the next years volume of the Guiness Book of World Records, I always look forward to what kind of crazy records have been broken. Another annual gift I get is a holiday snow globe. I don’t know when it started, but over the last several years I’ve accumulated a huge collection of snow globes, 19 or so last time I counted. I always bring them down to decorate, but it’s getting harder each year to find enough space. One major holiday tradition my mom has for Christmas is baking cookies. Every December, we bake hundreds of little sugar cookies with holiday sprinkles for ourselves and our friends and family. Mom calls them “So Good Cookies.” One major holiday tradition we used to have, typically after New Years our extended family got together for a reunion, and we made a second Christmas out of it. Sadly, with so many of my younger cousins grown and having so many things going on, nobody really has time for that particular tradition anymore. Hopefully someday that tradition will return.
My Personal Holiday Traditions
Regardless of what holiday is coming up, one major issue I have every year (particularly for Christmas) is getting into the spirit of the season. With so much going on around me and all that’s happened through the year, I’m normally slow to get into the feeling of what’s going on. How do I handle it and get into the spirit every year? I’ll tell you. I normally binge holiday movies and TV specials. It’s true, with enough time watching stuff revolve around the season, I slowly start to get into it myself. Normally depending on the holiday, I watch several on the very night or watch them through the week leading up to it. But when it comes to Christmas media, there’s so much I have to binge for several weeks, some I even watch after the holiday leading up to the New Year. And each year, there’s always something new to add to the watch list, makes finding the time pretty tough. Still, regardless of time or how much media there is, I always enjoy those movies. Watching them at the time of year they revolve around just feels like the only right time to do so. That’s my personal tradition.
Conclusion
I could go on about how me and my family spend other holiday traditions, but I’m pretty sure you’d get a bit tired if I went on. No matter what holiday or event is going on, traditions mean a whole lot to me and my family. I’m hoping we can continue them for many years and that generations down the line do as well. I hope you enjoy your holiday traditions and have many splendid years to come.