I love Christmas. This is not news to anyone who has been to my house in December; It’s generally a Christmas explosion with holiday shrapnel scattered across every available surface.
It’s a lot and I love it.
One of my favorite things about Christmas is all the fun and sometimes quirky traditions that come with the season. So here are some of ours!
Probably our quirkiest tradition is wrapping gifts in ham packaging. As I’m typing this, I realize how insane that sounds. When we were kids, Daddy would wrap Mama’s gifts in the shiny packaging that our sugary baked hams came in. I texted Daddy to see exactly how this tradition started because it’s so weird. He said he just thought it would make a pretty wrapping paper and that Mama Katie (his grandmother who helped raised him) was always repurposing things like that, so that kind of craftiness is a family tradition. And that’s why there’s a small stack of ham wrappers in my closet.
This image is from circa 2014, thus the blurriness lol
For our Christmas cards, we usually include a photo and a letter telling far away friends what we’ve been up to every year. This is something we started after Jubi was born. My side of the family never really did this (with the exception of a long-lost cousin who would send what my papa would call “brag letters” every December lol), but Jared’s side of the family does this every year. Uncle Kevin’s is always a big hit, and I look forward to it hitting our mailbox every year. The year he had surgery for prostate cancer was a particularly funny year, which I realize does not sound funny at all, but that’s just Uncle Kevin for you!
My favorite Christmas card tradition is by far our Puck’d pictures. My friend photoshopped a photo of our dearly departed Puck, who was very much alive and well at the time, into a Christmas scene, and the results were absolutely hilarious. I’ll attach a few to this post so y’all can enjoy as well. Since Puck passed away from doggie lymphoma we’ve stopped including them, but I have some of the years’ past Puck’d photos on our fridge year round. (Also --and this has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas-- after Puck died, Jared told some of his clients that she died of EMPHYSEMA instead of lymphoma and when I think of his clients’ faces hearing that news, it always cracks me up! Puck would have thought that was hilarious. She was a very ridiculous dog.)
This last one is my favorite because it sneaks up on you!
Each night in December, we like to read from a book called Unwrapping the Greatest Gift. It is a beautiful written book that connects the Old Testament stories and prophecies of the coming messiah to the New Testament and Jesus. Every night there is a different scripture reading. I would love to tell y’all that this a peaceful family time, and as much as I might want it to be, it is not! But Jared and I try to be intentional about the fact that Christmas is first and foremost about Jesus. The other aspects of all the Christmas celebrations are fun (Santa, gifts, lights, etc.), but the main point is Jesus and His gift to us.
The Saturday before Christmas, we have our big family get togethers with all the extended family. I really appreciate this scheduling situation because it has made my life so much easier. The Von Steins meet up in the morning for breakfast (hello, delicious grits made by Aunt Melissa!), and the Neese side meets up in the afternoon at Nannie’s. We are a very musical family so sometimes, we all sing and play together. It’s a whole day of people and food and gifts!
Christmas eve we spend at Mama and Daddy’s in their cozy little apartment over Daddy’s gun shop. It’s a tight squeeze, but it’s always a lot of fun. We eat a ton, yell over the top of each other to hear, and open a bunch of presents. Once upon a time, we used to go to Nannie’s house on Christmas Eve, but when we changed that to the weekend before, Christmas Eve started to feel a little sad and lonely. Now it’s the opposite!
Christmas Day used to be a big frazzle for us because we would spend the day driving from house to house, but since we are the only ones in the family with kids (for now), we asked everyone if they wouldn’t mind coming to us, and it’s been great!
Because I love gift-giving, I always end up with a ton of gifts under the tree for the girls. There are some there from Santa, but most are from me and Jared. I always make the girls a stained-glass snowflake to add to their collection. They end up hanging in our windows every Christmas! I love making these snowflakes because they’re mostly clear textured glass, and the variety in them is very satisfying, like they’re real snowflakes!
This is a not-so-great photo of the one I made earlier this week:
(If you're interested in more stained glass stuff, there's a lot on my IG, you'll just have to scroll down for a while.)
We wake up and the kids open their gifts, and then around 9:30 or 10, Jared’s parents come over and we all eat a late breakfast together. I make a really delicious biscuit and gravy casserole (I’ll link here: https://tasty.co/recipe/biscuits-and-gravy-bake) and Jared’s mama brings a different delicious type of breakfast casserole and some monkey bread. Then we all open our gifts from each other. Ma is an incredible cross-stitch artist (although she hesitates to call herself that but she totally is) and she has made some of the most beautiful stockings and ornaments for us to open as gifts. They generally have something to do with big events in the year, so it’s always neat to see what they will be about when we open them!
Here's the stocking she made for me this year:
Once the gifts are all open, it’s time to find the pickle ornament in the tree! Jared’s side of the family is very German, so this tradition stems from that heritage. All of us will leave the room and Ma will hide the pickle ornament in the tree. We all come back in and look for it, and whoever finds it gets an extra present, usually a gift card.
After a while, the girls get tired, and we let them rest after the family goes home, and then my side of the family comes over around 3 or 4. My grandma comes with them, and we all have a Christmas feast! I make a ham (and save the packaging, obvs), and Daddy brings a turkey he smoked, and there’s general feasting and merriment until it’s time to get ready for bed.
We love our Christmas traditions over here, but the most important part in all of it is pointing it back to Jesus.
We give each other gifts because Jesus gave us the ultimate gift. We celebrate because He gave us a reason to celebrate.
I am not always good at this, but I really hope that when our girls look back on the holiday seasons of their youths, they remember that as cheesy as the saying is, Jesus really is the reason for the season.
Let me know what your family traditions are!