Creating Traditions

This is the first Christmas I will have ever had without my parents. Strange. While it will feel like something's missing, I'm excited to start creating our own family traditions when it comes to Christmas. In my family, we would wake up, beg our parents to wake up (even in the teenage years!), wait a couple of hours while dad "disappeared," then go open our stockings. After that we would have breakfast, usually omelets made by dad. When our appetites were sufficiently sated, we could return to the living room for the main event: presents.

Now, to make sure you understand, my mom, especially in the later years, went a little overboard with presents. She liked to shop early, throughout the year. Which is good. Except she likes last-minute shopping, too. And she was really good at hiding the presents from us.... and usually herself too. So we ended up getting a lot more than even she realized she was giving. The end result was that the presents were not neatly stacked under the tree. Oh, no. The presents were amassed under the tree, but oozed out from under every branch, until there was about a 4-foot radius of brightly wrapped gifts.

These gifts would show up under the tree over a period of time, starting soon after the tree was decorated the first Saturday night in December. Any time the present count changed, my brother and sister and I would immediately have to do a comparison--who has the most, who has the largest, who has the tallest tower when stacked, whose presents make the longest line. It's a wonder my mom even bothered to put anything in the packages. This game entertained us for hours (even in the teenage years!). Although there were many many gifts by Christmas Eve, there were always twice as many that showed up over night. Crazy Santa.

So we have these piles of gifts, and you would think that it would create pandemonium. But, no. In our family, it was a tradition to open one gift at a time, one person at a time. This way everyone could appreciate the special gift. Combine that with the number of presents, and you can see how Christmas became an all-day event in our house.

But now I have my own family. While that sense of nostalgia entices me to extend the traditions of my childhood to my own children, I am only one half of the equation. My husband also has traditions, some of which he wants to pass on, too. And we also want to create our own, so this is what we're trying to do.

Tonight we started a tradition that he had in his family: Christmas Eve dinner. Since Thanksgiving is obviously not celebrated in Brazil, Christmas Eve is the stuff-yourself-with-turkey equivalent. So today we made dinner, and even showered & dressed nicely and ate in the dining room. I was skeptical at first, but it was actually kind of fun! Then we took some pictures of the kids while they looked half-decent, since it doesn't happen often. So here's a peek into the first Fernandes Family tradition of this Christmas. Hope you're enjoying your families as much as I'm enjoying mine!