Christmas Traditions

Laura from The Bignell Family suggested I post some of our Bixler family Christmas traditions - we have A LOT OF THEM!!!! I think I'll do a few posts throughout December. This post will just be about the traditions I had as a kid.
I am all about Christmas traditions. Growing up, #4 in a family of 5 children, we had certain rituals we all counted on. We looked forward to this all year! My dad took us kids out to McDonald's on Christmas Eve - a real treat, because our family NEVER went out to eat (Who could afford to feed a family of 7 at a restaurant? Not us!). Well, while we were out having our burgers and fries, the darnedest thing happened - Santa ALWAYS came! And my mom, who stayed back at home, was ALWAYS vacuuming and NEVER heard him come, leave the gifts and go! IMAGINE THAT!!!! (I guess we weren't that brilliant back then, huh?) :)
We also got our hair in spongy curlers Christmas Eve and we received new nightgowns, too! (My brother didn't have to have the spongy curlers - and he got pajamas in place of the nightgown.) This made for nice hair and spiffy outfits for Christmas morning pictures!
My mom was (and still is) the hostess with the mostest! She always puts on quite a spread and people dropped by uninvited, but welcomed. Typical "snacky" foods that Mom would put out: pickled herring, nuts, chocolates, Christmas cookies of all kinds (that she would have baked for weeks in advance and pack in gallon ice cream pails and store in the chest freezer downstairs. There were always a few missing, if we were sneaky enough!)
Music and laughter and chatting was constant at my Mom and Dad's place. "Merry" is pretty descriptive, I'd say...
And often we'd go to Midnight Mass, come home tuckered out and in the morning, there would be more visiting from relatives. Our home was the place to be.
I'll be sharing some of the Bixler family traditions with you this month. Our kids go wild for Christmas. They thrive on the traditions they can count on year after year. The traditions we practice in this household have changed from the ones I had as a child. Funny how that happens. Somehow, traditions just evolve when you're not looking...the special things that happen one Christmas in our little family seemed precious enough to repeat the next year. I suppose that's how my parents made all those Christmases so special for me and my siblings.
I just know it's so fun to see my daughter asking me why I have cookie batter in the fridge and her eyes light up with anticipation when I act mysterious. (It's for our cookies I'm baking for tree trimming on Sunday.) And you can't help but chuckle when a five-foot, eight-inch eighth grader who rarely shows emotion has asked five times in the past three days, "So, we're getting our Christmas tree Sunday, right?" I love that they haven't outgrown the Christmas spirit. I hope they never will.
What was your most memorable childhood Christmas tradition?