The other day I made a post about some of my family’s traditions at Christmas. Having done that, I ended up taking note of other traditions that happen in my family and how some of them have evolved over time.

• Decorating the Christmas tree has always been a family event. When my sister and I were much much younger, the tree was mostly covered in decorations we had made with our own little hands at school - handprint turkeys, those large ball things made from several little circles glued together - you get the idea. Combined with those were the decorations bought along the way, all of which had stories. We would get out all the boxes and sit around decorating the tree. As we got older, our personal contributions shrank and soon the homemade decorations were being left in the boxes because as cute as they were, there were no longer children in the house. Finally we all decided the tree looked a little sad with its minimal hodegpodge of old decorations. We started a new tradition - each year a colour scheme is chosen and the tree is decorated in full regalia. Does our tree look “commercial”? Probably, but it’s done with my family’s love.

  P.S. We also added the tradition of setting up the tree in a different spot every year. This is quite a task involving serious furniture shuffling.

• My family (immediate - me, parents and sister) always spent Christmas together, noone ever travelled at that time. If nothing else, the four of us could count on the fact that we would be together. Even when my sis moved to Trinidad (for school) we still managed to have her home every Christmas. But then she started working and it wasn’t always that easy. Nowadays, if she can’t make it home for Christmas, we have the update phonecalls where she gets to hear the details of what we had for breakfast, who got what gifts, what we did for Christmas dinner, who was there, who said what, etc. To me they get a little painful to carry out sometimes but they are the natural step for my family.

• When my sister and I were younger we used to have Christmas stockings at the foot of our bed(s) that “Santa” would fill with small stocking stuffers, usually not worth wrapping but providing great joy to us. The deal with my parents was we could open the stockings at whatever time we woke up, no matter how early, but everything else under the tree had to wait until everyone was up and had eaten breakfast (which we did together). Now we are older, the whole stocking thing has vanished (at least most years), but my family still waits till after breakfast to open presents, at which point it’s a whole ritual of present distribution with a careful selection process (all internal presents are unlabelled).

• Christmas Eve night used to find my family on the road, having finished the actual shopping but enjoying the excitement on the roads, the lights, the fever of everywhere being open late. We would come in when stores were closing to get ready for church, at which point my pops would have the ham in the oven so by time we came back from church there was warm ham to eat. My mother is the only one who attends church on Christmas Eve now, but the ham tradition lives on. I will usually fall asleep to be awoken on her her return when we gather in the kitchen to eat warm Christmas ham. Yum!!

There are more of course, but I will leave this list for now. It gives a good idea of how today went for me (with minor variations to allow for me bing sick with the flu this year ).