My family’s favorite holiday tradition–we only have ONE real tradition– is to go to Elephant Rocks the day after Thanksgiving. One year, when my daughter was 3 and my son was 1, we woke up the morning after Thanksgiving and it was simply beautiful outside. It was warm, sunny, and on the news we watched the gridlock in the mall parking lots. After drinking our coffee and wondering just what we were going to do with ourselves, we decided that it was just too nice to be indoors or fighting with people over parking spaces. We got the kids together, and drove down to Elephant Rocks. We spent the whole day outdoors, climbing around, and enjoying the company of other families who decided to eschew the commercialism, if only for one day…
It was such a wonderful time, and we have gone every year since, rain or shine, warm or cold. It is my son’s favorite place to goof off, truly nature’s very own playground. It’s a wonderful way to start the Christmas season right–with some goofy family togetherness.

My favorite holiday tradition is our family’s ugly ornament contest. Anyone can participate, and we have a lot of fun coming up with horrible looking ornaments. You can buy or make the ornaments. It’s a great family activity. We also have a nice ornament exchange, but no one seems to get nearly as excited. It’s a nice, fun addition to the holiday stress.

We start off December with the countdown to Christmas. We may not have any other Christmas decoration up but we have our countdown calendar out. My parents started this when I was little with this green felt ribbon that had 24 little candies tied to it (mom usually used tootsie rolls) and everynight before bed, I’d get to eat one off all the way to Christmas eve which was followed by a little bell. (My favorite time I missed the candy the night of christmas eve and woke up to find it sitting on the floor of my room on top of a beautiful ribbon that led all the way downstairs and was tied onto my brand new pink bicycle with the pretty flowered banana seat!) Now I have one with little pockets that we put kisses and candy canes in (the individual ties won’t work, there’s five kids trying to steal each others candy). It’s such a nice way for us to prepare for that wonderful Christmas holiday.

My family’s favorite holiday tradition is to drive around looking at Christmas lights. Each year we all put on our pajamas, grab some hot chocolate and jump in the warm car!! Then we drive through the neighborhood enjoying the beautiful chrismtas lights while listening to christmas music. It is so relaxing and reminds me of being a child

My family’s holiday tradition is to go to the local firehouse on Thanksgiving and to cook a HUGE dinner for the firemen that are working that day. We ask what all of their family favorites and food traditions are and make sure we serve them ALL! We even sometimes use their mom & grandmas recipes. We don’t have a dinner at home that day for ourselves. We just take it as a time to celebrate and be thankful for the people that serve and take care of us. We should all be thankful for the job they do! This is a great way to prepare for the upcoming holiday season of giving. Happy Holidays a bit early!

My favorite family holiday tradition would have to be making Christmas cookies with my mother and grandmother. I am not talking about just one little batch of cookies here, I am talking full out cookie pandemonium. Every year a few weeks before Christmas the cookie craziness would begin, we would always make the traditional sugar cookies and chocolate chips, but we also tried new recipes each year. The one year I remember trying to make oatmeal cookies but we didn’t have enough oatmeal so mom substituted some corn flakes. Those were the hardest driest cookies I have ever had. Another time I don’t quite recall what ingredient we forgot but we had to scrape cookies off the sheets to remix them. It doesn’t matter what we are making we always have a great time and I look forward to this day each year and now am passing the tradition on to my daughter.

Every year for Christmas, my family heads up to my parents house in east central Illinois. Usually, the kids and I go up a day or two before hand and my husband comes down with his mom on Christmas eve. Of course, he usually has to get off work and finish his Christmas shopping first!

We eat tons of good food, soups, finger foods, cookies, and candy on christmas eve. But the best and craziest part of the holiday is the Dirty Gerty Game. Everyone goes out and buys a bunch of gifts that are $1 or less (sometimes we spend a little more), wraps them up and we dump them in 2-3 clothes baskets. Then we all sit in a circle and get out 2 plates and 2 set of dice. Every double, you get to pick a gift and roll the dice again. This goes on until all the gifts have been distributed.

Then the REAL fun begins as we start a 3-5 minute timed section of stealing. Every double earns you the right to steal a gift from someone else. Because only the person who wrapped the gift knows what is in it, we have huge fights of people stealing the same gifts over and over only to have them turn out to be things like a roll of toilet paper, reflective marker, bar of soap instead of some of the good stuff like the box of chocolates!

We even have a kids version of the game for the littler ones. It is completely insane with people dashing around, yelling for gifts, gifts flying across the room and ow the wrapping paper flying when its all over. Then once we know what we got, its a series of bargaining and haggling as people trade one thing for another!

My favorite holiday tradition is watching “Endless Summer” on Christmas Eve or Christmas day. It is a long and obscure surfing documentary from the 1960s and it has nothing at all to do with Christmas. The contrast gives us a break from all the holiday cheer, and gives us something to do as a family when my stepdaughter is at her mom’s house. Because one of the children in our family has to share two houses for all the meaningful family celebrations, I try not to do anything too cool when she is away. This is the least cool and most meaningful tradition to me because part of the reason we do it is to make sure everyone in our family is included as much as possible in the really important things.

Last year we did a fammily tradition of sending gift boxes to the troops instead of every fammily exchanging presents. This year we are going to have the fammily make a donation as a whole to Make-A-Wish. I like this tradition because it helps us to remeber that it is more fun to give a gift than it is to receive one. This year my family got to see the power of a wish and we want to pass that on to another family and Make-A-Wish just seems like the right group to help this year, they do so much for so many.

My favorite holiday tradition is to have family breakfast at my mom’s house on Christmas morning. Now that we are all older and have our own kids, we wait a little later to get together, but we all meet, kids and gradkids and have a big breakfast after a rowdy present opening! It’s the best feeling of family and belonging and everyone is happy and smiling.