12 Days of LIstmas: Holiday Traditions

Merry Christmas everyone! hope you are having an amazing holiday. So far mine has been a whirlwind of travel and family, wrapped up in phlegm (I've been sick as a dog, but am powering through).

Here's list number 6. 12 days of Listmas will be continued next year with the other half.

Today I'll share with you a list of holiday traditions in our family.

1. Watching my younger cousin's open their presents. Ever since my brother and I got too old for Santa, we wake up at the crack of dawn to live this joy vicariously through my younger cousins' Christmas Morning.
2. Christmas Eve seafood dinner. As good Italians, we don't eat meat on Christmas Eve, which of course means we eat seafood instead (someone somewhere decided fish and shrimp aren't meat).
3. Christmas day brunch at my house. As I write this my house smells like baccon from the 5 pounds of it my mom is cooking downstairs. I can't wait to stuff my face with breakfast foods along with my whole family (you'll notice that most of our traditions involve eating).
4. My dad buys my mom's gifts on Christmas Eve. Without fail he goes out shopping on the day before Christmas, another tradition he buys magazines for her stockings that she doesn't read, despite being told the correct ones to buy.
5. Christmas Eve at Lisa's. This tradition of  my family and my friend's family goes way back, we stop buy for a drink and gingerbread cookies on the way home from seafood dinner. Last year we broke this tradition tho, and this year, we meant to go, but I fizzled out as far as feeling sick goes around 9, and had to go home to bed ASAP.
6. Christmas home videos. When I was much much younger, my aunts and uncles and parents used to have a men vs. women competition each year of who could make the better hilarious movie. Last year we started this one back up, but kids vs. adults.
7. Uncle Dave sets off a bucket of fireworks. New Years eve usually results in a family party at my house, and my uncle lighting as many fireworks as he can get his hands on in the back yard.
8. The snow drop. When me and my Cousin Krista were kids, we used to spend hours over the holidays entertaining ourselves by cutting up bags of paper into tiny squares to be used in a snow drop at midnight on New Years, this tradition continues, although we still find paper under furniture from years past.
9. The Martha Stewart Christmas Tree. My mom used to have magazine cover worthy Christmas trees every year, which meant that when deccorting the tree as kids, we were heavily supervised over which coloured ornaments went where. Anything homemade that didn't fit the theme went on the back.
10. The New Ornaments. To compensate for this traumatic childhood experience, my mom mow buys us awesome ornaments each year, and the tree is now decorated nearly exclusively with personally amazing ornaments (and love).
11. The what do we get for Nana. Every year my aunts and uncles and mom frantically discuss what to get for my Nana, calling dibs on good ideas as they are generated. It seems that you never grow out of not knowing what to get your mom for Christmas.
12. New Years Eve. My family does New Years Eve big, and awesome and fun and together. Everyone comes in from out of town, we drink, play games, eat food, and party all night. Last year we even had an epic beer pong tournament. Subsequently I never worry about plans for New Years anymore, because I always know where I want to be!

Anyways, hope you have an amazing Christmas and New Years, or if you don't celebrate those, just enjoy some time off, and for sure time with Family. I'll try to get a post or two up over the next couple days. I'm for sure looking forward to 2013, I guess the Mayan's weren't so smart after all.