Santa and Holiday Traditions

My friend Kim asks: “Do you remember when you first found out about Santa? What did you feel? What about your traditions?”

Oh Lord, I’m not entirely sure I remember when I found out about Santa. I think it was elementary school…and I think it was just other school kids who found out, being mean. I don’t think I let on for a bit after that though, honestly it was embarrassing and disappointing as a kid.

As far as traditions, well they are nothing out of the ordinary. We always get a live tree the weekend before Christmas. We always leave it up till the end of January. We always fill it up with a ridiculous number of ornaments, we put colored lights on and usually gold garland. We always cook a big meal on Christmas day, usually eating around noon. We always open presents at 5am Christmas morning while listening to Christmas Carols. We always wake-up some of our relatives around 7am with a phone call and tell them to get their asses out of bed (okay, this is my dad usually). We always decorate the house with lights, we always decorate the inside with a rather bulky christmas display, including a garden below the tree.

When I was little and all of the family still got along, we always went to the grandparents for Christmas dinner, on both sides of my family. And we always opened gifts again there, on each side of the family. Actually I was pretty lucky as a kid because we opened gifts at home, then my moms mothers, then my dads parents, then my step-dads parents. A lot of gift-exchanging going on there, I don’t know how they did it. Eventually we started drawing names rather than buying all of the kids a gift. It was more economical that way 🙂

Dad always bakes cookies every year as gifts. I’m talking about…….at least a hundred dozen. I hate having all these cookies around, to be honest. But he likes baking, so I deal with it. Not to mention it’s a tradition for him to totally trash the kitchen for 2 or 3 weeks during December for this process, so I usually avoid cooking meals as much as possible so I don’t have to filter through the mess.

A lot of things have changed over the years though. Now that my dad is disabled he can no longer buy gifts, so I always allot like $200 every year for him to use at his leisure. Also 2007 was my first year of starting a “Christmas Fund” so I wasn’t scrambling at the end of the year like usual. I like this tradition too because it takes all of the stress out of the holidays. Also our gifts are a lot more practical in nature now. I still get him some things that aren’t practical, like his corncob pipe last year, or that calendar I made. But in general we try to get things we really need. This year I’m asking for some socks, some dumbbells, and some practical books on canning and such from him. Oh, and for him to buy me a case of oil and change the oil in my car. That’s always a nice gift 🙂

His presents really boil down to only two or three this year. His massive toolbox and a battery storage system with a battery tester in it. Actually I think that is all I got him…though I’d like to at least get him a few more small things.