Christmas Eve has always been one of my most favorite nights of the year. It's a night that's full of anticipation, magic and many amazing family traditions. It's always been a night that we all looked forward to and spent together as a family and is usually much more fun and exciting than Christmas Day itself.
As we've gotten older and our family has grown and changed, so have our traditions. Christmas Eve no longer involves the sibling gift exchange... we stopped drawing names and exchanging formal gifts several years ago. It no longer involves the one gift (usually pajamas) that my mom would let us open before shooing us off to bed. We don't watch the original "Miracle on 34th Street" like we did every Christmas Eve for my first 15 or so years of life. And this was the first time in all of my thirtysomething years that Christmas Eve didn't involve the annual performance of the nativity pageant. It was a little shocking at first to imagine a Christmas Eve without the traditional donning of towels, bathrobes, and tinsel halos, but alas there are only a handful left in our family that are even under 18 and the grandkids finally protested enough and won. Until they all start having enough kids of their own to re-populate the pageant...it's been officially retired.
This year we decided to have some dress-up fun in a new kind of way as we introduced the First Annual Holiday/Ugly Sweater Christmas Eve Party...
It seems that dressing in ridiculous sweaters and silly ornamentations rather than bathrobes and turbins was a hit with everyone, both young and old... I suspect that we have a new traditon in the making!
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Of course, some traditions hold strong... like the much looked forward to White Elephant Gift Exchange...
Of course, some traditions hold strong... like the much looked forward to White Elephant Gift Exchange...
Some of the hot items this year included:
The dancing chicken (there was also a dancing pig)
The EZ Plunge (courtesy of CJ)
Brake Pads (a little yucky, but really funny)(Both of the above were a huge hit with the little girls who thought they were: a mini jumping trampoline toy and huge bandaids for owies, respectively)
My favorite gift of the night though, were these little skeleton statue fingurine thingies (mr & mrs.) that Tasha was lucky enough to score... What the What?!?
(they were courtesy of Grandma, of course. My mom always comes up with the best white elephant gifts)****
And with the start of this new sweater tradition, there were prizes and titles to be awarded...
Who would "CRUSH" the competition???
The votes were tallied and the envelope was opened!
The clear-cut winner was my always proper and put together Dad, who (with the help of my mom, I'm sure) pinned wooden ornaments all over his low cut v-neck sweater and topped it off with chains and beads. I love that guy!
Big Bro Duane came in 2nd with his tight little yellow cardigan ensemble and my cute niece Cassidy rounded out the top 3 with her snowman adorned vest. (she had de-junked it a bit before I had a chance to snap this picture... see below for the original look)
We finished out the night by gathering together to watch this and take a few minutes to reflect upon our Savior, His birth and what it means to each of us. It was the perfect way to put everything in perspective and send us all away with the true meaning of Christmas in our hearts.
I don't think that anyone even missed the nativity pageant this year.
Thanks Mom and Dad for another year of amazing family memories!
1 comment:
LOL ROFLMAF! I enjoyed reading this post so very much, and then I got to the brake pads and laughed so hard that I am still teary! That is something that my brother would totally die over! And I would have totally made danny give those as his white elephant gifts this year if I had known about them- but now I have next year all figured out! Thanks!
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