Traditions

Do you have any holiday traditions?

I have always held a few traditions close to my heart when it comes to celebrating the holiday! With Nolan starting to come of age and show his personality and everything, it gets me super excited to continue them with him.

Just One Present
I always loved the charade of convincing my parents to let us open JUST ONE present on xmas eve. It always seemed like a struggle to get them to concede and allow us the one present but I think in the back of their minds it was the plan all along. So we'd spend all day salivating at the thought that we'd get to open on present. We were never structured on the time of day, although it probably was something we commonly did right before bedtime. Of course santa had our wish lists and we'd think of the top item on that list and hope that the present we selected to open was that big one! Whatever it was, it was always exciting to "break the rules" and open a present the day before we were supposed to. Probably because on xmas morning we had to go to church and spend like 4 hours there before coming home then having a huge meal with like 50 family members wait for everyone to finish eating and cleaning and THEN we'd get to do the actual unwrapping of everything else. The struggle was real!

Bonus X-Mas
The premise was that we'd open our presents that morning and then just totally be hyped up getting our new toys out of the packages and playing. While we were distracted in the basement or whatever more gifts would be put under the tree. I particularly remember my sister, Rachael, coming down the stairs and going "Santa forgot a bunch of presents, we have more stuff to open!" For context, my sister was probably old enough to know that santa wasn't real and was just playing along with it because she knew how fun it was for us to believe. But me and my younger brother basically flipped our lids hearing this. We'd fly up the stairs to find more presents with our names on them! OMGOMGOMGOMG we were DYING to open them. I don't believe we did this every year, but when it happened it was pretty darn phenomenal. And I 100% recommend doing it for your kids if you have any.

The Treasure Hunt
One of my favorite traditions of all was getting a group gift... usually something small and in a light box that was addressed to all of us kids. The gift contained a clue which ultimately became a whole house treasure hunt. Clues like "go the the place where the cookies are made" and we'd run to the oven where a clue like "flush away your holiday sorrows" or something cheesy like that would lead us to the bathroom (but which one!?). It would lead us to the BIG present. One year we got an air hockey table that was kept under our deck. Screaming ensued. What made this one great was that we had to work together to find the next clue and we'd be running all over the house to find it.

You better believe that these traditions are going to be practiced in my house.

What traditions did/do you have? Please share in the comments!