For as long as I can recall, we have always followed through with our Friday after Thanksgiving Tradition (and no it's not Black Friday shopping I'mtalking about). Every year, we come to my Aunt Nee Nee's (pronounced Nay-Nay) house, and we start getting ready for Christmas.
We jam out to every Christmas song you could ever think of, all the way from Blue Christmas to Grandma Got Ran Over By A Reindeer. These are the songs we typically spend time singing to at the top of our lungs.
Then we move on to eating, because, everyone knows that you can't get into the Christmas spirit without prepping yourself with some good food first. Every year we choose to eat thin crust pizza from this little store down the road.
After we've ate all we could stuff down, we prepare to decorate. Normally, it takes us around an hour because there is so much to put up and it all has to go in a specific spot. The tree alone takes at least 20 minutes. We have to make sure we decorate it just right!
When we're finally finished decorating, we move on to watching Christmas movies, eating cookies, and preparing to set up beds for everyone. Then we hold a huge family sleepover with my aunts and my cousins. The next day we wake up, make waffles then head off home. This is how I begin my Christmas season every year.
Except, it didn't happen that way this year. This year... the tradition was broken.
When we came into the house, there was no Christmas playing. Instead, we were all getting down to Salt N' Peppa's "Push It" (and boy was that a scene). We listened to a ton of throwbacks and got our dance on with my Memama (my grandmother). Although it was a lot of fun, it was the first thing to break tradition.
We did order pizza, however, it wasn't the pizza we normally get. You see, our order got messed up, and we ended up eating regular pan crust pizza, which again was good, but stirred us in a new direction.
Decorating only took about 25 minutes this year. For some reason none of us could get in the mood. We ended up just throwing stuff around and making it look as nice as we could in that moment. This normally wouldn't have been okay with Aunt Nee Nee, but this year she just let it be.
We did set up for a sleep over, but not everyone stayed as usual. Also, there were NO Christmas movie or cookies! When we woke up this morning, we didn't eat our typical Mickey Mouse waffles. We just decided to go with left over pizza.
We totally went off the tracks as far as traditions go. We broke all of our initial Christmas season kick off traditions. I thought surely this would upset me, but the next morning I woke up and realized something.
This holiday season isn't about the traditions we have. Traditions are fun to have, but when they go off course, it's okay, because this time isn't about staying in a annual routine. It's about spending time with the people you love, you know, the people that make those traditions so fun.
So even though we didn't stick to tradition, I still was able to feel the beginning of my Christmas spirit, thanks to all the loved ones that I was able to be here with. That's one thing I'm glad I'll never have to give up.
