My favorite things about the holiday season are the little traditions that my family has.
The first is the tradition of having a "craft night" after Thanksgiving every year. Basically what we do is we get together -- usually just the women in the family -- and make our own Christmas ornaments and decorations. This usually ends in someone gluing something to themselves but all in all it's a lot of fun. Especially since now I can drink wine. This year we had not only family members, but also a few family friends over and it was a lot of fun. There may have been a little bit of fighting and I may have focused more on making myself rum and cokes than on my ornaments but by the end of the night everyone had had a pretty good time.
Another tradition we have is decorating the tree together as a family. This sounds like a really sweet family moment right? Well you're wrong. I usually get bored halfway through and sit down to look at my phone, prompting my sister and mother to yell at me as they continue to decorate the tree. Then my dad uses this as an opportunity to sneak off into his room. I feel like if it was a tree in my own home I would be more into it. But to be honest my mother is a little controlling over what the tree looks like and what goes on it. My sister definitely inherited these traits. Don't get me wrong, I love my family, but the main tradition surrounding decorating the tree seems to be telling me that I don;t know how to decorate a tree properly. I can't exactly say they're wrong though, a couple years ago I pulled the Christmas tree down onto myself while I was trying to shake a cat out of it. I wound up with a heavy tree on top of myself and a freaked out cat.
Another tradition we have occurs on Christmas morning. Every Christmas we wake up and open the presents in our stockings -- we may all be adults in my house but yes we still have stockings -- and then eat breakfast as a family. The rule is we aren't allowed to open the presents under the tree until everyone has had breakfast. I remember as a small child that this was the bane of my existence because I was never hungry in the morning. I see my niece now having the same problem as we catch her trying to open presents when no one is looking.
Finally, the last tradition I want to tell you about happens on New Years. Every New Years Eve my family spends the night watching movies and eating Chinese food. Then one year we decided to start a new tradition. How many of you have every seen the show "Minute to Win it"? Basically the contestants are given tasks that they have to try to do within a minute. This is so much harder than it looks on TV, but we started playing little games like this every year. We even buy little prizes for the people who win the minute long challenges. I will say my siblings get a little too competitive but it's fun to do something like that with my family.
It's not a lot but these are things I really enjoy doing with my family even if it sometimes ends in a fight. But we're family, fighting is a given. In the end we always end up having fun with each other.
