Favorite Things – Holiday Edition

So, I can’t do favorite winter things yet, because it’s not winter until December 21 or so. That’s also the shortest day of the year, and one of my favorite, because the sun sets at approximately 2:30 pm. It’s like we are living in Alaska for a day!

So, here’s a list of my favorite holiday things. Feel free to blog about your own favorites!

1. Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” – hands down, the best song of the holidays. I don’t officially consider it Christmas season until I hear this song. I love singing it, it gives me goosebumps every time I hear it. She has such a great range (8 octaves!) and it really is in use on this song. A magical part of the Christmas season.

2. Christmas Eve service – as a child, this was one of the worst parts of the season. It just seemed like church would last forever (when it reality I don’t think it was ever more than 1.5 hours – we did have some interesting “special visitors” but that’s for another time). As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to have a better appreciation for what this service means. It is a favorite moment of mine when our church makes a circle around the sanctuary, lighting candles and singing “Silent Night”.

3. Family Christmas party – Mom’s side of the fam has a party on a Saturday before or after Christmas every year. The best part about this party is the “Card Game”. It is a simple game of deception. You need two decks of cards, 5-6 gifts/objects to “win”, and a memory. You hand out the cards to everybody, then call out the cards from the second deck. When your card is called, you select a prize. Then, once the prizes are all in circulation, you have to request the prize from another person. It leads to a lot of laughter when people are made to look stupid because they don’t remember who has the prize they requested. They all have specific names, like “green package with red bow” and if you don’t call it that, you are wrong and don’t get the prize. So yes, I love the card game.

4. Gift opening traditions – in our family, we open presents from the kids Christmas Eve and from Santa Christmas morning. It’s always fun to race home from church and get excited to open gifts. Then, we always beg (to this day, even!) to open more gifts until we are reminded that Santa hasn’t come yet (for the kids, of course).

5. Waking up early – I still, as a 27 year old, cannot sleep on Christmas Eve. It’s not as bad as it once was, but I wake up at 7 am. I’m like my father in this way; he and I are the ones that make everyone else get up early. This has caused a lot of consternation with Beth, because if you know her, she’s not really a “morning” person, at least not that early.

6. Old Videos – I remember when Dad and Mom used to videotape our opening of gifts. One of my favorite memories is when Jer was a young lad, maybe 3 or 4, and he would open a gift and scream (in his other-worldly low voice for a kid), “hey mom, I got this!”

7. Gifts gone awry – no, this does not refer to Moulin Rouge; instead, it revolves around my penchant for asking for things that I don’t really use much. Past items include a telescope and an acoustic guitar. I’m sure my family can chime in with other gifts that I have wasted.

8. Christmas cereals – when you grow up in a family with three kids, there are bound to be disagreements about stupid things. Two of our most vehement disagreements were over fast food (Jer always wanted McDonalds, I wanted Burger King) and cereal. As a treat, mom would buy each one of us a box of cereal that we wanted for Christmas. It stopped probably when I was in high school but it is a fond memory of mine.

9. Christmas music – I’ve already covered Mariah, but there are a plethora of other great songs that we hear for approximately 6 weeks a year, both secular and Christian. It was an even bigger joy to know that Jer enjoys Christmas music a lot.

10. New Years Day – New Years Eve is consistently the most disappointing day of the year (except for this year—Brut Sun Bowl!) but NYD is awesome. Memories of our family going to breakfast (not at Bob Evans) and then going to the mall are very fresh. Then we get home and watch football all day. One of my favorite traditions is ordering grilled cheese from Eat n Park at 9am on New Years Day.

Well, I originally intended this post to center on the whole holiday season, but was able to come up with a lot about Christmas exclusively! I love Thanksgiving as well, but I guess you’ll have to wait to hear about it until next year.