Christmas was always a big deal around my house when I was growing up.  My Mum loves (and I mean LOVES) Christmas.  She goes all out with her decorating.  Our house inside and out always looked very festive it was impossible not to get into the Christmas spirit.  There were several things we did every year, traditions that made the season familiar and wonderful.  Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without these traditions and I want to pass them on to Maya so that when she grows up and moves into her own home and has her own family she’ll think back on Christmases when she was growing up with the same fondness that I look back on my childhood Christmases.

One of my favorite Christmas traditions was getting a new Christmas ornament every year.  The ornament was always fondly picked out my my Mum and always captured each of us perfectly.  The ornament when we were really young was tapped to our big gift from Santa with the gift tag.  Later is was usually in our stocking.  I still use these ornaments every year to decorate my Christmas tree and have so much fun reminiscing as I put each ornament on the tree.  I’ve already started passing this tradition on to Maya, she has two ornaments that were very fondly picked out just for her.  I hope she loves this tradition as much as I do.

Another tradition that I loved and have already started passing on to Maya is the Christmas jammies and “the holding empty stocking” picture in said jammies.  Every year my Mum would buy us each a new pair of Christmas pajammas.  She would give us the new jammies on Christmas Eve when we got home from the Christmas Eve service at our church.   We would all don our new jammies and my Mum would get ready to take our yearly “hold our empty stocking” picture.  We would all grab our stockings and sit down in front of the Christmas tree and my Mum would take a picture.  The pictures always turned out so well, I think because we were all so happy and excited about what the next day would bring.  Maya’s Christmas jammies are sitting in my closet waiting for Christmas Eve when she will proudly wear them and get her picture taken.  Who doesn’t love a new pair of warm Christmas jammies.

The next Christmas tradition that I hope to pass on once we start having Christmases at home instead of traveling, is my Mum’s Christmas morning ritual tradition.  As a child this next tradition used drive us all crazy, but looking back on it I realize how awesome it was.  Every Christmas morning we would all get up and rush to the tree.  We would open the gifts in our stockings and our big Santa gift.  Once we were done my Mum would put a halt to the gift opening so that we could all head to the kitchen for a yummy pancake breakfast.  Although it was tough to leave our presents behind and sit through a whole breakfast, but I loved those breakfasts.  We were all so happy and had such fun talking about the gifts we had received from Santa.  I can’t wait to be at home for a Christmas so I can introduce her to this favorite of Christmas traditions.

There are so many Christmas traditions I want to share with Maya, but those are a few of my very favorites.  I hope she loves them as much as I do and I look forward to developing our own traditions, like making a gingerbread house every year ;)

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