My Family’s Christmas Tradition

Christmas is my favorite time of the year because I absolutely love the atmosphere; the music, the food, the people, the mood almost everything is happy and exciting. It’s like this warm feeling of goodness in the air. It’s also my favorite time because I get to spend time with my family. We always have the best time together during the holidays and I can wait to share this time with my own family in the near future. I’d like to share my favorite family Christmas tradition.

 Each year my mom and her siblings take turns hosting our family Christmas gathering. We do this thing we call “boxes”, where each family fills a box full of things that go with the theme chosen while also being within the budget. Some of the past themes we’ve had were; House related- so if you choose the ‘kitchen’ you’d fill the box with kitchen related things. We’ve had a camp related theme where you fill the box with things you’d need for camping. My favorite theme is when it’s free for all. You have free reign over whatever you want to put in your box. Each box is numbered and we play games to find out which box you get. It’s super fun to go through each box and find out what’s inside.

We usually do our Box game on Christmas day after we have our family eating. We typically have activities each day leading up to Christmas for a week. We’d do the typical gingerbread house decorating, we’ll have a movie night for the younger kids, my favorite night of activities is probably game night. The Xbox would come out and we’d play Dance Central, we’d have the cards and different games lined up.

At the end of the night, my grandma, the matriarch of our family will always close our family gathering retelling the reason for the season. The birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I love that she always reiterates that Christmas is more than  presents and Santa. Learning this at such a young age helped shape my perspective, although presents are nice but it will never compare to spending time with my family, which to me,  is the best present of all. Does your family have any Christmas traditions? I’d love to hear about them❤

-Ness