Friday, December 18, 2009

Friday Five: Christmas Traditions

For this Friday Five, Jan asks us to "share five things about the Christmas traditions in your family."

Since Christina and David are home (yay!), I snagged Christina to help with this while David was practicing his trumpet.

Traditions we always do:
* Some time during the season we go to the Portland Zoo to take in Zoolights.

* There are a few "must watch" Christmas movies -- e.g. PeeWee's Christmas Special, The Snowman, Muppets Christmas Carol, and Rankin-Bass specials.

* Christmas tree ornaments are put on the tree while David selects/plays the music.

* On Christmas Eve, we go to a church service, then go to Grandma's for a huge holiday food spread before opening presents.

*Oh yes, and who can forget... the cats always get catnip from Santa on Christmas morning.

Traditions we always cook or eat:
* Christmas cookies

* Fudge!

* Hickory Farms cheese spread, crackers, and meat

* Ham or turkey on Christmas day

Traditions we would like to start:
This year we bought a Germans from Russia board game (to help celebrate our ethnicity!) which we just played this evening. This has a pretty good shot at becoming an annual tradition.

Traditions we would like to discard:
* Someone always seems to get a Christmas cold. Let's ditch this tradition.

* Also, we almost always have a 'green' Christmas here in the Pacific NW -- We'd rather have a white one.

Anything about our family Christmases:
We always stay home, and have a small, but nice holiday.

11 comments:

Processing Counselor said...

Germans from Russia board game. Pretty specialized! Milton Bradley?

Elaine (aka...Purple) said...

Zoolights...perfect.

Hope your voice is better.

Diane M. Roth said...

we want to ditch the christmas cold, too. :)

hope you have a blessed time!

Jan said...

I so like the way you did the Friday Five! Thanks for the glimpse into your Christmas life. I am looking for a board game for Christmas, so Germans from Russia sounds pretty good. Everyone was captivated by Puerto Rico last year.

dust bunny said...

How about a Saturday Six?...then you could include the Gilberg Get-together with the Dust Bunnies! (Not technically a "family" event, but definitely a tradition) This year I managed to snag a mighty tasty pumpkin roll----not quite the spread your mom puts on, but still worthy of the calories.

Terri said...

I would really like a snowy white Christmas too! And the zoolights sound like great fun...

Auntie Knickers said...

That Christmas cold was really a tradition for me during college -- as was carrying a load of books home and never cracking them! (We had finals after Christmas, crazy!) Christmas laryngitis can be even worse if you have speaking or singing parts in the Christmas service...we've been there too. Hope you're doing better now and enjoy the time (and the game! from my time in MN genealogy circles I seem to recall there are Germans-from-Russia in North Dakota? And in the Army I had a Russian instructor, native speaker, who was one Von Schlippe!)

RevDrKate said...

The game sounds fun. Ditto on the cold idea. Forgot about the movies, they are definitely part of the tradition.

angela said...

May I come visit. Sounds yummy. Gotta put old-fashioned fudge on my list this weekend. I've always wanted to visit the Pacific NW.

We may have your snow this weekend...expecting 10 inches. Thank goodness for a fireplace. Milk, bread and marshmallows at the ready

Sally said...

Love the sound of that board game, don't think I could play it though!

Hot Cup Lutheran said...

sounds beautiful all the way around!