Traditiooooooon...tradition!

This post asks the question, what are your Christmas traditions? (It also over-uses the parenthesis.)

The first Chritmas Jon and I spent together as a married couple, we were in Japan. That wasn't conducive to starting a new tradition (although it would be awesome to go to Japan every Christmas!) and so we put things off a year. The next year we had a little baby (yay!) and we started to adopt the traditions of our two families into one.

We have pink-and-white sandwiches on Christmas Eve (the white is chicken, the pink...bologna), watch a Muppets Christmas Carol (because it is the only holiday movie I like), and then go to bed early (um, because we do that every night). On Christmas morning we open presents and eat pancakes (pancakes!) and then prepare for dinner. Nothing too complicated.

This year we are instituting Holiday Tradition #4: New pajamas on Christmas Eve. Mostly because Evelyn needs new PJs, but also because new PJs are fun. Hooray! Perhaps without knowing it I have also created Holiday Tradition #5: Make a crappy home-made holiday ornament using glitter. (Last year I tried my hand at Martha Stewart's beautiful cinnamon dough birds. They instead turned into stars covered in green glitter. This year I tried my hand at salt dough ornaments. They aren't as bad as the cinnamon stars, but I won't be sending any photos in to Home Beautiful, let's just say that.)

I realized for the first time last year how much more fun Christmas is with a baby around. Evelyn wasn't even old enough to open her presents, or to appreciate gifts, or to understand that this new thing was for her. She didn't know the reason we celebrate Christmas, or that it even was a holiday. But it was still a lot more fun with her around. I imagine that will be even more true this year.

Especially since she'll be wearing her awesome new PJs...