We’ve been talking a lot about holiday traditions in our home recently. As Christmas approaches Pat and I have been thinking about the things we did growing up that we always looked forward too.
One tradition in my home growing up was that Santa always delivered a stuffed animal to our bed on Christmas Eve. He did this to make sure we were sleeping. Pat and I have decided to pass on this tradition and are looking for a unique stuffed animal for Zane this year.
We are thinking of ideas now for the traditions we want our family to have. Some we’ll start this year and others we’ll wait for until Zane’s a bit older.
So this leaves me with a question for you…what are your holiday traditions? Not only would I love to hear them but I would love to see them somehow depicted in a photo. And how about a prize for sharing your traditions?
I am honored to be in HP Photographic Memories interview series with other rocking mom bloggers. Part of being in this fine group of women is that I get to give you some HP Photo Books!
What are HP Photo Books?
Photo Books are a fun, easy way to create a customized, professional quality photo book at home with your inkjet printer. The innovative binding system – think of a big binder clip – lets you replace or rearrange pages and add mementos like ticket stubs or invitations. The included software has a variety of professionally designed layouts, or you can create your own with your favorite graphics package. If you have a MAC I suggest using INDesign or PhotoShop to put together some unique layouts. The books come in two sizes, 5x7 ($14.99) and 8.5x11 ($24.99) and in multiple colors.
You can find the book at HP Home and Home Office Store, Best Buy, QVC, Amazon.com, Staples, Office Depot and Circuit City (online only). Just in time for the holidays HP is offering a 20% discount off the purchase of a Photo Book in the HP Store. You can find the coupon for this offer here. Also, a number of retailers, including the HP Home and Home Office Store, will be offering instant rebates on printers during the upcoming holiday season, including the A626 Compact Printer.
Or you can win them here! And one lucky winner will also get a HP Photosmart A626 Compact Photo Printer. Due to a shipping error I received two printers but HP was happy to let me keep the second to give away to my readers.
Let’s recap…post a link to your blog or Flickr photo that describes your holiday tradition by Tuesday, November 20. Two judges will take a look at the entries and pick two winners. The judges will be my mother (who is a professional photographer) and my Uncle Lee (who doesn’t know that he's a judge yet but will be in town). He also has a great eye for photography.
First place will receive two Photo Books (one 5x7 and one 8.5x11) and a HP Photosmart printer. Second place will receive two Photo Books (one 5x7 and one 8.5x11).
Share your holiday traditions and get a great gift for yourself or someone else!
Contest Change: Several of you have noted that you don't have pictures of your traditions! That's okay...make sure to take some this year though to save those memories! Just go ahead and tell me about your tradition and we'll go with that, but if you have a photo please share it with us as well.
11/14/07
what's your holiday tradition?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
18 comments:
Well don't enter me for obvious reasons, but I wanted to comment on the holiday tradition thing. We haven't really done much for that but we do both take off work the week of Christmas and have some nice quality time around the holidays. It makes life pretty sweet to just relax with the kids. :) I like you idea of the santa stuffed animal...that is pretty cute!
Don't enter me either, for similar reasons as Stacy, but on the animal, you might go with something that has lots of variations --bear, elephant, dog, cat etc so you can do the same animal every year. Then at the end he will have a great collection of them. We did elephants for my son when he was very little.
Holiday traditions: we have one of those wooden advent calendars that you can put coins and candy in, and my son loves to open the door each morning. We also get an ornament for every pet for the tree, so this year we have to get one for the new puppy.
Traditions:
Every year when we were little, we got to open one present on Christmas Eve. It was always a pair of new pj's to wear that night.
My little sister and brothers (8 & 6) make us homemade ornaments each year. I always look forward to receiving one each Christmas and am already thinking how sad I will be when they get old enough that they no longer want to do that.
Matt's family has a nice steak dinner on Christmas Eve. Kind of wondering how that will play out once we have children because I will want our kids to wake up in their own beds Christmas morning and our families live 2.5-3 hours away.
Matt and I also started last year but plan on getting a new ornament each year for us.
Since Andy and I have been married, we have taken a "special" photo for photo Christmas cards. This has been our tradition for 6 years now. One special Christmas, we had a 1 month old, and of course he had to be the photo of the year.
Here is the shot:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9134808@N05/2027173082/
He wasn't so happy with us afterwards.
I LOVE Christmas traditions. When I was young, my two sisters and I used my Dad's 'field socks' (he's a geologist) as our stockings because we perceived them to be the biggest socks in the world!! Then there is the 'chair' tradition. Because we always did 'right royaly' at Christmas, and Mum and Dad got sick of wrapping things, they took to leaving our unwrapped presents arranged tastefully on an armchair. We always selected one each on Christmas eve and it was usually a fight to see who got the sofa because of course we perceived that there may be more gifts on a bigger 'chair'!! I think I was 24 when the chair Christmases ended. Mum and Dad prepared the chairs that year while we were at the Midnight Service and when we got home there was a 'do not enter' sign on the lounge room door. We thoroughly enjoyed our last opportunity to be 'kids' but after that Mum drew the line and we had to start getting wrapped presents under the tree like all the adults!!
Of course, now the Baby Angel and Small Boy have chairs! The other tadition is the letter to Father Christmas. I have kept all of the Baby Angel's letters and all Santa's replies. She was about 8 or 9 before she tumbled the familiar handwriting. Magic transcends all logic.
Christmas Traditions!!!
I'm so horrible at this!
We usually spend the holidays with my family or in-laws and I havn't really started any in our own home. I NEED to though.
Last year I made gingerbread trains from scratch with the boys which was a LOT of work, but I would like to continue that. It makes a nice home made decoration and the kids had a blast!
We always have a little family nativity on Christmas eve and we read the Christmas story while the kids preform in their bathrobes and towels tied around their heads LOL!!! It is such a special time.
I usually give the kids a new ornament each year with their name and date on the bottom. I started when they were babies and it is fun each year to pull out the ornaments and the kids get to hang their own ornaments. The ornament usually goes along with what they are "into" that year. (trains, a character etc..)
I can't remember a Christmas morning we didn't have home made cinnamon rolls ~ I'm learning to make them so I can carry that on :)
I just LOVE Christmas time! It is so magical and fun!
Beth
http://www.flickr.com/photos/james-town/2038534598/ ~ my picture : )
Beth
Love the idea of a stuffed animal from Santa!
Every year since we were married, we've put up the Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving. But with Nadia's birthday here on Saturday, we're going to wait this year...and I'm sad to break that tradition.
We haven't really creted a lot of our own family traditions...maybe we can start some new ones this year!
I love traditions. They make the holidays so special.
Here are a few of mine:
The Christmas Tree:
We always go out the day after Thanksgiving to get the tree. Has to be fresh. Then we bring it home and decorate it that night while listening to Christmas music or watching a Christmas movie.
The Ornaments:
We try to buy a new family ornament once a year to highlight the event that had the biggest impact on the family that year. Like last year it was a fire truck, due to the fire. Not a pleasant event, but an event that surely impacted the rest of the year.
We also buy an ornament for each boy. Usually represents something they were interested in that year. When they get older and move away (Sob) we will give them their collection of ornaments for their own tree.
The pickle. This is actually a German tradition but I love it. On Christmas eve Santa hides a pickle ornament on the tree and whoever finds it on Christmas morning gets to open the first gift and gets a special little gift.
Elf Blue Foot
Elf Blue Foot is one of Santa's special helpers. He travels to different, random homes on Christmas eve dropping off Christmas presents for children on Santa's list. He always drops off new pjs, to make sure the pictures on Christmas morning are unforgetable, and a holiday book to read at bedtime. He usually leaves them at the door sometime during the evening, and then hurries along, like magic, to deliver the rest of his gifts. The reason why his name is Elf Blue Foot, is because he doesn't have reindeer like Santa (they are busy resting up for their big trip later in the evening) and has to make his travels on foot, so by the time he gets back to the north pole his feet are blue because of the cold. Luckily he doesn't seem to mind. In fact, he thinks of them as his trophy feet, proof that he's one of Santa's extra special helpers.
Those are just a few traditions that happen in our house.
I love the idea of a special Christmas animal - and Elf Blue Foot is too, too cute!
When we were younger, there used to be a children's mass at 4 on Christmas Eve. For as long as I could remember, my family - brother & sisters, parents, grandparents, aunts & uncles & cousins - would all trek across the street to the mass (and when we got old enough, we were in the pageants as well). Afterwards, we would all head over to my grandmother's house, and find a note from Santa, telling us that he'd stopped by to do his final naughty/nice check on us, and was glad to find us all in church. He'd be back later, once we were all asleep, he'd say... but he'd left us just one thing to hold us over till the morning. Coming back and finding that letter - or sitting in church doing my best not to fidget too much or to think about the fact that the letter would be there when we got back - those are some of my favorite Christmas memories.
Of course, an unthinking aunt ruined that for me a year or two earlier than necessary, when she left the drafts of Santa's notes in my notebook - along with her shopping list.
We're all old enough now, and my brother and oldest sister have kids of their own, so we're trying out new traditions: the gingerbread house baking was a no-go, as was my Dad's attempt at an Italian Christmas Eve (all fish - ick!), but we've managed to eek out a few so far. Christmas stockings at Grammy's house - for & from everyone; a Christmas Kelly for each of the girls (or boys, when they wanted them); and a real live Christmas tree... no matter what. (Fake tree = not feeling like Christmas, at least to us.)
I'm looking forward to building more traditions, as time goes on. Especially when I have kids of my own.
I don't know how this tradition started, I think my mom used to do it when she was little?! Each year my mom or Santa, when we believed would hide a pickle ornament somewhere in the depths of our Christmas tree. Then the first one to find the pickle would get a bonus present. Sometimes only one person would get the bonus, other years Santa would leave a bonus for all of us if we could find the pickle. We also have the tradition, even now when we are home that Santa will leave our stocking on our bedroom door so that we can go through that if we woke up early and not disrupt our parents until the allotted time.
we have many fun holiday traditions, but here's one i actually have on film. we like to drive to the coast on new year's day and play on the beach. it's chilly, but it's a great way to ring in the new year with a breath of sea air and sand. it helps get us geared up for the wonderful new year ahead.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/meganmona/2046897709/
this photo is from last year's excursion. happy holidays!
My sisters are twenty-some years older than I, so when I was growing up, the whole family celebrated on Christmas Eve leaving Christmas Day to be spent with just my parents and myself. As I kid, I used to miss seeing my sisters on Christmas Day, but now that I'm older - and we still celebrate this way - I relish spending quality time with my parents (who are in their mid 70s) just the 3 (or 4, now that I'm married) of us. We can get up when we want, eat when and what we want, and laze around all the live-long holiday without interference from anyone else. A couple of years ago when we were visiting my sisters in Michigan, we were left to our own devices on Christmas Day and with only the local Dennys open for dinner, we managed to drive all over God's rainy earth trying to figure out what we'd do in lieu of Christmas dinner. We ended back at the hotel playing cards and we wouldn't have had it any other way.
It's a small tradition, but it's ours, and it's one we've really come to cherish in the last few years.
Well, I dont have a picture right now, but I´ll tell you.
We start celebrating the birth of Messiah 4 weeks ago, so every advent sunday is kind of special. We start decorating and baking the gingerbread cookies. Then at Christmas eve we come tohteher, hole family, and share some yumm food, open presents and share our time with each other, Anyways it's great time together, but we should always remeber the origins of Christmas, these make the reason to celebrate it too! Happy Waiting for Jesus birth time and remebering it!
I like posting things at the last minute. ;) Here is my Holiday Tradition description and photo.
Traditions for the family, from the family
We always have someone read about Jesus' birth after dinner and before devouring our packages. It is a quiet moment of reflection after a loud and fun meal. I always feel so warm inside with the crackling fire, warm and full belly, and pondering why we are all together--to celebrate Jesus. This is followed by a prayer thanking God for his blessings the entire year. After that it's a free for all!
Traditions...
My hubbie and I go to our respective families every other year (we do a Christmas/Thanksgiving rotation). My hubbie is from the South so we have a very traditional Thanksgiving or Christmas meal, we inevitably watch college football (go Auburn), and play some games that his grandmother always arranges. It's fun and usually the gifts are 10-20 dollars and they're usually funny or silly. When we spend the holidays with my family we usually take a trip (usually a short trip since we never have more than a week). My family is small and this is what we did when I was young. This year we have a new baby so we're getting both families together out where we live and taking a weekend trip. We're going to rent a house and cook and make some new traditions for our baby.
Post a Comment