Tamera: Every Christmas my family and I go to church together. Then we feast! We also give our Secret Santa gifts to one another.
Ashlyn: Every year on Christmas, my whole family eats stuffed French toast together for breakfast, we play some type of family game and we exchange our homemade Secret Santa gifts.
Aubrey: We have hosted a Christmas breakfast at our house for as long as I can remember. Extended family comes over, everyone brings a breakfast dish, we eat, exchange gifts, and enjoy spending time with one another. This is the tradition I look forward to most every year!
Izzy: Every year on Christmas my family and I wake up, make breakfast and while it is in the oven we pass out presents and open them. After we open them, we take them back to our rooms, then eat breakfast and make hot chocolate. For dinner, we have a big feast and enjoy the rest of our night.
Mekenzie: My family doesn’t have any specific holiday traditions, but it is common practice for me and my little sister to visit our dad in Nashville during Thanksgiving. We enjoy going to his place because he makes the best home-cooked meals and there’s lots to do in a bigger city. Since part of my family relocates almost every year, we plan Christmas trips on a whim and go wherever the wind takes us. I hope to spend time with my mom in Maryland this winter. It’ll be a nice change of pace! I think annual change is a part of my family’s holiday tradition.
Chloe: For Thanksgiving, my mom cooks dinner and we invite friends over to eat with us. We always end the night by watching National Lampoons: Christmas Vacation. For Christmas, my family decorates the house together. We put as many handmade ornaments as we can on the tree. All of our ornaments are handmade by my brothers and I through our childhood years. It’s a nice trip down memory lane. We also throw a Christmas Eve party with all of our friends.
Ethan: If there is one tradition, my brother and I compete to see how much food we can eat. So yeah, my holiday tradition is losing eating competitions to my younger brother.
Trenton: I have one set of grandparents that lives in New York, and another that lives in Lawrenceburg. Our yearly tradition is to go to one for Thanksgiving and the other for Christmas, alternating years. No holiday season is complete without our family road trip(s). It isn’t always the most exciting or peaceful tradition, but it is unique to our family.
Clarissa: In December, my mom buys me and my brother Advent calendars because it is a German tradition she grew up with; it is usually a chocolate Advent calendar so you’d eat a piece a day to count down the days till Christmas. On my father’s side of the family, my great-grandma makes her homemade Russian tea cakes in batches for our family to take home and devour during the Christmas season. When celebrating Christmas, if we were home, because we used to live away from family, the morning is when our household would wake up early in the morning and open our Christmas gifts. However, since high school, my dad has been too impatient and excited, so we wait till midnight hits for us to open up all the gifts.
James: Every Christmas Eve, my father gathers all of us around in the evening before we go to bed. He opens the Bible to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and reads the Christmas story, reminding us of the true meaning behind the holiday. As he shares the story of Jesus’ birth, it’s a heartfelt moment that brings us closer as a family.
Erika: My family always has my dad’s spaghetti and meatballs, then my mom makes chocolate oatmeal cookies and pairs it with my grandma’s homemade punch.
