Hello folks,
We’re now only 1 week away from Christmas, which is very exciting!
Christmas is my favorite time of year and the worst time of year, 1, It’s Christmas YAY!! 2, It’s my birthday
Still, I am a mad Christmas fan and it is one time of year which I get really excited about. Christmas is full of many traditions for our family. We have traditions which involve us three girls, traditions which involve my mums best friend, and traditions for Christmas day which involve the family.
One of the traditions we have for the three of us is decorating the Christmas tree, we will spend a Sunday going out to choose one, and then we will decorate it. It is so much fun and once the tree is up the Christmas music will come out and we can sing along and have fun. We also start wrapping presents once the tree is up, and we’ll spend an evening wrapping presents together, and each of us has our role, i’m the sellotape cutter, my sister is the paper holder, and my mom does the actual wrapping.
Every year with my mums best friend our first Christmas tradition begins in September or October when we bake our Christmas cake, the only thing as children we are allowed to do is stir the mixture and make a wish before it goes in the cake tins. As i’m an old child now, I do get the job of photographing the process, because no one knows what making Christmas cake looks like. We try to make a different recipe every year because we’re on a quest for the perfect Christmas cake. When it gets to December we try to get together once a week to have tea and watch a Christmas film, our first one is usually The Muppets Christmas Carol, which i’m sure you will agree is an ace film. Once Christmas is lurking and almost here we have our Christmas walk, this year it will be the 21st, we get together and go for a nice long walk and look out for holly to collect, and we then come back for homemade soup and bread along with a lovely hot chocolate.
Christmas Eve
Christmas eve is one of those days which always seems to drag, my mom is busy preparing Christmas dinner and sets me and my sister the task of cleaning the house, which she’ll then do again because we’re never good enough. We put off cleaning for as long as possible and make it into an afternoon task, however it only takes a couple of hours and we’re bored again. We spend our afternoon feeling up the presents under the tree and trying to guess what they all are. I will admit now that I am hopeless at this, and my sister is much better but still not as great as my mum! We go to church in the evening for the Christingle Service which is great fun and it’s lovely to see the church full which only happens at Weddings or Christenings.
When we come home me and my sister create little place markers so that Santa knows where to leave our presents and we still leave out a mince pie and glass of milk for Santa, and a carrot or two for Rudolph and the other reindeers. My mom still likes to put me and my sister to bed and to read us our Christmas stories, we have the story of the Nativity (we have a pop up book!) and the poem ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas. Me and my sister will then watch The Grinch together in bed before she goes off to her own room, when we were younger we would share a room.
Christmas Day
I always struggle to get to sleep on Christmas eve because i’m full of excitement and so come 2 in the morning I will be waking my sister up to open our stockings. It used to be a case of running in and physically waking her up but now I cheat and ring her and text her, it’s too cold to get out of bed. We will sit together in my bed and open our stockings together showing each other what we’ve got, normally we have very similar things. We will also watch another film together, and have lots of fun attempting to open the chocolate oranges from our stockings, for some reason it takes ages, even throwing them at the wall didn’t work one year! My sister will then share my bed with me until morning.
One rule we have in our house is that we aren’t allowed to get up and go downstairs until 7, this originally started when my mom and dad were together. My dad is a farmer and would have to go to work on Christmas day morning to milk the cows, and so I had to wait for him to get home before being allowed near my presents, however I was allowed my stocking to open before hand, My sister and I will wake my mom and stepdad up at 7 which they never appreciate! My mom usually gets up first and we go and see whether Santa has been by checking to see if his little snack has been eaten, he’s yet to leave without eating it! we than sit and wait for my stepdad to come down.
We open our presents for Santa and my mom then rushes to find paper and a pen so she can make note of what we’ve all got from other people so that we can thank them properly. Once all the presents are opened we have to get ready to leave for church, luckily the service is usually only have an hour long and again we tend to see a pretty full church. After church we drive round to find a pub so that we can have a quick drink because this is something which my stepdad likes to do.
Once we are home from church my mom will get cracking with Christmas dinner and so me and my sister will play with our new ‘toys’ and watch a film before being made to put everything away upstairs. When we were younger our presents would stay downstairs until after the New Year but because we have guests they have to be put away.
My stepdads parents. my uncle and his girlfriend come round for Christmas dinner and some years my cousins will have dinner with us or they will come after dinner, depending on if they’re having Christmas with their dad. Once Christmas dinner is over it’s usually around 5ish and so my mom will get ready of my birthday because at 17:16 (the time I was born) it becomes my birthday! I will open my presents and blow out the candles on my cake and then we go back to Christmas.
We spend our evening getting merry and playing a game together as a family, usually the one which Santa brings for us! My best friend also comes round in the evening to celebrate my birthday and so I get a second lot of presents from her.
I do really love Christmas, I just wish I didn’t have to share it with my birthday.
How do you spend your Christmas?
