Day 20: Family Traditions

Today is Gingerbread-poloza, so I thought I would write about some family traditions that Allison and I have.

I grew up in a really small family, so holidays were never really that big of a deal. I was always jealous of Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone for having a family that was so big and rambunctious that they could manage to forget him, not once, but three times.

Sure my family had traditions, we had tons of holiday chachkis that had significant meaning, we went to midnight church service, and my Dad read us T’was the Night Before Christmas when we got home. Then we left a high-ball of scotch for Santa and a carrot for the Reindeer. Yep, we left booze for Santa, he would get trashed and make a mess in the house which we had to clean up before we could open presents…It wasn’t until my first Christmas with Allison’s family that I realized that this wasn’t normal.

My Mom turned Christmas shopping into a sport. She would do ALL of her Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve, and every year she spent the exact same amount on Brandon and I, making sure that we also had the same number of gifts under the tree. This got awkward when I started wanting stuff like an iPod and he still wanted 400 GI Joes…guess who got 399 individually wrapped socks? This girl! One year I was a huge pain in the ass and wouldn’t tell my Mom what I wanted, so she bought me the tackiest crap she could find at Walmart so we could return everything together the next day and go shopping for my real present. You know that whole bad present thing that Jimmy Kimmel has been doing? Yeah, my Mom invented that.

For our first Christmas Allison and I were poooooooor…like I was getting paid in wine poor. It is the only Christmas we have spent apart so before we left for each of our parent’s houses I decorated our whole apartment Elf style.

That year we decided to a cross country scavenger hunt between the two families, which culminated in her whole family in the front yard reenacting a live nativity, and my dad dressed like baby New Year.  It is still on the books as the most ridiculous Christmas yet.

This is our sixth Christmas together. We have spent the last 5 with Allison’s family, mainly because between 19  aunts and uncles and 26 first cousins I finally feel like I am in Home Alone. We are starting to create our own traditions as a couple – we don’t buy each other Christmas presents instead we plan a trip or get tickets to Broadway and give each other small fun gifts every other day for Advent. We go nuts creating a themed out our Christmas tree every year. This year our tree has hundreds of star ornaments made out of energy drink cans, last year we had a very dino Christmas.

Once we get to New York you can pretty much guarantee that there is going to be some ridiculous piece of beast that we compare in size to the dog.

We will also remember Christmas morning that wrapping Libby’s presents with snausages in them will mean that she will want to help everyone unwrap their own presents. This year she dove into the present stash under the tree as soon as we walked in the door. We can count on secret Santa on Christmas Eve where we do the family gift and ornament exchange.  All of Allison’s aunt, uncles, and adult cousins make each other ornaments each year. So if you think about it that has been about 30 ornaments/year for the last 30 years…last year I put every single one on the Christmas tree!

My favorite part of Christmas has got to gingerbread-poloza. I guess as kids Allison and her siblings always did the Wilson Gingerbread house together. For some reason the first Christmas I spent with the Werner’s we decided to combine all of the kits into a massive castle. The tradition just stuck. Last year we made a candy cane replica, and this year we are working on a scale replica of the house. I love spending time with the siblings planning, sorting candies, and shaving down chunks of gingerbread.

Growing up is weird. As a kid, I could never imagine what it would be like to not have Christmas morning with my parents. Now as an adult the way we do things just seems to make sense. We try to do something fun with my parents for Thanksgiving or I fly out and see them mid-December then we spend Christmas day with Allison’s family. It just seems to make sense.

This time of year always makes me miss my family though. I know that if my parents, brother, and grandma were here they would be having a blast too. I feel bad for loving Christmas in New York. I feel bad for preferring secret Santa Christmas eve with 20 kids running around and opening presents at midnight so everyone can sleep in on Christmas morning to a nice calm lunch with my Uncle and Grandma on Christmas day. I love my family so much, but the chaos makes the holiday fun for me. Even when it looks like this:

Yep Mark had the whole family take apart Christmas lights so they were red/green/red/green. For some reason this required a bunch of wire splicing.

Now as we start to look toward the future I am not sure which holiday traditions we will keep for our own family once we have kids. I want them to be exposed to the shear craziness that both sides of the family harness.  I feel like everything will get a little bit more complicated, but I also can’t really wait for the magic of experiencing Santa through the eyes of a child…I’m just pretty sure that our kid will probably not leave out Scotch for the big guy.

Do you have any sassy holiday tradition stories?