My Christmas Traditions

D has been out of town for a few nights, so I've been decorating the house for Christmas this week in the evenings. Last night I followed up on one of my favorite Christmas traditions - watching "White Christmas". I usually watch it by myself as D can barely take old movies - but that's ok. I watched it last night while I finished stringing cranberries on floral wire for the tree garland. SIX bags of cranberries later it's finished, and looks great. Anyways, watching that movie always makes me feel good and gets me in the holiday spirit. I love old movies and how elegant and polite people seemed to be back then. Although I'd hate to do it myself everday, I loved how women wore skirts and gloves and hats. And everyone knew how to dance. I'd love to have a party, just once, where everyone came 'dressed' not just jeans, sweaters and a six-pack of OM. But I'm rambling....the thought was having watched the movie was one of my traditions. I have a lot of them that seem to be just 'mine'. One of the things that makes me want kids is to be able to pass them along. I thought I'd list out some of them that I can think of.

• tree garland - stringing either popcorn or cranberries while watching a holiday movie
• always have christmas candles burning
• put out the nativity set my grandmother Huggins made us
• hang all my old childhood ornaments along with new ones
• open one gift Christmas eve
• always do stockings
• stockings should have those little foil wrapped chocolate santas in them (my mom did that)
• Hide the christmas pickle ornament in the tree (got that from my friend Gretchen's family)
• make a huge breakfast Christmas morning
• the dog always gets a stocking and a bunch of bones
• take time Christmas day to relax and read a book for a bit in front of the tree
• make Baklava, oyster crackers and mom's cheeseball
• hang jingle bells on the front door
• somewhere you always have to use the big colorful outdoor lights from the 70's because my dad always did and to me that's christmas
• mulled wine
• make Christmas scent bags to hand out to just about everyone

That's all I can think of for now. I'm sure there's more!