Traditions

I thought I would just take a bit to share two of my favorite family Christmas traditions. The first one is about presents and when they get opened. Neither Hubband or I grew up in families that opened presents on Christmas Eve so we didn't really need to do any figuring out of when to open said gifts. However, there was an established "putting the baby to bed" routine before the first one was even a year old. The standard stuff of pajamas, last drink, mouth cleaning, and a bedtime story/book reading. Yes, I have had people ask me how old my kids were when I started reading out loud to them. The first one, about three or four days. The second, well before she was born she had an older sibling reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears to "the baby in your tummy" complete with showing my tummy the pictures every day.
Anyway, back to traditions. There are a lot of really cool children's books about Christmas out there and though libraries are some of my family's best friends, I do believe in buying books. Especially cool children's picture books. Thus a new tradition began in our family. Every year we get a new Christmas book, the kids get to open it on Christmas Eve, and it is their bedtime story for the night. The Christmas "bed-time" story still gets read to them by their dad. Why him? Well, that is part of the tradition. If he's going to have to finish reading it when I get all choked up while reading it, he might as well start it.

Our other major Christmas tradition is to sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and have birthday cake for breakfast. That tradition has been in our family at least since my mom was little girl, but maybe since my grandmother was a child. I know Mr. A and his brother were singing Happy Birthday this morning too, and I would guess my cousin and his kids were as well.
Happy first day of Christmas!