When I think about Christmas traditions, my family really isn’t big on particular activities. We’re more about spending time together. It’s not so much what we’re doing, as it is who we’re celebrating with.
That’s always been a very heartwarming and comfortable part of my life — just knowing we have that family foundation. For me, that’s what makes celebrating holidays enjoyable.
We’re a small family so we just have two homes where we’ll gather. We’ll go to my parents, then we’ll visit my girlfriend’s family. As hectic as things are these days, we like to keep it simple and focus on enjoying that family time together.
Our homes are about 15 minutes apart, so that makes it easy to get back and forth during the holidays without a lot of travel. That’s especially helpful now that I have a baby boy.
Laken was born Sept. 15, so he’s not going to have any idea of what’s going on, but for me, just watching him grow and seeing my family interact with him reminds me of what’s really important in life.
As far as traditions go, when my family owned a hardware store, we used to host a big Christmas Eve dinner where we fed almost the whole town. COVID put an end to that, but those are good memories of celebrating with our customers and friends.
Now, we just enjoy our family dinners on a smaller scale, but that allows us more time to visit with one another. We enjoy a lot of the typical holiday dishes like my favorite — sweet potato casserole with marshmallows — with a turkey as the main course.
Things have changed for me this year because I’ve gone from being just an eater to being the cook. I smoked a turkey for Thanksgiving and apparently everyone thought it was pretty good because I’ve been promoted to head smoker.
That means I’m in charge of smoking the Christmas turkey.
Before and after the meal, there might be a few board games and mom is already talking about having our matching pajamas. Not my forte, but my girlfriend likes it, so whatever keeps her happy.
Kind of a new tradition that I do enjoy is our Elf on the Shelf. Basically, you move it around the house and tell the kids that the Elf is watching them, so they’d better be good.
I get to do that now, so I’ve had some fun with it. Recently, I had the Elf sitting backward on a cactus and I told everyone he was feeling prickly. (I know.)
As far as Christmas movies, my family likes the funny ones, but whenever we have time, I normally try to sit down and watch Bassmaster reruns.
On that theme, my dad and I might do some local fishing during Christmas week this year. Since we sold the hardware store last year, we’ve had a little more time when I’m not traveling. We’ll probably take advantage of the more relaxed schedule, as long as the weather is decent.
We’ll probably go to one of the small lakes or ponds near us for a more low-key trip with more productivity. We won’t get too caught up in catching tournament-quality bass; we’ll just go fishing.
Like I said, it’s all about spending time together.
