Starting the party…and the season… (With E-Reader Giveaway) Back to Blog
Update: The winner of the e-reader is Julie Kornhausl!
Do you have a favorite way to kick-off the holiday season? Is there a special tradition that really gets you in the mood for holiday magic?
At my house, it’s all about the ornaments for me. When the ornaments come out of the boxes, when I get to oooh and ahhhhh over them, well, that’s when the magic starts.
My ornaments aren’t a perfectly matched set. They aren’t fancy glass balls that shimmer and shine in the light –instead, my ornaments are a totally mis-matched set. A Santa made with popsicle sticks, a snowman painted by the hand of a two-year-old boy. Each ornament has meaning for me, and it’s the memories that matter most.
Every year, I get my son to spend time making a new ornament with me. A new ornament=a new memory. I don’t need to have expensive ornaments lining my tree (my son would have smashed those long ago!), but I do need the memories to hang from those branches.
What about you? Please share your special tradition for starting the holidays with me! One commenter will be randomly selected to win a Kindle Paperwhite e-reader (and if the winner already has an e-reader, I can send a gift card for the e-reader’s price, instead–a value of $119).
And here are a few of my ornaments…hanging proudly from my tree… 😉
See? I told you I had a popsicle Santa.
Snowman fun! Painted by my son, back when he was 2.
She's not exactly a dark angel, but I bet she'd still like Az...
Every year when we put our tree up, my mother – who is scottish – will sit with her favourite whiskey and toast the tree with my husband. I can remember a few years when the ” toasting ” started before the tree was done and those were the years that my tree would be crooked, or all the decorations seemed to be in just one spot, or the lights looked like they were strangling the tree instead of enhancing it! With this being my mother’s last Christmas with us – she is in her last stages of cancer – these will be the Christmas memories I will cherrish the most.
The holidays start for us when we start our Christmas baking.
We start the holidays by decorating the tree while listening to holiday music and afterwards we sit in the floor around the tree and drink hot chocolate.
Your ornaments made me smile because you do something completely different than what my family does. They like their trees to have themes and match. Me though I have ornaments that I use that were gifts, things I’ve made, or anything that caught my eye. Holidays here for me start with baking, there is nothing like smelling fresh cookies.
Going out with my kids to cut down our tree from one of the fields on our farm and then bringing it back to the house to decorate it.
We start the season by visiting a local farmers market style place the first week of December. They have homemade apple cider and all kinds of yummy baked goods.
I love to decorate & decorate for all the holidays. The season starts when it is Thanksgiving, by then my shopping is done my lights & tree are up & I can enjoy making christmas cookies with my kids. I like to watch the movies on tv. That is what really does it for me, sitting with the family watching christmas movies.—Rachel
Traditions: the day after thanksgiving my mom decorates the tree, while i make cookies. my favorite is christmas day when everyone comes over and we open our presents and play games (apples to apples, dance party, etc)
Me and my kids have a tradition of making an ornament every year as well. They are my favorites on my tree and the ones the made in grade school that aren’t quite perfect to the average viewer, but to me they are exquisite and beyond perfection. Our Xmas tradition is putting the tree up 2 days after thanksgiving with Xmas music blaring in the house.
mmmm traditions.. So many of them… I guess my favorite is just getting out the decorations. So much fun.. THe ones for the inside and the outside… I do love to look at the ornaments also…. Thanks for the fun giveaways Cynthia!! YOU ROCK 🙂 🙂
Ornaments are the same here. I don’t have the fancy ornaments. Every year hubby lets the boys pick otu an ornament and I intial them. Some, much to my dismay got chewed on by a puppy.
But I have two ornaments a friend send me. I was pregnant for my third child. One is a pregnant bear and the other is a rocking horse.
Believe it or not, the first thing I do for Christmas is hit the Black Friday sales. That gets me in the spirit, and then I put up my tree the Sunday after Thanksgiving. And then on Christmas Eve, the grankids come over to make cookies for Santa.
In my family we have plenty of holiday traditions: when my 2 little sisters and I were kids our grandparents used to take us to the sinema and watch a cartoon (like POcahontas, Lion King), we would eat lunch and have a nap at their place and when they brough us home the tree would be up and the house would be decorated 😀
Since we grew up we have other traditions: we decorate the tree (me + my 2 sisters) while listening to rock-y Christmas songs and dancing around :-D, each one of us bakes about 3 kinds of cookies so we have tons to eat for breakfast during the holidays, and we always watch While You Were Sleeping during the holidays as a family movie 🙂
As for how I get in the holiday spirit? When I smell the scent of mulled wine at the Christmas fairs, when I start hearing the Christmas carols/songs at the shops and when the city is decorated with the Christmas lights 😀 I just LOVE it!! 🙂
ps. and those ornaments look great, that Popsicle Santa is really cute and wow your son painted that snowman when he was 2, that is impressive! My niece (who is also 2) can only draw circles lol 🙂
When my sons were small, we would bake and decorate cookies on Christmas Eve. My sons are grown now but still enjoy coming over to my house and decorating cookies!!!
We always go to get our Christmas tree from our own forest and we decorate it on Christmas Eve.
I collect Scottish Terrier xmas ornaments – I have way too many for a tree – and have yet to find a suitable way to display them. There are no small children at the family gathering, so the holidays are low key for us now that we are getting older.
My rule is as soon as I buy the first christmas present, I’m allowed to start playing my Christmas music. I have just about everyone’s christmas album and can go just about all season without repeating a song. 😉
I love hearing the Christmas songs on the radio, all the different versions of some of the song just makes me wanna dance around the house like a little kid again.
I love Christmas and everything that revolves around it. It’s my favorite time of the year! I love listing to Christmas music, decorating and baking. So much fun.
Christmas starts for me when I go to the first carol service. This year the beginning of December. A huge choir of 200 men, women and children sing carols and have readings. Later in December I go to a carols by candlelight service, followed by mince pies and a drink.
A really warming way to start the season.
Lorraine
My family loves to watch holiday movies. It’s a fun way to be indoors and enjoy its other’s company. Plus we keep the fridge stocked because you never know when there’s something we want to make together.
We make Christmas cards together. I scrapbook so we have lots to choice from.
we put up the christmas tree right after thanksgiving dinner so the family is all there to help . ITs great fun to watch all the kids pick out their favorite ornaments to hang up
meandi09@yahoo.com
It’s all in the decorating. Love to decorate the house together. We have these one lights that do different sequences of flashing. I love to turn off all the lights except the tree and just sit and watch them together.
danni0113@gmail.com
I love decorating the tree to start the holiday’s too. Our ornaments are all from places we’ve traveled to together and ornaments celebrating our son. I also love to get in the holiday mood by making a big batch of cutout sugar cookies.
I also have special ornaments so when I open the box the memories flood my mind. How wonderful it is.
I love putting up the Christmas tree. My son tries to help, bless his heart. Love this time of year!
ehaney578 at aol dot com
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Congrats on the new release, Cynthia. The start of the holiday season starts right after Thanksgiving dinner when we put up the tree and we spend a couple of hours decorating it.
My tradition is getting a special ornament each Christmas from “The Cracker Box”. They are expensive kits with beads, sequins and faceted rhine stones on a satin ball. In high school my then boy-friend’s Mother did this and she had the most awesome sparkling tree. I’ve missed some years but my most treasured ornaments are those.
We start the season playing carols on the iPod and then decorate the house from top to bottom (always on the Saturday after Thanksgiving).
kesummer69(at)gmail(dot)com
I love to decorate our house for the holidays. I have two trees as one is our traditional tree that I put up each year with the same ornaments we originally bought for it and the other tree is loaded with all the ornaments I have from my parents and grandparents. I love to look at each one and remember the stories my family told about how they acquired or made each one of them. What wonderful memories I have as I put together my “memory” tree.
Nothing say Christmas to me as much as the Nativity. Over the years I have collected 20 Nativity scenes. Some are 1 pc with the Baby Jesus, Mary and Joesph others are have multiple pieces. I have one that has 32 pcs. I guess the most precious to me is the one that was in my childhood hope. It is a rag tag affair as it has been around 53+ years. It is now down to 5 pcs that are old and worn. But it is the most beautiful to me. As I unwrap this Nativity I recall my parents (both have passed away) and childhood memories flood my heart and make me smile and thankful that I was so blessed in my life.
I have skipped the tree the last 2 years, but my Nativity scenes are always put out for that is what Christmas means to me.
Thanks for the giveaway. Happy Holidays
Every member in our family including the animals have an ornament with their names on them… tradition that starts off the holiday… well we start off with Christmas music and the a bit later pulling out all of the wonderful decorations… the tree is a little later on.
Happy Happy Holidays! 😀
We start the holidays by putting out all our decorations and the tree. Sip eggnog and watch some kind of Christmas show. We used to always listen to Johnny Mathis when I was a kid. We still do that at my Mom’s for her tree decorating party. Gotta have Johnny!
I usually start putting up our tree the last weekend of November, remembering to put lots of lights on it. We love sitting at night, which comes early now, and only have the lights from the tree on, beautiful. Have a Happy Holiday.
Our traditions are so much alike! Every year I let my little guys either make or buy a new ornament and its so much fun putting it on the tree and looking at the ornaments from the years past 🙂 My youngest just turned 2 on Thanksgiving so this will be his first year for a handmade one.
I also make Christmas candy and cookies. That always puts me in the Christmas spirit cutting out little Santa Claus and candy canes.
And last but not least on Christmas eve we have a movie marathon. My kids pick 2 and watch them and when they go to bed my hubby watches a Christmas story and I normally read a Christmas book :)!
I’m so excited for Christmas this release party has gotten me excited!!
Every year we get new name ornaments for out boys so i have currently 9 David’s and 3 Jonathan’s on my tree. We also have handmade ones that were mine and my husbands when we were little Thank you mom’s… I have a small tree only 4.5 feet i plan on getting a bigger one every year but can’t part with my little tree.
Every year, my sisters and I get together and make Christmas cookies for our families. Decorating challenges get pretty competitive 🙂
We dont start until after Thanksgiving and that night start watching holiday themed movies and music
It starts for us after Thanksgiving, when we decorate for Christmas. What really gets me in the mood is watching Christmas classics, like Rudolph, the Grinch, and It’s a Wonderful Life.
That is a great tradition Cynthia, I’m definitely starting it when my nephew gets older. The tradition my entire family takes part in is the watching of Christmas themed movies especially A Christmas Story!
The Christmas season is official underway in my house the day after Thanksgiving when we pullout the decorations and set up the tree. It is a family affair and takes hours with all of our ornaments. There are no two alike and are all special like yours. From my husbands childhood ornaments to the ones my daughters made in school to the ones my husband and I bought when we got married or our daughters babies first Christmas ornaments and the moveable hallmark ones my MIL gave me. They all have very special meaning.
lol We don’t really get into the spirit until right before Christmas when we finally get our tree up ( December for hubby and i for work is crazy) When i finally get a chance to wrap the gifts and we’re all together. Kind of late in the month but that’s just how it happens.
I work the USPS and hubby is a truck driver so crazy busy.
Lisa B
My mom still hangs the ornaments that we made when we were kids, on the tree and we are 41, 40 and 38 years old. One of my favorite traditions.
We always decorate the tree on Thanksgiving night and listen to Christmas music and snack on homemade chex mix and hot cocoa. Then we watch Polar Express with my son at bedtime.
I too love ornaments and have been collecting them for over 42 years. I give a tree trimming party every year and everyone helps trim the tree and there’s lots of food, drink and fun!
We still put up the decorations our children made many years ago; they are now 30 and 28 years of age but they still expect to see them on the tree!
We usually put our tree up on Thanksgiving night and leave it up until January 6th. The ornaments are ones my children and grandchildren made or were made for them.
Another tradition is my Grandmas Hungarian cookies. She would make them every year. She passed away almost 9 years ago. I got her recipe and now I make them every year.
Love decorating for the holidays. It is a family tradition that each year there is a new ornament under the tree for each family member. So each year as we put up the ornaments we check the name and the year. This way when the girls head out on their own they have a full set of Christmas ornaments to take with them. This year we actually have 3 trees. One with the matching ornaments. One with the each year ornaments and a smaller tree with some of the more delicate ornaments throughout the year.