Christmas Traditions

Hi Guys! Ever since I first thought about incorporating Christmas into my December blogging, I knew I wanted to do a post on traditions. It provides endless fascination for me to listen to tales of everyone else's 'typical' Christmas day, and I treasure my own little routine so close to my heart. I'm truly a festive person in the most over the top sense of the word, in some ways I feel as if I spend all year counting down until this special season, my most favourite of them all. I have vivid year 7 memories of pestering my best friends to recount their traditions to me on the way to school in the middle of July - I'm that girl.

For me, Christmas is getting up at 3am and creeping into my sisters bedroom, stocking in hand. With sleepy smiles and excitement we sort through the little collection of hair ties and chocolate, comparing with each other and sometimes having a little snooze before I sneak back into my own room, set the stocking exactly where it was and fall asleep until morning (when we would tactfully pretend we hadn't seen the same hair ties and chocolate just five hours before in the middle of the night.) It's about waiting for Dad to make the mugs of tea before we can enter the living room and see what 'Santa' left us, and then having a competition to see who can drag their present-opening out the longest. The afternoon food-snooze following the Christmas dinner, giggling at the sounds of our grandparents snoring, and watching How to Train Your Dragon and The Polar Express before making a quick turkey sandwich and then getting back to board games and general festive entertainment.

It's odd for me to think that next year I won't have the exact same traditions - a lot of them will be the same, but the majority of advent will be spent somewhere entirely new, with people I haven't even met yet. I know that I'll still be able to bake gingerbread and make Christmas cocktails, but it will be within a totally new crowd - which both scares and excites me a lot. It's even scarier to think that years into the future I'll most likely be hosting a Christmas event of my own (*prays that my husband can cook because I can't even boil an egg*).

I'm not even entirely sure what the point of this post was, but I guess what I want to know is; what are your Christmas traditions? The whacky and the wonderful - I'd truly love to know! Also, how do you feel about evolving traditions? For me, I've always been an apprehensive person about any kind of change; in my mind Christmas exists in this magical, untouchable bubble. When I look back at this post this time next year, what will have changed, and how will I be different (shall we play a game of spot the potential Philosophy student?) It's all scary and its all exciting, but it's still always comforting to know that wherever you end up, and whoever you are or are not with at the time, you can come home at Christmas and be secure in the knowledge that the things about Christmas that really matter will always be there.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Em xo