Holiday Traditions

With the holiday season fast approaching, I thought it would be fun to see what traditions writers did besides putting up the Christmas tree and decorations.

Loretta Brabant--My favourite holiday activity is eating.

Shellie Foltz--One of my favorite holiday traditions is to fix a nice fireside supper for just my husband and myself sometime during the weekend before Christmas. Everything else is so hectic and involves parties and groups - it's the one time during the season it's just we two (although this year our new baby - Natalie, a stray we adopted over the summer - will be joining us).

Leann Harris--For the last several years my older children, my husband and I after the early Christmas Eve service have a dinner at the house and then go to a movie. Christmas morning we make pumpkin pancakes before presents. Now remember, these are teenage kids.

Helen King--We have no family in town, so my husband and I created some of our own. :)

On Christmas Eve we go to Zoo Lights. We get a big bag of kettle corn and eat our way through the exhibits. We usually watch the dancing trees at least twice. If it's cold enough we'll get hot chocolate. We love going there that night.

Santa hides the boys' present and they must follow the trail of clues to see what he left. In past years the clues have sent them all over the house, outside, in the fridge and under the dog's dish. There is usually 5-7 clues to discover before they get their prize. It's so much fun

Jane Myers Perrine--Going to the Christmas Eve church service.

Laurie Alice Eakes--Christmas morning was always a ritual. We would wake to coffee and cocoa, cinnamon and pecan rolls, and fruit, then open presents. Each person gets a present before the round starts again.

As for preChristmas, we put up the tree the first Saturday of December. Pine trees make me break out in a rash if I touch them, so it was my job to set up the nativity scene on the mantel.

Mae Nunn--My favorite holiday tradition is keeping the cat from climbing the tree! :-)

Tina LaVon--We always drove Jackie around to see Christmas lights on the 24th to get her to go to sleep. She loved it so much we did it through her teen years.

Donna Delgrosso--I work at a police station and on Christmas, nothing is open and there is little to nothing to eat there. So about six years ago I had an open house. I invited everybody working up on my side of town over for spaghetti and meatballs. I wanted my friends to be able to enjoy Christmas for part of the working day. After that, my family came over and I spent the rest of the day with them. It was a hit! The officers love it and my family had fun getting know the people I work with. I do it every year now and really look forward to it!

Carol Webb--My favorite tradition for the holidays each year was and is getting the SUV packed up with blankets and pillows. We would go to either Starbucks or another coffee shop and get hot apple cider or hot cocoa. I remember one coffee shop in California where you had a choice of chocolate or vanilla whipped cream with your chocolate. Everyone picked the chocolate. Then we would drive through the neighborhoods and look at the holiday lights.

A nearby church (The Church of Joy in Glendale) has an absolutely, amazing light show you can drive through. We’d get a car load of people and drive through with Christmas carols blasting from the speakers. Singing of course was always involved. It didn’t matter how bad you sounded. Some years we’d look up in the newspaper or on the internet and find the list of neighborhood houses which had a bunch of lights strung on their house and property. Winterhaven down in Tucson is an entire neighborhood decorated with lights. You cannot NOT get in the mood for the holidays when you walk through the streets there. I can’t wait to be able to start the tradition all over again when my kids eventually have their own children.

Kim Watters--Taking in the local Christmas pageant about the birth of Jesus, nestled in blankets and drinking hot chocolate and trying to keep warm.

So now you know what some of us writers do. What are some of yours?

Kim Watters