Christmas Traditions

It's that time of year when the world falls in love.  Every song you hear seems to say, "Merry Christmas...."

I absolutely love this time of year.  There is a sense of magic in the air.  People are a little bit nicer.  Giving is at an all time high.  And almost everyone (with the exception of an occasional Scrooge) is just a tiny bit happier.

Another fun part of the Christmas season is that everyone celebrates just a little bit differently.  I love hearing about a tradition I had never heard of before...or something that is extremely unique to just one family.  We have our own traditions and one I'm sure no one else shares.  ;)

One of my favorite traditions, and one shared by many, is to go pick out our tree.  In previous years we have just gone to a big box store and chose one.  Which I still enjoyed.  But this year we went to a tree farm.  Since Baby Girl is still so tiny, we just chose one from the lot.  But I know we will be going back for years to come.  Why?  Because the experience was phenomenal.  They had a cute little Christmas shop set up with tons of ornaments and other Christmas decor.  You could get hot chocolate, hot dogs...snack bar type stuff.  Santa Claus stopped by!  And if you wanted to pick a tree out of the field, there was a horse drawn wagon to take you!  There you could either cut your own or they would cut one for you.  I am very much looking forward to going as a family in the years to come.

After we pick our  tree, we go home, turn on Christmas music, and decorate!  I love going through our ornaments and picking just precisely where they belong on the tree.  Speaking of ornaments....have you ever heard of Patience Brewster?  She has designed gorgeous ornaments which you can see here.  Anyways....back to our ornaments....

After getting married, Hubby & I decided to decorate our tree in our favorite colors: green & blue.  We added silver as well to bring it all together.  The trend has continued and I absolutely love it.  Someday we plan on having a "fun" tree for the kids ornaments and the ones I have from my childhood.  But here is where the super strange unique tradition we have began.  The very first year we had a tree for the 2 of us was the year before we were married.  We didn't have any ornaments of our own so my parents sent us a box of the old wooden ones that we used on our tree each year.  Among those ornaments was a little clown, with x's for eyes.  While I know each x was meant to look like stitched eyes, but Hubby and I both instantly thought "dead clown" because in today's cartoons, x's mean the character is dead.  We laughed about the "dead clown" and he has to be "hidden" somewhere in the tree each year.  I say hidden because one day our children will have to find that clown.  haha.  But for now, he just gets a special place on the tree...even if he doesn't really match our decor...

I cannot wait for the traditions we will start in the years to come now that we have a beautiful little one to celebrate with!

What strange, *ahem* I mean, unique Christmas traditions does your family have?