Oh Christmas Tree...and other traditions

Sparkly!!

All my anti-holiday sentiment seems to have reversed itself in a fiery blaze of lights and stockings and tinsel and I'm all about Christmas now!  Amazing what one most-certainly overpriced plane ticket will do for one's outlook, isn't it?

I'm noticing the Christmas decorations in the stores.  I even purposefully turned the radio to one of those stations that thinks it's a good idea to play Christmas music 24-7 from Thanksgiving till New Years.  I'm not sure what's happened, but this Grinch's heart has grown more than two sizes in the past week.

I was thinking today about my favourite Christmas traditions, and realised that other than some that revolved around going to church on Christmas eve my family doesn't really have anything that we all do year after year at Christmas.  That made me a bit sad, but at the same time I think about how that give me and Simon a chance to create our own traditions and that, as my friend Lynne would say, makes me wickedly, wickedly happy.  I feel like so much of our married life has been...up in the air, I guess?  We haven't settled into "Our First Married Home" because we were trying to sell it.  We didn't know where we were going to end up, so I think we've sort of put the memory making part of being newlyweds on hold.  That includes Christmas traditions.  We eat our own little Christmas dinner for two, watch Christmas telly, and generally act like slugs all the way from the Queen's speech to Doctor Who.

What are your family traditions?  What do you do every year without fail?  What makes Christmas feel like Christmas to you?  Mine will start with seeing my Mister's face on Christmas Day.  Happy Two Weeks till Christmas Eve, y'all!