Tradition!

On my run the other day, I got to think about holiday traditions and how people celebrate differently and figured I’d blog about what the holidays is to us.

First off all, we’re not huge in Chrismas kitch, but we LOVE twinkly lights.  So, by early December, we have our outside lights up and have decorated our tree.  Seeing the bright, cheery lights distracts me from the fact that the days are getting shorter and the weather is getting shorter, so they stay up until the day before we go back to work in January.

The iguana typically spends most of December in the tree.  Doubly so this year because we put the tree where her enclosure used to be.

First of all, I usually get in a good, long-ish run (7+ miles) to offset what’s about to happen unless it happens to be offseason (like 2012), then it may just be a rest day. It just doesn’t feel right to start Christmas eve without sweat though!

Zliten’s family always did presents on Christmas Eve.  We kept this one because it became our own little holiday, just us two, no matter what we had going on for the actual day. Sometimes we work that day, sometimes we don’t (this year, Zliten does, I don’t because I had lotsa paid time off to burn), but when we’re both home, it’s on.

The celebration starts with some sort of food we can pick at for the rest of the day.  The last few years, it’s been Din Ho chinese food – something like wonton soup, veggie delight, something with chicken, and beef noodle.  Then, we pour a drink – in the past it’s been absinthe for a green Christmas – but we’ve fallen out of that after finding the hangover the next day of sugar and high proof liquor to dampen the actual holiday a bit.

My family had gotten the gifts from the Manly Man Company and made us wait until after Christmas dinner to open presents, which I still at age 36 think is bullshit, so we start the great gift opening as soon as we’ve had our first bites and sips.  My father’s side of the family is Jewish, he dropped that way before I was in the picture, but I suppose we incorporate a small bit of that in the way we do gifts.  We both enjoy getting each other a crap ton of presents (usually about 12, but sometimes we can’t control ourselves), but most of them are really small.  Past years have included things like cans of soup and chapstick and socks.

We open one present every 30 mins or hour (depending on how late the festivities start and how quickly we need to wrap things up to not be up until 4am) and typically watch Christmas movies or play Christmas music (or sometimes watch something we received as gifts – one year I gave Zliten all the Harry Potters and made him open them first, and we watched them all day).  It’s an excessive orgy of unwrapping and stuff, but I love it.

Christmas day is always a day off training.  We sleep in and usually head up to my parents’ house (about 40 mins away) around noon and start the day with tamales (sometimes) while we wait for the incredibly elaborate feast to finish… frozen lasagna, garlic bread, and salad.  If I remember correctly, my mom just kinda said “fuck it” one year and did that because it was easy, and it was the BEST so we’ve just done that every Christmas since and it’s my favorite holiday meal ever.

My parents are not big gift givers or receivers.  They’re just happy to spend time with us.  My husband IS so they get super nice gifts anyway, but every year, we get the same thing – money, and some stocking stuffers.  No complaints here.  I never understood the whole stress around the holidays thing because my family was never like that, and I’m happy to continue that tradition.  Nothing needs to be PERFECT, we just need to be thinking of each other.

And always with the goofy hat because… Christmas!

We eat, we play cards all day, we always have some sort of desert with peppermint in it.  This year, I’ve made homemade brownies and homemade ice cream – two flavors, peppermint oreo and butter pecan and they’re LEGIT.  There are way too many snacks and always a second helping of lasagna and sometimes a glass of wine or two, and it’s a great day.

Then… the 26th, there’s typically another long workout.  One year we did 110 miles on the trainer, sometime a long run, but it always feels good to actually put some of those carbs to good use and to shake out the sugar sludge and kick off the rest of the holiday break right.

Ask the audience: what’s your favorite family holiday tradition?