Sixteen days, fifteen hours, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty-six seconds until it is officially the best holiday, in the world; well, at least in my opinion. Christmas has always been my favorite holiday, and probably will forever be my favorite. Christmas is so much more than giving and receiving gifts. Now don’t get me wrong, I do love my presents and the excitement of opening them, but the family traditions and memories that we make will always hold a special piece of my heart. However, as more of my family members passed, the traditions and memories have changed.

I remember ever year on Christmas Eve, everyone on my dads family would meet up, out in the country, at my great-grandparents house. We would spend the evening eating, playing, and chatting with everyone. Whether it was just catching up about work or our daily lives or playing and drawing with cousins while everyone commented how big we were getting and they wished time would slow down, we were making memories. As it got later in the evening and the clock struck 7, everyone’s eyes were glued to the windows. We were expecting a special visitor. Eventually, Santa Claus would walk in carrying a red sack just stuffed to the rim with what we knew were gifts. One by one, including the adults, we all climbed up into Santa’s lap and reminded him of one thing on our Christmas list that we really wanted. After, he would pull out an item that just happened to be on our list and tell us “Merry Christmas little one.” Shortly after, we would then say farewell to Santa and head home for the night as we prepared for the next days festivities. As a child, this was always my favorite holiday tradition and still is. Looking back, I think this was the very reason why I believed in the Christmas magic for so long. I mean Santa just had to be real because who else visited us on Christmas Eve and just knew automatically what we wanted for Christmas? I knew it wasn’t anyone in my family impersonating him because we were all there. He had to be real.

When my great-grandparents passed and we no longer celebrated with the tradition, I asked my dad who impersonated Santa for all those years and why do we not continue the tradition? He told me it was a family friend of Grandma and Grandpa’s and we just fell out of contact with him after they passed. To this day, I wish we continued that tradition on Christmas Eve because we have so many young kids in our family and I just know that they would enjoy seeing Santa.

This year, 2 of my older sisters, my sister’s best friend and 2 of my nieces started our own tradition. We met up at Kellie’s house, my sister’s best friend, and we did all sorts of Christmas activities. We started the night off with constructing Gingerbread houses and watching Christmas movies. After, we used Kellie’s Cricket and designed our very own Christmas themed welcome mats. As we painted on our designs, we continued to watch Christmas movies. By the end of the night, we watched Elf, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and Grandma Ran Over By a Reindeer. It was a very long night, but we all had so much fun. It truly means everything to me that there are still people in my family who cherish family traditions.