Around Christmas time, my family is huge on traditions. Since we’re all so busy the entirety of the year, we use the holidays and our traditions as a way to stay connected and to spend time together. We have more traditions than I can count but these are my top favorite Lee family traditions.
1. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Every year since I was a baby, my whole family gets together at my grandma’s house and we watch this movie. There’s always food and dessert and laughter. We’ve watched the movie so many times that we have memorized most of it and we say the lines along with the actors. In recent years, we’ve made a game out of finding all the mistakes that made it into the final cut. We now have a little baby in the family and I can’t wait for him to start talking so he can learn the lines with us!
2. Elf
Another yearly movie night that we have is to watch Elf. Part of the tradition is to buy Taco Bell and eat it while we watch the movie. This one was accidentally started and it began as a joke. One night, my family got Taco Bell and had nothing to do, so we watched the movie. The next year, the same thing happened, completely coincidentally. By the third year, we had realized that we’d done it twice and we are now on year six or seven. This is one of the funniest traditions we have.
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3. Decorating the Tree
Since I can remember, we’ve decorated the Christmas tree on Black Friday. My family isn’t about shopping on that day, so we try to stay in and decorate to avoid those crazy shoppers. Unfortunately, I had to work this Black Friday (retail life, ugh) so we had to push the decorating back a few days, but it was still nice to decorate the tree and dance around to Christmas music. I have a collection of Harry Potter ornaments that I hung up near the front and it’s all you can see when looking at the tree.
4. Ottavio’s
On Christmas Eve, my family goes out to dinner at Ottavio’s, an Italian restaurant in Camarillo. This is a tradition that started before I was even born. My dad and mom used to go there with my dad’s family every year. When my Granny passed away, they all stopped going, but my dad wanted to keep her memory alive, so the tradition lived on through him, and it now lives in my sister and me.
5. Christmas Eve
After dinner at Ottavio’s we hope into my dad’s car and we drive around to look at all of the Christmas lights. Gemini street is a personal favorite, because every house has a theme and the neighbors sell hot cocoa and popcorn. It’s such a friendly gathering and the houses are beautiful. After looking at the lights, we go home and my sister and I open our gifts to each other and the pj’s that our mom always gets us. We put on the pj’s, make hot cocoa, start a fire, and watch cheesy Christmas shows until we get tired.
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6. Grandma’s House
On Christmas Day, my family opens presents together and eats breakfast at our house. It’s a small thing, but its fun. Later in the afternoon, we head to my grandma’s house for more gifts and a huge dinner, that we call Roast Beast in reference to The Grinch. We make a huge mess of wrapping paper that the animals play in.
7. Pj’s
Like I mentioned above, my mom buys my sister and I matching pajamas every year. Even though I’m 20 and she’s almost 17, its still nice to be matching like we did when we were kids. It’s hilarious to see how grumpy my sister gets though.
Traditions with my family are wildly important. Both my sister and I get upset when something changes, because then, it isn’t tradition anymore. As we’ve grown up, we have had to deal with some change, as it is inevitable, but we always make sure that the family stays together during the holidays.