Day before Christmas Eve

This year we will be celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve.

That's not usually how we do it.

I'm not the chief cook this year.

That's not usually how we do it.

We'll gather for a meal together and gifts will be exchanged, just like always, but it won't be happening in my house - and that's not how we usually do it.

The anticipation has me sleepless.

It's all started me thinking about Christmas Traditions and how they got started and why we have them the way we have them. I'm up late so I'm surfing the net and reading about Christmas Traditions. Each family is different and have their own traditions and sometimes I think traditions become traditions because they are what works, not because it was set out to be made in to a tradition.

There's one of us that demands socks in the gift pile. One year there were no socks and it was stated loud and clear that from now on there shall be socks because they were the most anticipated gift!!! So now, there are socks every year. It's tradition.

There's one of us that wants TIME every year.

It's on the "want" list - some of your TIME, it says.

Because time is the thing that is hardest to find and spare.

Texas Christmas Dinner (according to the Internets) says potato salad and mashed potato are pretty much a required tradition, pecan pie and banana pudding are too so it says. The standards like turkey, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, dressing and cranberry sauce are assumed to be on every table all over America. It's tradition.

If I combine Texas Meal and Standard meal - we'd be eating 3 kinds of potato and a turkey!!!

We don't.

For several years our Christmas Dinner has been a theme meal.

It has turned in to our family tradition.

Tex-Mex: enchiladas, Spanish rice, nachos with cheese, refried beans, tres leches cake.

Italian: lasagna, garlic bread, garden salad and biscotti.

Cajun: chicken jambalaya, corn bread, pecan pie.

BBQ: sliced brisket, baked beans, potato salad, cole slaw with sweet tea and Texas Toast.

You get the idea.

There have always been extras - Daddy's fruit salad is a requirement no matter what else we have, and there is usually chocolate pie. There is always tea and Coca-Cola.

It's been fun to come up with something everybody would like and Tex-Mex has won out more than anything else.

This year, we are having a what the internet says is a Standard Traditional Christmas Meal.

Turkey, dressing, sweet potato, green beans, rolls, pie, cranberry sauce and gravy.

I'm looking forward to it. (I'm not the cook so all that work won't be done by me -snicker)

Do you have traditions that don't change, or something that is a tradition because it changes every year? Do you have a dish that is a MUST HAVE ? Something that would make it not seem like Christmas if it wasn't there?

Is there a specific order that must be followed? The meal and then the gifts? The gifts before the meal? Is dinner at noon or later in the evening? Is there a certain Christmas Breakfast tradition?

Are you starting a new tradition this year or dropping an old one?

Whatever you're doing, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.

Everyone.

~*~