Listography: Top 5 things that make Christmas Christmas

The new listography challenge has been set: what makes Christmas Christmas.  I love Christmas, but it’s always hard to combine both mine & OH’s traditions into one (even after 7+ years of marriage).  Although he’s a bit of a bah humbug, and has to work (the joys of being a farmer) so he’s a) not that fussed about Christmas, and b) most of the traditions I’d like to have don’t really work.

Here’re mine:

1, Stocking – the present kind, not the nylon type!

Love them, so much more exciting than big presents.  My mum still sometimes brings over a ‘stocking’ type of gift bag for us.  But now we’ve got a baby, I’m able to get the excitement through him.   The waking early, the feel of the stocking, and the traditional chocolate coins, 20p, satsuma and walnut (that noone eats), as well as other odds and sods.  As children it was also made more realistic when many of our friends would also have similar presents in their stockings (the year of the smelly 20 in 1 colour pen, or the time everyone got funny wooden ‘bird’ pencil sharpeners – the joys of the Studio catalogue!)

2, Christmas dinner.

Ok, so we never really had turkey when we were children as I’m the only one that really likes it, but a good roast, crackers, nice pudding and everyone round the table is brilliant fun.

3, Tree.

So far, no sign of the OH getting ours down from the roof which means we’re probably not having it this year (his reasoning, we’ve got an almost one year old…bad reason as far as I’m concerned).  Very disappointing – I love to see the twinkly lights and my pretty silver/purple themed tree.

4, Wrapping presents.

This year’s been a bit of an anticlimax with my Christmas wrapping.  I like to put on Christmas music, set everything out and spend a couple of hours wrapping. I even usually get to do the wrapping for the mother-in-law as well as she hates it (with the bonus I get to nosy what she’s got everyone!).  This year with a little one under the feet, I’ve had to do in stages.

5, Christmas carols.

My mum and I used to go to Midnight Mass.  It was magical, walking down to the church in the cold wrapped up warm, a packed out church, seeing lots of people I’d not seen for ages.  Now, the OH’s family tradition for Christmas Eve is to go to a local pub for a big family meal.  It’s lovely, but makes it hard to get to midnight mass (plus we have a small local church, and the services mix and match around them, so it’s a bit of guess work as to where the service is happening, and the singing’s a bit weedy as there’s not enough people to make it sound amazing).  One day hopefully I’ll manage to get back to them again, although maybe we’ll have to do evening carol concerts with N instead.

There are other things that I’ve not been able to include – driving home from work/round town and seeing all the houses with their lights, eating what you want when you want, watching The Snowman.

Check out everyone else’s lists over here.

 

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4 Comments

  1. I love wrapping presents! I can’t say that I’m really great at it, but it’s fun to think about who I’m giving it to while I’m doing my best to make it pretty.

  2. Ah lovely list! We have finally got the tree out today, it really does put you in the mood. And my one year old loves it….nag your OH! I hope you and your family have a lovely Christmas x

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