We have less than a week until Christmas, which means the holiday season is in full swing. The tree is up, the tinsel is hanging, and the Christmas Hits playlist is on repeat. To get into the holiday spirit, I wanted to share my favorite holiday traditions with y’all. My family celebrates Christmas (even though we’re not religious), but we also have some traditions for Thanksgiving and New Year’s that are probably around two decades old. No matter what winter holidays you celebrate, I hope you all are having a fun and happy holiday season, and I hope all is well! 2021 is coming up soon, and even though 2020 didn’t look like we thought it would, a lot of good things still happened this year (if you want to recount them, watch Some Good News with John Krasinski or read my Thanksgiving gratitudes!). I thought this would be one of those feel-good posts, so happy reading everyone, and happy holidays!
Thanksgiving
I think this tradition is the one that’s been around the longest (since before I was born for sure). Basically, my parents’ main friend group is their college friends, and this group now includes the parents, kids, and other close friends they’ve made over the years. Every Thanksgiving, we all go to one family’s house and have a potluck party. The host family handles the essentials (turkey, mashed potatoes, bread, veggies, etc), and everyone else brings a few dishes. The things that people bring usually stay in the same ballpark; we can always count on one family to bring the pumpkin pie and another to bring the noodles. My family tends to change it up a bit, but we have this one shrimp dish that we’ve brought to a lot of parties. From the hours of 6 pm to midnight, we eat, watch TV or movies, play games (I’ve gotten really good at cards after years of going to these parties), and just talk about what we’ve been up to. Oh, don’t forget a recent development: me losing miserably in this Chinese version of poker. One of the reasons why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday (unpopular opinion, whoa) is that it’s one of the few times during the year that everyone is together -- I’m the only kid that’s not in college or working (age differences woo), so it gets kind of lonely during the spring/summer. It’s always nice to see everyone again, eat some really really good food, and catch up.
View from Taiwan during winter break 2018!
Christmas
My family doesn’t really have a specific Christmas tradition: some years we’re traveling, other times we stay at home, and other years we do a mix of both. However, we always spend our Christmases together as a family. We usually set up the Christmas tree at the end of Thanksgiving break when my siblings are still home, and we leave the tree up until after New Year’s. Please note: we’ve been using the same fake Christmas tree for probably twenty years. We’re not that committed to Christmas decor. Anyway, when we stay home for the holidays, we just get in a lot of quality family time, open presents together on Christmas morning, and watch many episodes of The Great British Bake-Off. When we’re traveling, there’s often a road trip involved, and sometimes we’ll go on vacation with the aforementioned college friend group. There were a few years when we went to the Outer Banks together for Christmas (yeah, we went to a beach in the Mid-Atlantic in the dead of winter). Everything was closed, but it was really fun. We enjoy our time vacationing, and then we exchange gifts after we’ve come home. My siblings also take this time to reconnect with their old friends from high school and college, and I exercise my few social skills to hang out with my friends. Christmas is always a good time, and I look forward to it every year.
New Year’s
I feel like a lot of people spend New Year’s Eve with their friends, have a party, and watch the ball drop together. For me, New Year’s has always been a family holiday. For my whole life, I’ve gone to a party with the same people that I spend Thanksgiving with. Again, we have to have the potluck dinner, just like Thanksgiving, except without the turkey and mashed potatoes. There’s always some great food at these parties, so my stomach is very happy over the holidays. We eat, talk, play games, and watch the ball drop in Times Square. We watch a lot of the music performances before the clock strikes midnight, and those are always fun. We also watch the Planet Fitness ads because they show up every year. I don’t understand how Planet Fitness is rich enough to sponsor the New Year’s Eve show each year. I also don’t understand how the whole thing is filmed between LA and Vegas and NYC, but it’s good music nonetheless. I used to always love New Year’s Eve because I could stay up really late (though my sixteen-year-old body now gets tired at 11:30pm), and I’m glad I can spend this holiday with my family.
Summer vacay pic from Victoria, BC, Canada! Loved this city
Summer Break
I know, summer isn’t a holiday. But, I don’t have school, so my family and I are free to travel for a bit. Each year we try to take a family vacation all together, but the places we go don’t stay the same over the years, so we’ve been to Seattle, Vancouver, Banff, Chicago, Cape Cod, and a bunch of really cool places all over the country. I always look forward to these trips because I can see my siblings and we can relax and have fun together. The views don’t disappoint, either, so that’s always a plus. I don’t know if this counts as a tradition, but summer vacations definitely hold some great memories.
For the other holidays, like Independence Day and Easter/spring break, there aren’t any long-standing traditions. My parents and I sometimes watch the fireworks on Independence Day, and sometimes we’ll go someplace close for spring break. For many of my years in middle/high school, my parents and I have gone to the same convention center for a competition, so that’s always fun. Since I’ve entered high school, there have been more overnight trips with clubs for competitions that I travel with the club for, so those don’t involve my family, but those are a blast for sure. Before I get even more sidetracked, those are all of my favorite holiday traditions! Hope you enjoyed reading, and happy holidays again!
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