Traditions

I love tradition. There is something about knowing that you can count on some sort of order to things that just resonates with me. I like knowing that I can count on family and friends to join in something together. Year after year we commemorate the holidays by one tradition or another.

One of those things is the Christmas dinner. My mom has frequently been the host of the Christmas dinner, and although sometimes timed as more of a lunch, Christmas has always felt off to me if we don’t gather at my parents house for all the foods I grew up with and the way they have always been prepared.

(Mom- Don’t get mad but I am about to throw you under the bus.)

Up until college I thought that everyone except restaurants and gourmet chefs made their mashed potatoes from a box. It was my assumption that baked potatoes were the ones in the fresh produce isle, but that mashed potatoes were created out of little flakes in a box. I never thought anything of it growing up. If we were feeling a little fancy for a holiday like thanksgiving we threw  a little fresh garlic in them. I know – crazy right.

But traditions change. Over the years Mom has added the most amazing sweet potatoes to the array of food that graces the table – the kind with brown sugar, not marshmallows. Everyone knows the brown sugar sweet potatoes are the best. And she has perfected some pretty amazing REAL mashed potatoes. We went from boxed powdery flakes to variations of the potato for the holiday feast. That’s a pretty good step up!

One of my other new-ish traditions is the after gift clothing photo. For the past few years we have thrown on every gifted article of clothing over our pajamas for a photo. We can count on my brother being kind of a pain about it but he usually will at least pretend to put something on. So to celebrate new traditions and old, here is this year’s holiday-gifted-clothing-photo:

PS: Christy always gets the most clothes. And we told matt not to stand on the stairs but he did anyway because it is pretty standard for his head to be cut off in pictures. Also, my sister and I both got my mom the same scarf but in different colors – oops! We have good taste!

Tags: christmas, clothes, family, holiday, tradition