Streamlining our Christmas Traditions

For Christmas 2007, we started our own set of Christmas traditions and in 2008, we added a family Christmas tradition from my childhood. In 2009, we continued the same traditions, didn't add any new ones, and worked on streamlining the Christmas Eve events.

For reference, our Christmas Eve tradition is to attend an early church service and then take a drive, which enables Santa Claus to make an early visit to our house. In 2008, we had not thoroughly considered the process, which resulted in a less than perfect execution of the tradition. The problem was the church service ended about an hour before darkness. As a result, we needed one hour of activity before taking a drive. We chose to have dinner at a local restaurant. While we enjoyed eating out, it didn't give us enough time to prepare for Santa's visit.

This year, we decided to have dinner at home after attending Christmas Eve service. That enabled us to adequately create evidence of Santa's visit, which involved putting out the presents, eating the snacks by the fireplace and leaving a Santa note for our daughter. For our drive, we toured a holiday light show, and then returned home, while looking for Santa's sleigh in the sky. Our daughter cautioned us not to look too hard, as it might scare Santa from visiting :-)

When we arrived home, our daughter quickly went to the fireplace to check on whether Santa had eaten the snacks. She excitedly exclaimed, "Santa came and he left me a note!" Darn, we didn't get our camera out in time to capture that moment, but we were able to get it in time for the present openings.

Overall, this year's Christmas traditions were done pretty well. Next year, we'll need make sure the camera is ready when we arrive home on Christmas Eve :-)

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This is not financial, parenting or holiday advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

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