Hello Wonderlanders!
Today’s Friday Fives will be about “Things I Want to Do For Christmas In the Future.”
- Have everyone who is present on Christmas morning drinking hot chocolate with candy cane and marshmallows melted into the chocolate. This just sounds so yummy and even though I’ve yet to try it, I’m sure it tastes awesome. If you’ve tried this, let me know what you think of it below!
- Open one gift on Christmas Eve, and the rest on Christmas Day. This doesn’t happen in my parents house because my 35 year old brother’s birthday is on the Eve and he’ll throw a fit if his day has to be shared with Christmas. I get that December birthdays suck for many people because their family and friends tend to clump everything into one gift given on Christmas, but there are ways to point this out politely without fit-throwing. We also have started to open gifts later on Christmas Day for some reason. When do you open gifts?
- Stick to one color theme, ornament size, and type of lights on the tree. The definition behind the terminology of Obsessive-compulsive disorder does not apply here, it’s more an aesthetics thing for me – I like things to be coordinated and matching. Things can also be coordinated and not matching, but it really depends on how well coordinated the mis-matching items are. We don’t use a normal fluffy evergreen. We have a tree in out background (it’s an evergreen, I’ll update the name later as I don’t remember it right now) and it has branches spread out and spaced out. Which means there are distinct 6-12 inch gaps between each layer of branches. We had mini ornaments on them, but then my mom bought large glass ornaments and put them up. It just looked so darn odd. We had to purchase some new lights as well but the type of light (white versus warm yellow) was mismatched so our tree was lit up at different lumens. Plus, coiling the light up just didn’t look as nice and clean as on a full, fluffy pine, which brings me to point 4:
- Stick to fluffy pines in the future if putting up a tree. I don’t care if it’ll be a real tree or a a fake tree at this point, but it needs to not have huge blatant gaps that drive me crazy.
- Either go all out for Christmas (house lights, decorations all around & other traditions), or do nothing at all. I don’t celebrate Christmas for religious reasons. I do it for cultural reasons, and the culture I live in is based on Christianity, but it doesn’t mean I am celebrating for the same reasons the founders of this country are. So if I choose to not celebrate Christmas, it can be easily done. For the past 8 years my parents have been half-assing Christmas with just the tree. No more lights, no more full house decoration. Nothing else gets put up or done so it really looks out of place to have that Christmas tree. I love you mom and dad, but all this yo-yoing has got to stop. Pick a side and stick with it.
What are some of your family traditions? What are some, if any, traditions you’d like to incorporate with your family? I’d love to hear back from you!
Season’s Greetings,
Allys
Allys in Wonderland 