OPINION: My Christmas Eve traditions

During the holidays, every family has their own special traditions. I love hearing what is important and impactful to each person, what is needed to make it feel like the holiday has officially occurred.

Disney even did a Christmas short in which the animated snowman and reindeer from “Frozen,” Olaf and Sven, search the kingdom for holiday traditions. The goal is to find the perfect one for the royal family who seemingly have none of their own.

Some of the traditions seen include making candy canes, decorating trees, singing carols, enjoying saunas and baking treats like gingerbread and fruitcake. However, at the end, they realize that - SPOILER ALERT - making Olaf was the family’s holiday tradition each year.

I love Disney, I love a good Christmas special and I love traditions, so this is a great short for me. My family has our biggest Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve, so given that it’s Christmas Eve today, I wanted to share what we do every year.

Every job is different, but since my mom’s a nurse, she almost always has to work a full day on Christmas Eve. This year, I’ll be driving almost all of today just to make it home for the holidays, but I’m leaving early enough that I hopefully make it home in the afternoon.

The celebrations start with Christmas Eve Carols and Lessons service at church. Also known as the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, this service takes us through the Jesus story, from Genesis with the prophesy of a Savior to the gospels and the birth of Jesus. Between each lesson (or scripture reading), a classic Christmas hymn is sung relating to lesson. Our church always ends the service with Silent Night, the first verse usually sung in German, with the lights dimming with each verse.

Once the Christmas Eve service is over, it’s time to head home and make our big Christmas dinner. It’s kind of funny, but we have basically the exact same meal for each holiday, just switching out the meat for the season. Easter is ham, turkey for Thanksgiving and Christmas is usually steak. In recent years, my dad’s added shrimp to the Christmas mix too, but only he and my sister enjoy that.

Alongside the steak that is grilled out in the snow, we will usually have crescent rolls, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and chocolate silk pie. Other things might be added in depending on the year, but these five are consistent. This year I’m going to attempt (for the second time) to get my family to enjoy Brussels sprouts, but we’ll see how that goes.

Also part of our Christmas dinner is something I forcefully added in high school - Christmas crackers. The very first time I heard about Christmas crackers was in reading Harry Potter, where they described opening a cracker to find a loud cannon blast and a strange prize, including a full wizard chess set, live white mice and a rear-admiral’s hat.

When I read this, I pictured something like a package of saltines that somehow had prizes inside. Actually, Christmas crackers are a real British thing that has nothing to do with the edible cracker. These are small tubes you pull that contain a paper crown, a joke and some small toy or trinket. When I became immersed in British culture in high school, I brought this tradition into my family and we’ve never looked back.

After we eat, dishes are done and then we head to the living room. As the “tech savy” one, I throw some Christmas music on the TV and my parents hide the Christmas pickle. Supposedly a German tradition, although modern Germans disagree, a pickle ornament is hidden in the tree and the first person to find it gets a prize. In our family, the first person to find it gets to pick the first present to give.

That’s right, we give all our presents out on Christmas Eve. And much to the chagrin of anyone who joins us, we open one present at a time and oh and ahh over it before the next present is chosen. Considering my last column in which I waxed about the multitude of gifts we like to give, you can imagine how long this takes. However, I love that we do this. It both gives us all time to appreciate the thought put into each gift and a moment to throw away wrapping paper or nicely fold tissue paper and bags for later use.

By the time we’re done, it’s late and we’re all happy and full. Stockings don’t come into play until tomorrow, Christmas day, when Santa comes in the middle of the night and leaves the stockings on the ground under the tree filled with goodies.

The rest of the holiday is mostly spent with fun family time, playing games and watching movies together. I’d love to hear what your traditions are!