My 5 favourite Christmas traditions!

A friend of mine asked me the other day if my family had any Christmas traditions and..

I honestly didn’t know, because all of it seems quite straightforward to me. Food, family and Christmas movies, it’s all part of the deal. Anyway, just thinking about it I realised that there are some things that I absolutely love about the run-up to Christmas and that are pretty much tradition to me at this point. I hope you enjoy reading them and maybe they make you feel a little more festive. Thinking about them certainly makes me smile!

1) Saint Nicolas

This is a Dutch thing that not a lot of people are familiar with but it’s basically the Dutch version of Santa Claus and it is celebrated on December the 5th. Even though I do not particularly love this holiday, it’s mainly for kids, I do think it’s a beautiful tradition, especially now that I’m abroad and I can’t celebrate it, and in a way it’s kind of our starting point of the advent period.

2) Picking out a Christmas tree

When I was younger I always used to do this with my dad. He is very picky when it comes to trees so we would go to a local store where they would have all these trees laid out and it would take us ages to find the perfect tree.

These days I tend to go with my sister and we pick up one at IKEA instead, but it’s still a great tradition. I guess, in a way, my sister and I are picky as well but we are also not as great at ending up with the perfect tree. Usually we end up with some sort of quirky looking pathetic piece of work because for some reason we decide it has character and we love it all the more for it.

3) Gaming

This one is very family particular I guess. It started many years ago when we got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas and ever since we’ve basically been gaming every single year. The thing is, normally we don’t play on it at all. It’s really just around Christmas and Christmas break that we take out the console and go to town on it, much to my sister’s dismay, who is not a great fan. It might sound like a strange way of celebrating the holidays but honestly it’s just a part of what we do and it’s always great fun.

4) Christmas eve dinner

I mean, I’m not sure if we’ve done this on Christmas eve every time but the thing is my sister loves to cook and for some reason we can never work out a way to do an actual Christmas dinner so there’s always a point before or after actual Christmas when most of my family gets together at my sister’s and she makes this very elaborate dinner. I love it because I tend to run around helping out where I can and playing hostess when she’s too busy doing the actually important work. Also, my sister has the strange impression that I can do certain things that she struggles with, so even though I have no idea what I’m doing, it almost feels like I’m actually being a useful human being for a change.

5) Christmas shopping

I guess this is really just my own little tradition. I absolutely love to go into town around Christmas and do some solo Christmas shopping. I have to emphasize the solo because I go into town around this time of year a lot with a lot of people but if I can help it I also make sure I pick out a day to just go on my own and get presents and grab a coffee by myself and just enjoy all the festivity and the hassle around me. It makes me feel all Christmassy instantly!