Tradition!

My husband once told me my family is big on traditions. We are. I guess I didn't realize that not everyone is. My family sings an elaborate birthday song that no one can remember without the rest of everyone singing. After the song, cake, candles (if they haven't melted completely during the song), the usual. We never wrapped birthday presents and that became something of a tradition as well. Even the act of giving a gift on a birthday was a tradition in my family. "Heavy, heavy hangs over thy poor head. What do you wish this person with a BUMP on the head" each giver would recite with appropriate bumpings of the birthday kid. The recipient then had to make a wish for the giver before they could receive their gift.

At Easter we always had hot cross buns, homemade by my dad. We dyed eggs, and had a small egg hunt in our living room and went to church, just like every other Sunday. Fairly low key, but I find myself rather attached to those hot cross buns.

Christmas is a time when we aren't the only ones with traditions. I love seeing that I'm not the only one this time of year. Traditions hold such a dear place in my heart. I like to think that I'm not alone in this. I may be one of those people that has a freakish number of traditions, but I'm fairly certain that people keep traditions *because* they hold a dear place in their hearts. They make things like Christmas feel like Christmas. Mexican hot chocolate feels like Christmas to me. My family would always go up Getchell hill to a tree farm up there. We'd slosh around through the mud until we found a tree that we all agreed on and we'd cut it down ourselves. Fact: it was my favorite job to cut it down. We'd walk back through the little hilly farm to pay and pet their big husky type dogs and usually get one of those mini candy canes for the road 'cause that's the kind of establishment they were running. Dad would strap it to the mini-van and we'd go home and I would wait impatiently while Dad attempted to set the tree up straight in the stand in the garage before carting it up the stairs to our living room window for it's cul-de-sac view. We'd string lights and decorate it with the hodge podge of ornaments we'd collected through the years. Mexican hot chocolate is reserved for one time every year for me, and this is it. We drink Mexican hot chocolate during and/or immediately after decorating the tree. Period.

We don't have a real tree this year. We live in a place that seems to be completely void of any Christmas tree farms. It seems like cheating to buy one at Wal-mart besides the fact that it's not really in our student budget. That, and the fact that we have a couple of toddlers who would likely pull the tree over on themselves. So I put up our bitty little fake tree that my mom gave us our first married Christmas together. We didn't think we would be spending it with either family and we lived in the worlds smallest apartment. We set up the tree on one of our fancy folding chairs, wrapped a strand of lights on it and hung the ornaments on it that my mom sent. They looked comically large on our tiny tree. This year we are back to the tiny tree, so I made some tiny ornaments to go on it. I hung them up today and I strung the same strand of lights on that thing. I probably wrapped them around that little guy about 5 dozen times. I do think it's cute though, and I am feeling distinctly in the mood for some Mexican hot cocoa.

The mister just came home and asked what I was writing about. I said, "traditions". He gave me a smooch and said, "I just gave you my traditional homecoming kiss". I guess maybe he's more on the tradition bandwagon than I thought. I think I might just go whip us up some hot cocoa.