The story below is from our November/December 2020 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
Our team of staff and writers share their holiday traditions that might inspire you to create new memories with your loved ones.
While our holiday gatherings might look a little different this year in the face of COVID-19, our memories will always have that festive little glow about them. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali or another version of holiday cheer, perhaps this is the year you take on a new tradition. Our team of staff and writers are getting into the spirit and sharing their beloved family memories to inspire you into making new memories.
Wishing you very happy holidays, from our families to yours! –Liz Long
My husband and I always lead up the week of Christmas by watching the classics: “A Christmas Story” and Seinfeld’s “Festivus” episode. We usually spend Christmas Eve with my mom, who always makes an amazing dinner, followed by homemade brownie sundaes and opening gifts. We stay the night and watch the parade in the morning (and the dog show if there’s time!). On Christmas Day, we visit the other side of the family to enjoy the day together. After lunch, we honor my husband’s grandmother, who started a tradition years ago – the kids divvy up the gifts to everyone in the room, which are opened in order of age from youngest to oldest. (We’ve often threatened to reverse this and make the youngest wait their turn to learn patience!) –Liz Long
The most memorable holiday traditions always included watching “A Muppet Christmas Carol” and “It’s A Wonderful Life” and getting to choose one gift to open on Christmas Eve! –Julianne Rainone Jacob
My favorite holiday family tradition is having 13 gifts in our Christmas stockings. My parents picked the number 13, a baker’s dozen, in honor of my grandfather who was a baker onboard a battleship during WWII. –Martha McMahon
When my children were growing up, we would let them open one gift on Christmas Eve. It was usually a new outfit to wear on Christmas Day. Christmas Day we always wore something nice because of pictures we took, and we took a lot of pictures! So glad we did because it is fun to look back with my children on the Christmases we had. I always tried to have a duck, Cornish hens, or roast beef (with all the fixings); something other than a traditional ham dinner for our Christmas. Whether we had relatives included for dinner or ourselves, it was always a big dinner late in the day on Christmas after opening gifts. –Suzi Findley
My favorite holiday tradition is that my brother’s family comes in from out of town to stay with us, and we make homemade pizzas for the family. It’s a tradition my parents did when I was growing up, and my wife and I have been passed the mantle. –Matt Ayers
After Christmas Day with the in-laws, December 26th is Boxing Day! We never celebrate without the presence of Christmas Crackers with their fun prizes and paper hats inside, which everyone MUST wear (at least through dinner)! –Vicki Markvart
Christmas cookies! It’s a whole family affair. My mom makes the dough, my dad’s wife bakes them and then the kids decorate them. Last year the boys’ girlfriends helped, too! –Jenny Dorsey
As I get older, I am trying to accept that even traditions need to change to keep the joy in the holidays. So a new tradition over the past five years is basing Christmas dinner on attendees’ dietary restrictions. Creating a very different menu based on who comes that year is my new challenge: gluten-free, meat allergies, meat lovers, kid-friendly, and on and on. The result of this new tradition is that each Christmas we enjoy a very different meal – delicious and varied. A great new tradition! –Denise Koff
Because we tend to do a lot of home cooking on Christmas Day, one of our simple but favorite family traditions includes picking up takeout from Cafe Asia 2 on our way home from church on Christmas Eve. After we enjoy our dinner, we take time with our daughter to leave out milk and fresh-baked cookies for Santa, sprinkle reindeer food in the grass for Rudolph and the gang, and – if she’s still on the nice list – let her open one gift before bedtime. On and around Christmas Day we also enjoy visiting with family, often sharing meals that include favorite family dishes from both sides - oyster stew on my wife’s side and German rouladen on mine. More than anything, it’s the special time spent with friends, family and loved ones that we cherish most each and every year. –Jeff Wood
In the past 30 or so years, I’ve had two Christmas trees, each lasting a long time. My current tree is a small, white artificial tree that I simply plug and unplug each year, storing it completely decorated in the basement. Its predecessor was an upper branch of a tulip tree that I cut down in a friend’s yard and decorated, again plugging and unplugging each Christmas because it was already decorated. This tree was my Charlie Brown Tree: ugly, spare, loved. –Dan Smith
Baking has always been a huge holiday tradition in my family. My mom would tell me about my grandmother and great aunts spending weeks before the holidays baking different cakes and storing them in an antique pie safe. My mom always made an applesauce cake and a three-tiered coconut cake at Christmas. The fluffy frosting and coconut looked like mounds of snow. I bake lots of cookies. It really isn’t the holiday until those traditional Scottish shortbread cookies come out of the oven. –Patty Jackson
One of the things that I hold close to my heart is spending Christmas with my family. My brother and I were adopted when we were just little tykes. My adopted parents took us to Hotel Roanoke every year around Christmastime to celebrate our adoption (we were adopted in December – what a fabulous Christmas gift!). I remember all of the beautiful Christmas decorations, the waiter tossing our Caesar salad in a big wooden bowl tableside, and best of all, when I was just a little girl, my daddy teaching me to slow dance as the piano player serenaded us with big band music. We’ve had many family celebrations at Hotel Roanoke and the grand ole lady always makes them all very special for us. –Becky Ellis
Many years ago when my three sons were still at home, they gave me a DVD of Stanley Kramer’s 1963 comedy classic “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” on Christmas Eve. They knew it was my all-time favorite movie. We watched it together that night. As adolescents then, they loved it as much as I did. Ever since, we still gather as a family on Christmas Eve for dinner and then watch that zany movie about a pursuit for buried treasure even though we know in advance every scene, the most hilarious lines and how it ends. –Nelson Harris
One of my family’s favorite holiday traditions is finding an afternoon in the midst of shopping and baking and visiting to get outside for a local hike. We bundle up and move fast and always worry that we’ll run out of daylight. But these hikes are some of our most magical – often with a dusting of snow or the surprise of icicles. We always make it home with lots of memories! –Christina Nifong
When my kids were very young, I discovered a neat Advent calendar idea in a book called, ADVENTure of Christmas. It’s called the Calendar of Kisses, and it involves making a chain of Hershey Kisses using plastic wrap and curling ribbon, tying a cluster of kisses–one for each child–off into 25 days. Every morning we’d have breakfast, read our Advent story, then cut off one cluster of kisses from the chain’s bottom, thus beginning every day leading up to Christmas with a “kiss.” Even now, though my kids are nearly grown, I still make our Advent Calendar of Kisses.
–Shari Dragovich
Each year, I gift my four kids an ornament that says something about what they’ve been doing that year, either learning a new instrument, playing a sport, a beloved hobby or a current obsession. I write my child’s name and year on the bottom, so it’s fun to look back through them and “remember when” when we decorate the tree. –Christy Rippel
My favorite tradition is helping my dad prep his signature fried eggplant Parmesan for Christmas Eve dinner. The breading and frying process is almost always accompanied by shrimp cocktail, antipasto, red wine and the company of two of my favorite people: my grandparents (loyal subscribers to this magazine!). While this year might look very different, this scene is forever engraved in my heart and mind. –Ashley Cuoco
My friends and I always get together a few days before Christmas and exchange gifts while wearing reindeer antlers. It’s a silly tradition we started back when we were working at The Southwest Times in Pulaski. –Aila Boyd
My family and I always do stockings and open them before breakfast and while we are having coffee. We always put an orange in the bottom of the stocking and Ferrero Rocher chocolates are a must! Now that [my daughter] Ava is a bit older, I’ve continued my family’s tradition of making Christmas cookies to decorate and leave out for Santa with a glass of milk and carrots for the reindeer. –Layla Khoury-Hanold
The story above is from our November/December 2020 issue. For the full story subscribe today or view our FREE digital edition. Thank you for supporting local journalism!