Christmas time

Before Christmas is even in anyone else’s brain it is in my family’s. We go black “Friday” shopping, when I say Friday it usually doesn’t start then it starts on Thursday and we usually stay up for legit 24 hours. We leave thanksgiving dinner early every year because the sales start early. When we go we always have a big group and we go to Johnson city or Hickory and sometimes Charlotte. When we go shopping this is when we get almost all the Christmas presents for each person on our lists. Black Friday is always fun to watch how crazy some people are and to get amazing deals. Around Christmas time in my family me and my mom always do the Christmas lights together. Our lights this year we have 14 different pieces in our yard along with lights on the house and trees/ bushes in our yard. We enjoy doing this together every year and if we ever didn’t do it nothing would feel like Christmas. When we went to vote all the locals were there as well and they all asked us if we were still going to do our lights this year. They were concerned that we weren’t because we are building on to our house right how and its taking so long. It was shocking to my mom and me to find out that the people around us look forward to seeing what Christmas lights were putting out each year. Another tradition we do together is make Christmas candy. We give boxes filled with peanut butter balls, three different types of fudge, around four different cookies, Amish bread, haystacks, homemade Chex mix, Ritz peanut butter crackers dipped in white chocolate, rice Krispy treats, bugles dipped in chocolate and white and milk chocolate pretzels. Everyone in our family and our family friends expect these candy boxes each year. Me and my mom have made these since I was little. We always decorate the inside of the house together too; my whole family helps with this. We have a tree of course, a village, a manger and a lot of little nick knacks. My brother, mom and me always make gingerbread houses together. We always go to the Christmas lights together at Bristol motor speed way. We usually have my family and a few of my aunts and uncles come. The speed way is always a lot of fun they have a village in the center and it has, activities for the kids, food, rides, shops and a movie showing each year. At church, we always bring a poinsettia for each of our family members who have passed away, we set these at the front of the church. The weekend before Christmas my mom’s side of the family gets together and all the adults play “dirty Santa” and the kids do crafts together. “dirty Santa” is a game that we play each year and everyone who plays brings one gift and you draw a number out of a hat and the lowest number goes first and unwraps a present from the tree. When the next person goes after the very first person you can either steal the gift that they first person had or unwrap a new gift from the tree. If your gift gets stolen, you open another gift from the tree. The game continues until each person has a gift. We all get very into this game and love to play it. We usually bring appetizers and hand snacks to eat at this party.  When Christmas comes we always wake up early but my dad never lets us wake up mom he makes us sit on the couch and wait. When mom gets up we start opening our presents then my older brother comes over and him and his wife do theirs. Afterwards, we go to my granny Bernice’s house my mom’s mom, we eat breakfast there then open gifts. Then we go to my pawpaw Tommy’s house and eat with my dad’s side of the family. After this we go to my great grandma Grace’s house and we eat and the kids exchange gifts. This is with my mom’s side of the family. Then we come back home and play with all the presents we got and nap. Christmas time is a very exciting and fun time of the year and it’s something I look forward to. This year I am a little worried about my dad’s side of the family because it is our first year without my granny Sue and pawpaw Tommy. We didn’t get together for thanksgiving so I don’t know if we will be getting together for Christmas. But, I am glad that my family has these traditions and we are such a close family. We do everything together and I have no idea what I would do without such a big and close family.