Christmas 2020: Traditions Old and New

When Tony and I were in college, people would often joke that if you do something once at UVA, it's officially a tradition. Since we didn't travel this year, Tony and I found ourselves almost completely recreating the holidays for our family. In many ways, it was quite liberating! We decided to incorporate favorite things from usual years (long-time traditions), while adding things we may have done once (a budding tradition) and things we've always wanted to do or thought sounded fun (potential traditions!).

Of course, there was the baking of old favorites...

And some new treats, too!

The holidays have to include the Grinch, right? On the last day of school, Sebastian's class watched the original cartoon and did lots of creative art and exercises related to the story.

We all made five-item personal wish lists of things we hoped to do during the two-week winter break. Watching "Home Alone" on Christmas Eve appeared on multiple lists! (This could qualify as a new tradition, but I should mention that we watch "Home Alone" often throughout the year. It's great anytime!)

After the kids went to bed, Tony and I got right to work organizing and wrapping dozens of gifts...many from our family who we wouldn't be celebrating with in Virginia. One extra special gift required a sign, so no one would peek when they first woke up... 😉

All our hard work! 

Crazy but true, the last time we celebrated Christmas in our own home was when Samuel was exactly one week old. !! I tried to think back to what we enjoyed most during that time. Yes, new parenthood is a delirious blur, but in addition to snuggling sweet Sammy, my fondest memories include Tony, Beth and I having a very special holiday in 2008. One highlight was a really delicious Christmas Day brunch that we cooked up thanks to a box from Honey-Baked Ham that my aunt sent us. So...my list included pancakes, bacon and eggs! 

We made our usual pancake recipe and added fun toppings, like chocolate chips, blueberries and bananas and walnuts...and baked it all in a sheet pan. I saw this done by one of my favorite food bloggers. She claimed it was a game-changer and it definitely was nice not to have to stand and flip pancakes for a long period of time. In less than 15 minutes, we had a whole sheet of fluffy pancake to dig into! 

Merry Christmas! 

My scrumptious plate!

Tony and I opted to stay in our PJs (a privilege of being in our own home), but the kids wanted to "dress up." Then they looked in their stockings to find sweet treats and cool things from the grandmas!

Then it was present time! (When we travel, we usually open them after lunch, so it was a fun change--and more like the holidays Tony and I grew up with--to do it right after breakfast!) The big hits were Greek mythology toys for Samuel; a new lunchbox plus 80's pajamas and a toy flute for Brie's American Girl; and Minecraft toys and a stuffed dragon for Sebastian.

And just when they thought we were done, we cracked open the biggest box of them all: a karaoke machine from Auntie B!

And then...when the kids thought they had opened everything (again), we headed down to the basement and they discovered the ball pit that Tony and I created! Brie has been asking (begging!) for a ball pit for MONTHS and Tony and I kept wracking our brains trying to figure out the best way to do it. Every "pit" online was either expensive or the wrong size. Then I remembered that we still had the kids' old play yard up in the attic! Granddaddy Rob helped us order a couple hundred balls, we upcycled Tony's old basketball hoop...and voila! This has been VERY fun for the kids. Hope they will enjoy it during virtual recess this winter! 

A gleeful trio!

What else made the list, you ask? Making a gingerbread house! This was not a new tradition since we build and decorate one every year with Tony's mom, but Tony put this on his list since we've never made our own. We decided on recreating our actual home (yay!), so Tony used PowerPoint to make a template. We used his mom's gingerbread recipe and then cut out...

And baked the pieces. It all worked very well and smelled amazing!! 

We were pleased when it actually assembled properly and was structurally sound! 

Tony and I would have been fine with a casual decorating, but the kids were really invested in making it look authentic. They even painstakingly tiled the roof...with Golden Grahams!

It was fun to brainstorm what cookies and candies would work well for the different parts of our house. Cookies and cream Hershey bars for windows and KitKats for shutters, gutters and our portico. Graham crackers for the garage doors and driveway. Mini marshmallows for our columns. Wafer cookies for our chimney and front door... It was lots of hard work, but behold! 

We weren't planning to do much with the back of the house, but Samuel decided that he wanted to make the back deck and walkway. Don't worry, the deck is to code!

The real...

And the delectable version! 

In case you're wondering, we did dig into the house and all its accessories. It all tasted great, particularly the gingerbread!

Speaking of...we always love Tony's mom's grand holiday meal, but we knew that tradition would be pretty impossible to recreate. So we opted for Thanksgiving 2.0 on Christmas night. It was soooo good... 

Other wish list requests? Lots of movie watching! So far, we've enjoyed "Home Alone," "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," "A Christmas Story," "Over the Moon," "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." (Brie's list included a movie marathon, so we'll be watching additional H.P. movies later this week.) More to come!

We've also played several board games and card games (the kids got many for the holidays and this was on both Samuel's and Sebastian's lists) and had a few song sessions, too. 

Sebastian especially loves the lights feature on the karaoke machine. Ha!  

So...we didn't get to see and catch up with all of our family and many friends this year--some of whom we only see once a year. We also didn't get to enjoy our favorite holiday traditions and dishes that we look forward to each year, or go to beloved restaurants and haunts in Virginia. But we also didn't have to spend two whole days in the car and we got to sleep in our own beds. It was definitely a tradeoff, but not all bad.

This year will go down in history no matter what, but perhaps if one positive thing that came out of this pandemic was a quieter holiday and (yet) more bonding time for the five of us. Above all, we're grateful to be healthy and to have one another. We will have so much to be thankful for when we're all together next winter! And you better believe we're going to be keeping some of our new traditions...they're too good to give up!

P.S. Another new tradition? Earlier this month, our hilarious neighbors started planting an elf on a different yard every night for fun. The elf came to our house during a warm spell...he was ready for sunshine... 

And so were the kids!

P.P.S. Since it's technically Throwback Thursday, I thought I'd take us back to 2000--when Tony and I spent New Year's Eve with Jackie and Justin in Osaka, Japan. We've always been very compatible travel partners...the four of us had a great time on that trip! Pretty incredible that it's been twenty years...