Good morning Dinks. We are smack dab in the middle of the holiday season. It’s time to start shopping, plan parties and get cooking for dinners. I was recently talking with one of my co-workers and we were discussing our holiday traditions.
I no longer spend the holidays with my family because when you are a child of divorce sometimes the holidays can be more exhausting than fun, so now I stay home and spend the holidays quietly with my boyfriend Nick. We are making our own traditions and that’s OK with me. It doesn’t mean that I don’t miss the days (many years ago) when I was a little kid waking up on Christmas morning with my parents, sister and dog – but now I’m 33 and that’s no longer a part of my life.
What are your family holiday traditions?
Christmas cards. Do you still write and send cards to all your family and friends? This used to be one of my favorite holiday traditions; I used to send out almost 30 Christmas cards to family, friends and co-workers. Now that I am older, getting lazy and not willing to spend money on the cost of postage I limit my Christmas list to about 9 people and 3 of them are my immediate family.
Christmas morning. When I was a kid I would stay in my pyjamas all day on Christmas. As a family we would open presents, eat breakfast and spend our morning calling family and friends. Then when my parents got divorced I spent Christmas morning in my pyjamas until noon when my younger sister and I would have to leave my Dad’s house and head over to my Mom’s.
My co-worker explained that Christmas at her house is “a fancy party” where everyone gets dressed up in their best outfits. Appetizers and champagne are passed around along with a cheese plate before the family sits down to a huge meal and dancing afterwards. This is definitely not the way Christmas is done in my family, but I guess we all have our own traditions to uphold.
Your wish list and gift giving. Christmas was always a big event in my house when I was a child; lots of food, lots of parties and lots of presents. I always loved seeing a beautifully decorated Christmas tree with a ton of gifts underneath. But now that I am older and a reformed spend-a-holic the event of spending the afternoon decorating the tree with my boyfriend Nick is so much more important than what’s under the tree.
The only person that I really buy gifts for nowadays is Nick, although I am participating in an office gift exchange and team lunch at my work. I really love the look and feel of Christmas so it’s nice that I still have some people on my list to buy gifts for because stores are always so festive this time of the year. However, as I get older I am becoming more and more impatient and large crowds of people are starting to bother me.
Photo from Pinterest
Kristina Tahnyak
Tahnya is a Certified Financial Planner and former Investment Advisor turned marketing and communications professional She holds a degree from Concordia University, is debt free and currently works in the field of digital marketing.
Gift giving has, and I guess will always be, a part of our family Christmas tradition. What I am missing today though is the exchange of Christmas cards. Since the advent of email and social networking sites, it seems many have skipped the art of sending physical cards.
we don’t have any, so it’s just another day…no high expectations, no getting caught up in all the buying, nothing out of the ordinary. ok, so we put up some decorations and our Charlie Brown xmas tree.
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