By Tiffany Shedd

I grew up with lots of Christmas traditions that all revolved around being with family, so as an adult I had a certain expectation of what Christmas was and what went on. Christmas can be a hard time, especially when you are a military family, because you’re often far away from family.

So, you can either lament those Christmas pasts that you’re missing or you can start making traditions of your own that you can carry with you wherever you may end up during the holiday season.

My parents always made a huge deal of Christmas. Santa always left tons of loot, and there were more presents on top of that. Mind you, we didn’t really get presents on a daily basis. We got birthday and Christmas. My parents made both of those occasions special for us. We would get excited about Christmas around November. We’d go through the Sears Catalog (I am dating myself here) and pick out all the toys we wanted Santa to bring us. We’d each write our letters to Santa, and my mom would mail them for us. Then the waiting began. I’d like to say we were patient about it, but we were kids so of course we weren’t.

Christmas eve was the worst as a kid. We’d go to church in the evening. Sitting through the short ceremony was torturous. It led up to the candle lighting ceremony at the end. This was thrilling and terrifying, once I was old enough to participate. We were each given a small candle with a paper ring around it to keep the wax from dripping on our fingers. These same candles and rings were used every year, so let’s just say they weren’t as snug fitting as when they were first used. I have very vivid memories of hot wax dripping onto my fingers and having to stay quiet and still even though I thought I was suffering from third degree burns.

After church we would go home and have dinner and get ready for bed. But before we were sent off to sleep, we got to open one present. The choosing of said present was quite the production. We’d pick them all up and weigh and shake to determine if it was clothes or a book or something boring. My parents would only put up with so much of our stalling, so eventually we’d just end up having to open whatever was in our hands. I frequently ended up opening something that wasn’t very exciting, because my family likes to reuse boxes from previous purchases that would seem similar to packaging of something I was looking forward to opening.

 We would finally go to bed and toss and turn most of the night trying to fall asleep. My siblings and I would wake up early and beg to go to the living room to see what Santa had brought us. We always started with our stockings, which as kids was difficult, because Santa didn’t wrap his gifts; they were just left unwrapped and on display, so we could immediately see if we’d gotten things from our list.

Once we got into our Santa loot, we’d have breakfast, usually broccoli and sausage quiche or sausage balls. Sausage balls were the best, because my dad only made them on Christmas. After we got bored with our Santa gifts, we started eyeing the wrapped gifts under the tree. My parents tried to slow us down in various ways over the years. We would have to take turns opening our gifts. One year, my dad came up with a complicated numbering system where there were only numbers on the gifts and he had to look up the numbers in a spreadsheet. I think he realized that was far more work for him that he wanted.

When we got older, we started having scavenger hunts for some gifts. We’d get hints and have to go searching around the house and sometimes even outside. The most memorable clue was hidden in the tank of our toilet. I think my parents had as much fun watching us frantically looking for the next clue as we had searching.

Around lunchtime we would head to my mom’s childhood home. When I was a kid, we lived in the same town as both sets of grandparents, so we had three Christmases in one day! How much fun is that?

We’d have the same food every year. I always looked forward to the apple salad and macaroni and cheese. After lunch, we’d open yet more presents. We would all be pretty tired at this point, and our excitement would be starting to wane. If we’d gotten toys that could play outside, this was usually when we’d get around to playing with those.

The adults would clean up or catch a few zzzzs on the couch while we were outside. Then, we would head over to my dad’s parent’s house around dinnertime and have another delicious meal. There would be a few more presents. I remember gorging myself on ribbon candy and cake. As we’d probably been awake since at least 5 a.m., we’d start to really be ready to call it a day.

This was our routine for my entire childhood, even when I went to college, it was still pretty much the same when I came home. Of course things changed, Santa didn’t really come anymore, we no longer lived in the same state as our family (but we usually went to see them regardless). We lost all of my grandparents by the time I graduated from college, but even with these significant life changes, it still felt like we carried on with most of our traditions.

I think that is why it was so hard for me, during my first Christmas being married. I had never been away from my family for Christmas. I was going through some significant life changes: I was newly married, we had just packed up all of our belongings and were moving across the country to Alaska, and I was spending Christmas with my husband’s family.

All of their traditions felt wrong and weird (of course they were not, they just weren’t what I was used to). I would love to say that I took it like an adult and smiled my way through it, but I cried and was probably unpleasant to be around.

It took me a few years to get used to not being with my family and enjoying our traditions. The next Christmas I tried creating some new traditions and adapting old ones to our new family. Now that we have a child, I look forward to creating more traditions with him and helping him create wonderful Christmas memories.