12 Things About Christmas!

It's gotta be 3 entries for today! If I do another one after this, I'll have to do 6! Anyway, make sure you see the other 2 posts I have for today!

My friend, Marcia Mickelson, tagged me to do this Christmas thing, so here goes. I found the "rules" on the blog of the person who had tagged her, so I'll list them first.

1. List 12 random things about yourself that have to do with Christmas
2. Please refer to it as a 'hoopla' and not the dreaded 'm'-word (Josi doesn't even know what the m-word is but she's trying really hard to think of all the dirty words that start with M that she's ever heard.) (For the record, I [Tami] don't know what this is about either.)
3. You have to specifically tag people when you're done. None of this "if you're reading this, consider yourself tagged" stuff is allowed...then nobody ends up actually doing it. The number of people who you tag is really up to you -- but the more, the merrier to get this 'hoopla' circulating through the blogosphere.
4. Please try and do it as quickly as possible. The Christmas season will be over before we know it and I'd like to get as many people involved as possible.

I'm not really sure about coming up with 12 things, but I'll give it a whirl! Here goes:

1. I was born two days before Christmas, so my middle name is Joy, going along with the Christmas theme.

2. I came home from the hospital on Christmas day in a Christmas stocking! Best Christmas present my family ever got..... although they might disagree. ;-) I still have the stocking; my mom saved it for me.

3. Growing up, we always opened one thing on Christmas Eve; it was new pajamas. Initially, they were given to the grandkids by my dad's parents, but they got to a point where they couldn't keep up with it, so my parents continued the tradition. (Seeing as I was the 2nd to last grandchild on my dad's side, the givers probably switched before I even came along or when I was pretty young at least, but I don't know for sure.) We've tried to carry on the tradition with our children, although I don't know whether it will happen this year. Fortunately, they are still young enough not to miss it if we don't.

4. Those same grandparents would give us $10.00 every year. It was always so exciting to get the money from them that we could do whatever we wanted with. :-)

5. Santa Claus always puts an orange in the bottom of the stocking!

6. It was a rule in our house growing up that we had to eat the orange from our stocking and eat breakfast before opening presents. We could look in our stockings (obviously, we'd have to look in order to get the orange), but that was all.

7. We would take turns opening presents and watching each other open presents. (Some people just let everyone go at it all at once, but then you don't see what everyone got or see people's reactions who you gave stuff to.) It was pretty systematic in our house. Christmas was not over in 5 min.; it usually took all morning. I'm pretty adamant about that, as well. I don't like the chaotic feeling of everyone ripping into everything so quickly, and it seems so unappreciative after all the effort people go to. We always had someone in charge of passing out the presents, and we'd try to spread it around as evenly as possible (kids generally getting turns more often, of course, because they'd get more stuff usually). Anyway, I try to do it like we did in my family growing up.

8. If we were getting a "big" gift, sometimes we would open a present with a note inside of a job to do. We'd basically do a chore scavenger hunt. Each thing we'd do had another clue of where to go next, until we finally got to the one where the present was. Usually the last one would be something like, "Vacuum the Winnebago." There we'd find the gift inside. (Although, it didn't always end there.) I remember one year my oldest brother going a little crazy with the present hiding thing, and basically he hid all of the presents and made us find them. That was a little different, though, not part of the "big" gift deal.

9. We had a tradition of every year around Christmas and New Year's having a jigsaw puzzle out the family would work on. That was fun.

10. My favorite Christmas song (or at least one of my favorites) is "Silent Night." I love the parts in it too. I love Christmas caroling, but unfortunately I don't get to do it most years because I never seem to be able to get other people to do it. I just LOVE Christmas music in general!

11. One of my favorite things to do at Christmas time is to sit late at night when the house is quiet and listen to Christmas music while looking at the lights on the tree, with all the other lights off. It's just a very relaxing and peaceful time, and it gives me a chance to ponder and enjoy the meaning of Christmas. (This just reminded me that I haven't done this yet this year. I had better get to it before it's too late!)

12. Aside from all the shopping and commercialization of it all, Christmas is by far my favorite holiday of the year. (Easter's nice, too, but not quite the same.) There's just such a special feeling this time of year, if we take the chance to stop long enough to feel it! I love Christmas!

Thank you, Marcia, for giving me this assignment so that it would give me a chance to stop and reminisce a little and to ponder the true meaning of Christmas a little more.

I now tag: Britt, Rob, and Shellie. I would do more, but I'd better leave some people for them to tag! :-) Have fun! I'll look forward to reading yours.