Welcome to High Five for Friday – hosted by me, Tif, Della, and Caitlin! If you want to know more, read about it here!

Some Housekeeping! First, there will be NO link up next week – Christmas Day. Enjoy that day with family and friends, please! We’ll all meet back up here on January 1 for a New Year’s celebration! I expect an extra big recap from everyone!

Second, our next H54F Hangout will be January 14! Mark your calendars now 😉

Our featured blogger this week is Tabitha from A Hundred Tiny Wishes! She’s joined me in the 30s club (hooray! welcome) with a birthday recently, but I really loved her post of lessons learned in her 20s. All truth! And she gathered the most delicious collection of Christmas cookies and treats! Swing over and say hello.

This week, instead of sharing some highlights, I’m sharing my top 5 favorite Christmas traditions, past and present! Can’t wait to check out yours too!

I’m such a traditions girl! I have such sweet, fun memories of all the traditions of my youth! And now that we have our own family, I am adamant about us being home on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, so we can start establishing our own traditions. Now that Elizabeth is a little older, she is super into the excitement of Christmas. I feel like NOW is the perfect time to get into our traditions.

1. Christmas Cookies! I have always been the cookie lady in my family. My mom always said she lacked the patience for cookies, so she gladly passed the task off to me when I showed an interest. Ironically, I don’t make any special cookies for Christmas. Just standard favorites like chocolate chip, ginger snaps, oatmeal and then a wild card cookie (sometimes biscotti, sometimes peanut butter). We so rarely have cookies through the year that baking standard cookies at Christmas feels like a special treat! Next week my cookie baking begins! I plan on doing a batch of sugar cookies just so Elizabeth can help me cut and decorate.
2. The Perfect Christmas Songs! My sister and I were tasked with setting up our tree every year, and for that set up, we always pulled out the Neil Diamond Christmas album (a cheesy classic that must be listened to!), and to this day, it’s my MUST LISTEN to music when I decorate the tree. If you’ve never heard this gem, allow me to indulge you!
   
   On Christmas morning, my dad always cued up the Mannheim Steamroller cds for present opening. I can’t listen to a Mannheim song without imagining wrapping paper everywhere 🙂 But nowadays, I love any traditional Christmas carol sung by a choir OR those delightful songs from the 40s and 50s.
3. Christmas Eve Oranges and Music! Christmas Eve is chucked full of tradition for me. For whatever reason, when we got a little older, my sister and I ate buckets of clementine oranges during the day of Christmas Eve. We also played car racing games… no doubt to keep out of my mom’s hair as she tried to finish loose ends.  I still eat buckets of oranges (in fact, my sister and I usually text each other our haul each year) and I might just race a car or two for old times sake.And then, the Christmas Eve Concert. When my sister and I were first learning piano, my dad requested on Christmas Eve that we play a few Christmas carols on the piano, and then he read the Christmas story from Luke. Every year after that, our “Christmas Eve Concerts” got more elaborate and planned. My sister and I would retreat to the office, computer on and Bibles out, planning our own version of Festivals and Carols – a mix of Bible texts and corresponding songs. We printed out programs. We practiced. We got serious about that. Even though Elizabeth isn’t playing instruments yet, I plan this year to start back up that tradition! She’ll grab her little maracas and recorder and we’ll sing songs. It will be a gas!
4. Christmas Jammies! Anyone else do the Christmas Jammies? It was the only thing we were allowed to open on Christmas Eve. My parents never had festive gear. It was just my sister and me. And I’m happily carrying on this tradition now! In fact, this year I bought 2 pairs of festive jammies for Elizabeth. One set she started wearing December 1, and then another pair for opening on Christmas Eve. I can’t wait!