"12 Days of Christmas" Blog Challenge -- Day 1: Christmas/Holiday Traditions

Aly over at Analyze This and Molly at The Fuschia News have teamed up to do the "12 Days of Christmas" Blog Style!  This is so exciting and I can't wait to see what all my Blog Friends say about their Christmas holiday.  So, without futher ado, here is Day 1 of the Blog Challenge!

Christmas/Holiday Traditions

1.  One tradition my family has always celebrated is the Advent Season.  For those that don't know, Advent is a Christian celebration of the weeks leading up to Jesus' birth.  It consists of an Advent Wreath, which is usually a normal wreath laid flat on a serving plate with 5 candles (3 purple, 1 pink, and 1 white) standing on the serving plate inside the wreath.  Every night we would light the appropriate candles (you start with only 1 candle and work your way up until all 5 are lit on Christmas night), read a short devotional, and then we each got to pick our favorite Christian Christmas carole for the family to sing.  I say "Christian Christmas carole" becuase when I was young, I always wanted to sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" but my parents always had to explain to me that while that is a very good song, it doesn't talk about Jesus, so I needed to pick a different one.  =)

2.  Another tradition we have every Christmas is for my mom's family to come to my parent's house every Christmas Eve.  This is always a very fun celebration because we don't get to see this side of the family very often.  It's always a great night!

3.  After my family leaves on Christmas Eve, and after we have opened all of our presents (yes, we do it on Christmas Eve...weird, I know...guess that could be another "tradition" we have), we all head to church for the 11:00 pm communion service.  This is always very interesting...mainly becuase by this point I am so tired that I can hardly keep my eyes open, but it's still so nice because it always ends at midnight, just in time to start the Christmas celebration!

4.  Since Patrick and I have always celebrated Christmas with our respective families and have never been together on Christmas day, we have started our own little Christmas tradition.  Every year on the night before he flies home to see his mother, he and I always do something REALLY Christmasy here in Nashville and open our gifts for each other.  Last year we drove around and looked at Christmas lights

We even went to George Jones' house!

And 2 years ago we celebrated by heading out to Opryland Hotel and looking at all the pretty lights there:

It's hard to say what we'll do this year...maybe I'll wait and see what Patrick has in mind...he's usually pretty good at that kinda stuff.  =)