Thanks to my stepmother, our family has been doing Christmas Jammies since before it was cool. Beginning in the 1980’s, my sister and I would open a single, pre-selected wrapped gift from under the tree, just before bedtime each Christmas Eve.
Wouldn’t you know, it was always new jammies? Perhaps telling of my notorious gullibility, each year I was genuinely surprised.
My sister has continued the tradition with her three daughters. Bestie Jen’s Elf on the Shelf delivers her kids’ Christmas Jammies when he returns to their house each year. Bestie Christy’s kids get their jammies at Thanksgiving and get to wear them all season long. Bestie Valerie smartly purchases her children’s on clearance a year in advance, and debuts them twelve months later with a new movie and a treat.
There are a thousand variations, but any way you swing it traditions like these are good plain fun… something to anticipate, commemorate, ritual and routine make it special and set apart.
Husband and I have continued the Christmas Eve tradition with our own children… this year will, of course, include Little Man.









This year I ordered early, online, for all three kiddos– and though they have arrived safely I have yet to open the package. I confess I don’t even recall what they look like! It will be a fun surprise for ALL of us, this time. Sometimes I get them for Hubs and myself, and sometimes not.
Jumping back to our gingerbread house decorating tradition, we had another fun gathering for the books, last night. The neighbors came over and the kids decorated, munched, and gleefully bounced off the walls. It was a little crazy and a lot of fun.
My sweet neighbors laughed with me as I realized how ridonk it was to make organic frosting and use the expensive graham crackers made without high-fructose corn syrup, jointed together with melted organic sugar, only to bedazzle the entire structures with candy. Live and learn…

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