Christmas traditions

As someone who dislikes change, when I find something that works, I stick with it. I think that’s partly why I’m so big on Christmas traditions. To be clear, I’m not talking about throwaway Christmas activities like eating mince pies. I’m talking specific, intricately-planned, and carefully sequenced traditions.

For my family, Christmas celebrations kick off in the first weekend of December (it has to be the first weekend), when we venture to the Christmas Tree Farm in Chandlers Hill and quietly compete with other like-minded families for the winning tree. We then spend the afternoon decorating the tree while listening to a Christmas playlist that I’ve long been perfecting. We unpack the decorations from a box with great ceremony, peeling away the encasing tissue paper to reveal glimmers of red, gold, green, and blue. The decorations are a tradition in themselves: we buy one every year to add to the collection, so it’s a mix of new treasures and old favourites.

Christmas films are also really important in my household, and they need to be watched in a specific sequence. I know it makes no sense, but first up is always National Treasure, the 2004 action-mystery starring Nicholas Cage. I think we watched it one December when I was kid, and it’s just stuck. Now, despite reason, it feels like Christmas.

There are also some more traditional Christmas films on the list, but none are more important in my household than Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, which must be watched on December 23rd and 24th, respectively. It really has to be those dates, and at this point, no one would dare suggest otherwise.

There are plenty more traditions I could mention, like the prawn and avocado salad that my Mum prepares for dinner on Christmas eve, the recipe for a Christmas cocktail that an auntie gave me years ago, or the Christmas movie night that my friends and I host each year (the worse the film is, the better). There are probably some others that I’m forgetting, but that’s really the beauty of traditions, isn’t it? It’s not always the decorating of a tree or baking of a cake. It’s the small, often incommunicable details: the way you and your family gather around a table, the pyjamas you wear, the jokes you make. These things are woven into the fabric of our lives and the memories we share together, and that is the foundation of any worthwhile tradition.