I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! I know that for myself, Christmas is always great. In fact, it is my favourite time of year. For the whole month of December, I run around buying gifts and decorating my house. I like to put up my Christmas tree in the first week of December so that I can wake up to the smell of pine needles for the whole month. While I hang lights, ribbons, ornaments etc. from the tree, I drink hot chocolate and listen to Christmas carols. This tradition brings back so many wonderful childhood memories.
For me, Christmas was always a time for family. Since I come from a very tight knit and large family, there were always many get-togethers over the holidays. My favorite family get-together was always the big Christmas Eve bash that we would have at my house. My grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins would all come over for a night of entertainment and delectable food. There would be approximately 25 people at my house and we would all exchange gifts. Because there were so many of us, we picked names in advance and only bought a gift for the person whose name we had picked. This way, everybody got one gift to open on Christmas Eve. We would also hire some kind of entertainer for all the kids. For example, one year we had a clown who juggled and did various other silly things; another year we hired a children's musician. Everybody always had such a great time that the party would usually not end until eleven or twelve at night. This meant that everybody was pretty tired Christmas morning. So for the past five or six years, we have had the party on Boxing Day instead. It's still nice to get together with everybody, but to me it's not as exciting because Christmas is already over. However, I'm very thankful that I get to share some of the Christmas holidays with my extended family. I think I still love Christmas so much because it was always such a happy time for my family when I was growing up.
