A Divine Christmas

Hey everybody :)

Thanks for checking in!

Now that we’ve completed our series for the month, I have a few personal things I’d like to take some time to talk about. It’s the holidays, it’s Christmas for my family, Christmas and New Year’s, and there’s a lot to celebrate.

So, that’s what I want to talk about! The traditions with which my family celebrates the holidays.

A Divine Christmas, as it were.

We love to decorate. At least, my mum and I do. We really do pretty much everything together, but this time of year is when we’re practically inseparable. We decorate the house together, we do some of our Christmas shopping together, we help each other with ideas for what to get whom, we bake, we cook, we clean—the whole nine yards in my family, that’s pretty much done by Mum and me. I’m the assistant.

Well, we start by decorating. Thanksgiving is actually Mum’s favorite holiday, so we make sure we give it its due attention. We do a turkey, cook up a ham, and make all the fixings… only to eat it all in about an hour (there’s also more desserts than there are people, usually). After Thanksgiving though, that’s when my favorite time of year comes in.

Mum and I decorate the weekend after Thanksgiving, generally. Sometimes it takes us a little longer, but not usually. We’re in a new house this year, but even then, it only took us an afternoon and evening to get everything done. We never bother to decorate the outside, but we go all out inside. Porcelain villages, bows on picture frames, stockings over the staircase, wreaths on the walls, red and green sprinkled everywhere through the house—and four Christmas trees to top it all off (don’t worry, three out of four are little ones).

That’s our first tradition. 

And in case this made you curious, yes, I do currently live with my parents. I love it. They've graciously opened their house to me, and we have so much fun together. It's great to be here, with them, especially through the holidays.

Our second tradition is cookies. The girls of the family make a million (not literally) Christmas cookies every year. Usually, we do a double batch of almost everything, but lately, we’ve toned it down a bit. The past couple years, each of us pick our favorite kind of Christmas cookie, and we add in our family favorite. Then the girls pick a day and spend almost the whole of it on our feet, mixing doughs, rolling cookies, baking, decorating, everything. And we have so much fun with it! …and there are always far too many cookies leftover.

The third is relatively new. Actually, we’ve only been doing it for a few years, and already we’ve had to change things around.

On Christmas day, we eat Indian food. Mum and I are very adept at making it, and it’s a lot of fun, but this year, my Great Grandmother will be joining us for the holiday—and we didn’t want to scare her off by the idea of Indian cuisine. So, we’re flipping New Year’s and Christmas around. Usually, Christmas is Indian food and New Year’s is a prime rib roast. This year, it’s the other way around.

Can you tell how much my family likes cooking, and food in general? Yeah, we spend a lot of time in the kitchen.

But that’s part of what makes us, us. We’re the Divine’s. We have our little traditions, most of which revolve around food, and that’s the way we like it.

You’d think it a wonder that we all stay as fit as we do, but remember, we’re also pretty fond of staying in shape.

What traditions do you and your families have, this time of year? I’d love to hear all about them!

[Merry Christmas]

{Rani D.}

P.S. Next week, since Christmas is on Monday and by Tuesday I might be a bit exhausted, I’m planning on posting my blogs on Wednesday and Friday. Next year we’ll get back to the normal schedule, promise. :) Thanks for understanding!