Christmas 2011

[mike24forever]

I know some may consider it too early, however my wife and I have almost finished decorating our house (inside and out). We will add things here and there throughout the season, but for the most part we are done.

This is absolutely my FAVOURITE time of the year. So it had me wondering, have any other OSers started there Christmas preparations or have you finished?

Do you have any long standing Christmas traditions? Decorating, family traditions, movies you HAVE to watch?

So, with 48 more days till Christmas...may I be the first to say Merry Christmas.

[Buckeyes_Doc]

Re: Christmas 2011

I love this time of the year.

My wife and I are putting up our Christmas tree tonight.

As far as traditions on Christmas Eve and Christmas I have to watch A Christmas Story. I watch it every year.

[The GIGGAS]

Re: Christmas 2011

Wow, y'all are definitely a bit too early. Wait until after Thanksgiving for decorations.

There's still a harvest feast to have!

[mike24forever]

Re: Christmas 2011

We already had Thanksgiving in Canada.

[Buckeyes_Doc]

Re: Christmas 2011

I like putting up the tree after Thanksgiving but my wife is getting excited and wants to put it up tonight for some reason. Whatever.

[Knight165]

Re: Christmas 2011

I'm upstate in N.Y.
I used to wait until after Thanksgiving, but it's so much nicer to set up everything while it's still a bit more seasonable(regardless of the October snowstorm!)....so I'm starting a bit early on the setup.
I won't start lighting until after Thanksgiving.
I absolutely love the entire Christmas season.
The lights....the old Christmas songs(I make up a little Christmas USB drive for the car :o....Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Aaron Neville, Nat King Cole...etc) and love it when I drive home through my town at night and see everyone with their homes and properties all lit up.
Love it.

M.K.
Knight165

[8]

Re: Christmas 2011

Yeah still a little early for me. I'll start putting lights up the day after Thanksgiving. Every year I add a little bit more. Inside decorations will go up shortly thereafter. I don't turn the lights on until December 1st and I won't listen to Christmas music until the 1st either. I'll watch A Christmas Story on Christmas eve while I'm wrapping presents and then later on I'll watch Christmas Vacation.

We should definitely post picks of our lights though. I'd love to see what everybody does.

[BunnyHardaway]

Re: Christmas 2011

I still like this time of year, but it hasn't been the same since my great grandmother died. It hasn't helped that a lot of our family has moved away either. We used to have a really big Christmas party the weekend before, but my great grandmother was the main organizer of that. We still have it, but this year it's going to pale in comparison to past parties. My one aunt dressed up as Santa for my younger cousins (and me when I was a lot younger), but she moved to Florida so that's done. All the fun family members are gone. Man, this is gonna suck, lol.

[AUChase]

Re: Christmas 2011

If you guys like lights, I'll try to get some pictures when my dad & uncle get done with the house they decorate, every year.

We have a few family friend's who own a huge three story house, with a pond and more yard space than they know what to do with. They've decked the entire house out for years now, with a humungous Santa Clause and Reindeer in the air, trees floating on the pond, cars, etc.

It's very very elaborate and some expensive stuff. My dad and uncle have been putting them up every year since I was a kid..

[daflyboys]

Re: Christmas 2011

Wow, y'all are definitely a bit too early. Wait until after Thanksgiving for decorations.

There's still a harvest feast to have!

ya....come on man! You're getting in the way of the Halloween decorators who started in late September and have yet to put away their plastic skeletons!! Geez!!

[Buckeyes_Doc]

Re: Christmas 2011

We didn't put up our Christmas tree tonight, we will probably put it up around Thanksgiving when it should go up.

[Happy29]

Re: Christmas 2011

I've been working on my outside lights since August, at least the programming on the computer for the show. The past couple of weeks I've been out hanging lights hooking them up to the box and testing the programing. Yeah Christmas is my favorite time of year.

[slickdtc]

Re: Christmas 2011

As I've gotten older, it's lost a bit of it's childhood magic. But I definitely still feel the non-literal warmth of the season. The spirit of the holidays, if you will.

I love that it brings family, and people in general, together. Spending that day with your family and putting aside any stupid differences, that's what it's all about. We live these lives 364-ish days a year, let's take a vacation from all of it for one day. It's great most people still abide by that kind of tradition in an increasingly scary world.

We haven't gotten a real tree for 2 or 3 years now, settling instead for a miniature version as we lay the 1 or 2 presents for each other around it around Christmas time (no longer need a 10 foot tree to stack billions of presents around). Still put up lights on the house, and we'll see if the old Frosty the Snowman piece still works. It's probably older then me. I find myself being the one who turns on/off the lights most nights.

I'm just glad I have a decent job for myself and can afford to drop some money on some stuff for my Dad, brothers, and girlfriend. Last year, the girl and I bought each other like 5 or 6 things apiece and couldn't hold in our excitement and opened each other's gifts a few days before Christmas (we were going to open one a day until Christmas but that didn't quite work out ).

It may not be the way it was when you were a kid, when you couldn't sleep on Christmas eve and check out the loot in the morning, but it seems to have taken on a more mature, appreciative version of its old self. For as much as magic is the figment of a child's imagination, the holidays still do hold a bit of it. Just speaking on it now is making me all warm and fuzzy inside.

[trobinson97]

Re: Christmas 2011

We wait til after Thanksgiving dinner to start Christmas decorating.

[The GIGGAS]

Re: Christmas 2011

(no longer need a 10 foot tree to stack billions of presents around)

Thankfully, my Christmas tradition is still as big as it was when I was a kid (with the grandsons finding girlfriends and fiances, it's growing). So we've got our fake tree that I assemble, and then a 2 hour marathon of opening presents on the morning.

It may not be the way it was when you were a kid, when you couldn't sleep on Christmas eve and check out the loot in the morning

*looks at age: 23* *realizes I still can't sleep on Christmas Eve to see what I got* *realizes that I'm a giant child* *is ok with it*

We wait til after Thanksgiving dinner to start Christmas decorating.

Same here. I always fight with my Grandma to try to set up the tree. We usually do it with some football on the TV on a Sunday.