On the Fifth Post of Christmas I'm Pleased to Share with Thee...

...Five Tra-di-tions! ...

Yes, it's that time. The time in the song when things slow down a little and people tend to shout a bit. I've never understood why the fifth day stands out from all the other days in the song; I mean, we're not even halfway yet. Why not relax a bit on the sixth day when we have as much behind us as we have ahead? For whatever reason, the fifth is the day to relish out of the twelve. On this day it's not Five Golden Rings that we cherish, however, but Five Golden Things...my most cherished traditions of Christmas.

The first tradition is our first act of Christmas every year, one that is celebrated by most North Americans at some point in late November or early December. It is the tree trimming, of course. Putting up the tree with my family has always involved a few things: selecting a real tree (I didn't this year, sadly), cursing as the lights are strung then deemed uneven and then re-strung, eating Swiss chocolate, and listening to the greatest Christmas album of all time by Swedish Sensations Boney M. We simply cannot adorn O Tannenbaum with tinsel and trinkets until the first notes of "Mary's Boy Child" swirl from the CD player. The other highlight of the session is the decorations themselves. My sisters and I were three crafty little girls growing up (thanks to my crafty mother), and so we all had decorations that we have received or made personally that each had to hang herself. Sometimes a little anecdote would accompany the placement on a most special branch. Of course we've all heard the stories so many times now, but we still look forward to them every year, drinking them in with a smirk and a nice cup of hot chocolate and Baileys.

The second tradition is also quite well known: the advent calendar. Growing up we used to receive them in the mail from our aunts in Europe, and it was always a special treat to see what was behind each little doorway. One year we got some chocolate advent calendars from the drug store, but we all found the cheap, waxy sweets lacking in flavour, almost unpalatable. I guess we had been spoiled, since our "Tantes" were kind enough to include Swiss chocolate in the packages as well as the calendars.

   

The third tradition is much like the second in theory, only different in practice; it's the advent candle. I'm not talking about the advent candles at church where one is lit every Sunday leading up to Christmas. This candle is an all-in-one type of deal, burned a little every day until Christmas Eve. From one line to another is about half an hour's burning time, and it's a great tradition to try and get the family together each day at least as long as the candle burns. I must admit that this tradition is one that I'm rekindling from my childhood, it's not something that we did every year, partly because we found the candles once at a kiosk and then the next year that we looked for them the kiosk was no longer there. I happened to find the red candle above at Jysk, but I'm not very happy with it because the quality of the wax is pretty poor. Taking a lesson from the chocolate advent calendar incident of yore, it's worth spending a bit more money to get something of better quality, so I'm going to see if I can find a better candle next year to keep this tradition going strong again.

The fourth tradition, like the first, involves family and chocolate. However, unlike the first, I doubt that many people have experienced it. There is a game that has my father introduced to our family that we only seem to play around Christmas. I have never heard of anyone else playing this game, so I have no idea if it was something that his family made up, or something well known in France, where he was born, or perhaps Switzerland, where his mother was born. We call it "The Chocolate Game". Needed to play are a bar of chocolate (preferably Swiss), a die, a fork and a knife. The game goes as follows: sitting around a table, elect someone to start rolling the die, trying to get a six. When that person rolls a six, they can start trying to open the chocolate bar with only the knife and fork, no fingers. In the meantime, the person to his or her left takes the die and tries to roll a six. Once a six is rolled, this person takes over with the fork and knife and the die is passed to the next person and the game continues thus. Once the bar is open, then the goal is to eat as much chocolate as possible before the next six is cast, using only the fork and knife and cutting off not more than one square at a time (or a half square, if they are really big). The game is over when all of the chocolate has been eaten. To make sure that everyone gets some, it's best to have a spare bar to either play again, or to let those who weren't adept enough with the utensils have a taste. It's a strange game, but it's a part of our family at Christmas.

Finally, the fifth tradition is upon us...the one for which we wait all year: Christmas Eve. Many North Americans wait all year for Christmas morning, but at our house it is the night before that gets all the attention because that's when we open our gifts. This is another one of my father's European influences. The evening involves Christmas pajamas, lots of good food and drink, Christmas music (perhaps an encore of Boney M), and opening presents one at a time with the youngest going first. Some other traditions have come and gone with the years. We daughters used to put on a Christmas Show for the parents before we got our gifts, another tradition brought from my father's childhood to ours. We would sing, dance, act and recite poems in our festive jammies in a spectacle that would be weeks in the planning. It was exciting for us for awhile, but as we got older it became pretty lame, so that tradition ended. Last year we started another one that I think will last longer: watching Jim Henson's "A Muppet Family Christmas" together before opening gifts. Although not the best known Christmas movie, it has become a classic in our home. Our collective favourite scene is that where the Swedish Chef tries to cook Big Bird as the "gobb-le gobb-le Christmas toooooorkey". Classic fun for all ages.

And Christmas Day? A bonus tradition of the season: sleeping in!