It’s officially the holiday season. If you’re anything like me, that means cringy Netflix Christmas movies, hot chocolate in an oversized Snoopy mug and delicious cinnamon rolls right out of the oven. There are so many traditions that are specific to people and they are all special in their own way. They might be old family traditions passed down generation by generation, or maybe it’s a new tradition that was recently started.
One tradition that my family started last year is that each of us chooses a movie that we watch over the break as a family. When you have three teenagers with a busy school and social calendar, it’s hard to find a time when everyone is home at the same time and is free long enough to sit down and watch a movie during the school year. So we take advantage of the extra time and over the two-week break, watch five different movies. Each person chooses a movie and the only rule is it has to be appropriate for the youngest person watching (my little brother Simon Blan ’31). Last year the five chosen were “Dumb and Dumber” (guess who chose that one), “Interstellar,” “Twisters,” “Dead Poets Society,” and “Life is Wonderful.”
No matter if it’s an old tradition or new, there are still memories to be made and laughs to be shared. So with that, here are 10 holiday traditions from the class of 2027.
- “With my family, we usually spend Christmas Eve with just the four of us, immediate family, and we’ll go to the Drover Hotel and have a nice dinner and take pictures,” Cloé Charron ’27 said.
- “Every Christmas Eve, me and my family go to church service at four o’clock, and then we come back and my dad’s side of the family comes over. Every single year we have steak for dinner for Christmas,” Ava Baker ’27 said.
- “We go to church on Christmas Eve,” Guy Matthews ’27 said.
- “We watch ‘Elf’ and leave cookies out for Santa,” Jake Settle ’27 said.
- “We always go to Capital Grille [on] Christmas Eve, and we open one present on Christmas Eve. My favorite [present was a] Lego airplane, and my brother helped me build it,” Julianne Ozaeta ’27 said.
- “Me and my family usually get together on Christmas Eve and we stay up until 12 to celebrate Christmas day at my aunt’s house,” Valorie Rojo ’27 said.
- “For Christmas I always go to my grandma’s house in Georgia and I help make pie, and we bake, and I spend time with my cousins and other family,” Cate Moulard ’27 said.
- “Every Christmas Eve, my family [comes to] our house for Christmas Eve dinner and then we go to church beforehand,” Jack Semple ’27 said.
- “We always get pajamas on Christmas Eve, and then we wear them on Christmas. We make gingerbread houses,” Charlie Cady ’27 said.
- “I celebrate Christmas for both sides of my family. For my dad’s side we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, and we spend the entire day there. Then at midnight, we open presents, and then we go back home at like 12:30 to 1:00, sometimes 2:00. Then we wake up at like 8:00 a.m. at my house for presents, and then we go to my aunt’s house where we do Christmas breakfast. Then we go to my grandpa’s house on my dad’s side and we celebrate another Christmas there,” Gavin Renteria ’27 said.
I hope these traditions inspire you to start your own or appreciate your existing traditions a little bit more. This can be a hard time for some people, but remember that if you take a look around, there is a little bit of joy hiding in every corner.
