The Christmas season is upon us. Christmas trees and the colors red and green fill every building. Christmas music that’s been played regularly in December for decades starts to invade my eardrums. At the end of it all, on Dec. 25, we gather together with our families and celebrate traditions new and old, no matter how cheesy.

  My family doesn’t have many notable “traditions”; however, we do have a plethora of favorite Christmas foods. Every Christmas, my mom makes “Rudolph Noses”, where she rolls red velvet cake into balls and coats it with hardened white chocolate. Meanwhile, my grandmother makes “snow biscuits”, which are soft, warm pieces of bread that pair great with butter. This year, our family wants to have finger foods at our Christmas celebration. I’d really like to bake some Christmas treats we’ve never tried before, such as gingerbread. I’ll have to wear a nose clip though–mixing up ginger and molasses to make gingerbread creates the most unholy smell in the world.

  Every Christmas, my family has to decide where our celebrations will take place. Usually, it’s at our own house, but our celebrations have taken place at other family members’ houses as well. For example, last year, we went to my brother’s house in Fort Worth. I don’t get to see my brother much these days because of how far apart we live, so taking a six-hour drive to his house didn’t bother me at all. My favorite memory of that trip was when my brother, his girlfriend and I went to the mall. We were in the middle of a clothing store when I knocked over a small mannequin that I didn’t notice due to my height. My brother’s girlfriend and I quickly scrambled to put it in place, only to fail and cause the mannequien to lose some limbs. Meanwhile, my brother fled the store in embarassment. That’ll be a story that will be told every Christmas now, and I’m not sure whether I’m proud of it.

  Recently we started playing a new Christmas game. In this new game, everyone wins. It’s a game you can find online called the Saran Wrap game. Basically, a grand prize and a collection of other prizes are put together and wrapped in Saran wrap. Each person takes turns trying to unravel the Saran wrap ball with gloves while the next person rolls dice. If that person rolls two of the same number, the glove and ball are passed to them. If a small prize falls out while you’re unwrapping, you get to keep it, and the first person to unwrap it fully gets the grand prize. When we first played, the small prizes were lottery tickets and candy, and the grand prize was an Amazon Echo Dot.

  At first, I didn’t think my family had any notable Christmas traditions, but as I continued to brainstorm, I realized our biggest tradition revolves around stories. Stories such as the aforementioned mannequin mishap, alongside other funny stories that are personal to our family. These stories will be told each Christmas, helping us laugh, rejoice, and appreciate each other. Fun games and mouth-watering food may be nice, but at the end of the day, I believe these stories are what matter most.