Holiday Traditions

November 25, 2024
10:58 am

Since 2008, Navigant Credit Union has selected a special ‘Holiday Themed Word’ for our billboards each year. Our members eagerly anticipate this annual tradition! This year, our staff chose the word ‘Tradition,’ which feels especially fitting, as selecting a word has become our own tradition. We also invited our employees to share some of their personal traditions for this festive season:

Finding the perfect Christmas Tree, cutting it down, and spending the night decorating together
Exchanging ornaments with family members
French Meat Pie contests – best chef gets a trophy!
Baking dozens and dozens of cookies to hand out to family and friends
Every Christmas Eve my family gets together to have homemade appetizers and wears ugly Christmas sweaters. After we eat we do a Yankee swap and play card games like pitch and rummy as well as an old board game called aggravation. So much fun and happy to have this tradition
We have the tradition of “The Christmas Pickle”. It is a pickle ornament that is the last ornament to be hung in the tree on Christmas Eve. Christmas morning, the first one to find the pickle receives an extra little gift. It is said that the person who finds the pickle will be granted good luck in the coming year.
My tradition since I was a child was watching the movie “A Christmas Story” with my family. We would turn the marathon on and open presents while it was on and just be present with each other. When I became an adult and had kids of my own, I decided to continue that tradition so Christmas morning I turn the movie on and we open presents while quoting the entire movie with each other. “I triple dog dare ya” will forever be the one quote we say to one another to this day.
Tradition in my Italian family is what Christmas is all about. We Celebrate Christmas Eve with all kinds of fish. My mother is from the Campania region, the sweets she grew up with at Christmas are very different from those we find here at any pastry shop.
Every year, on Christmas Eve, my family would go to church and when we got home there would be one early Christmas present for my sister and me under the tree from Santa. It was always brand-new matching Christmas pajamas to sleep in while we waited for Santa to come back with the rest of our presents to open in the morning. I continued this tradition with my children, who now have children of their own.
Every year, the Sunday before Christmas Eve, my brothers and I get together to make pierogis for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. We have been doing this since we were kids and have kept up the tradition and hope our children will take over when we can no longer do it.
Way before I was born my Aunt started a tradition of crocheting a stocking for everyone in the family. When someone gets married their spouse gets a stocking, when someone has a baby they get a stocking. My aunt is in her late 70’s and recently taught me how to crochet so that I can continue the tradition after she is gone. Every aunt, uncle, cousin and pet has the same stocking handmade with their name on it. I am proud to carry the tradition for the next generation and just completed my first stocking
One of the holiday traditions my family participates in is making advent calendars. I remember being a child and looking forward to the whole month of December. Each day I would wake up and go straight to the calendar to see what surprise would be hidden inside, usually filled with a small toy or sweet treat. This would make my day and make it easier waiting for Christmas Day. Now that I am a mom, I have continued the tradition with my daughter and now she gets to experience the same joy that I had with her own calendar.