Holiday traditions are part of what makes the holidays so fun. I like making new traditions with my friends, or keeping old ones with my family. My family always does a white elephant every year and it gets pretty heated. 

My grandma always tells everyone to bring something small, and under $20. Then she shows up with the most coveted item because she spends more and buys a nice sweater or expensive chocolates.

One year, when I was in 6th grade, she brought a Marc Jacobs perfume and everyone battled it out to win it. My cousin, Lexie, and I are the same age and we both desperately wanted it.. Our moms tried to help us each win the perfume by strategizing what they stole from our other family members so they would have another chance to steal the perfume.

It got so intense  that people were actually fighting over it. We had to go over the rules again after the game to make sure the item was locked in and no one could steal it again. Lexie won the perfume and she was so excited, but she shared it with me, which made me very happy as well.

I’ve found that my family’s holiday traditions mostly consist of fighting over some game, or a game that somehow turns into a political war. Then we talk it out and make up and laugh over some pie while thinking about how the other person is so wrong.

My friends and I usually have more simple and less aggressive traditions. In Boerne, TX, where I’m from, there are two weekends out of the holiday season with  festivities the town calls “Dickens on Main.”

My friends and I went this year for the first time since high school. The town blocks off the street and hires vendors to sell popcorn, mini donuts and even dog sweaters. Lot’s of cutesy things mostly. It’s always funny running into old friends as we walk down the street with our noses red from the cold.

This year I got a puppy, so I bought him a little red sweater from one of the vendors. I put it on him and he pranced around my mom’s house looking oh so handsome. Maybe that will be our a new little tradition between me and my dog. I buy him a sweater and he wears it once to appease me.

Traditions can be anything, from fighting over perfume to walking down the street looking for people from high school. I don’t have many traditions that I stick to for the holidays, but it’s always fun to start a new one or do the same silly thing every year in my hometown.