Holiday Traditions – Christmas Eve Tour Of Lights

After our Christmas Eve dinner and once all the cleanup is over with I make hot cocoa and fill up our travel mugs.  Then we all pile into the truck and head off to drive through certain neighborhoods and look at Christmas lights.  I don’t know why but the truck is the vehicle of choice for this event.  The girls always insist on it. 

Ever since my son was born this has been our family tradition every year.  It is a great way to get kids settled down and ready to head for bed.  When my son was younger he would fall asleep in the car and I would just carry him in and put him to bed.  When he got older he got to do the driving and I would get to see and enjoy the lights more. 

One year it snowed really hard and as we crept along through the neighborhoods the girls would reach out the back window of the truck, grab some fresh snow out of the truck bed and play with it.  I think they were having a snowball fight back there. 

Every year we pick a different neighborhood and spend about two hours touring the lights and sipping our cocoa.  Then home to brush teeth, get a quick update on Santa Tracker and then get to bed and fall asleep before “you know who” gets here. 

When I was a child the tradition was to put our pajamas on and have Dad read us “‘Twas The Night Before Christmas”.  The book we had was a neat old book full of Victorian style pictures.  I still love that story to this day. 

Do you have a particular Christmas Eve ritual?