I hope you all had an amazing holiday! Even if you don't celebrate, I hope you had a great couple of weeks :) The Holiday Tradition Contest ended earlier today and I have chosen the winners. They were chosen using random.org, so everyone who entered had an equal chance of winning one of the prizes. I wish I could have posted every entry on here, since they were all great, but that would have made this post incredibly long! Here are the winners, along with their entries:
Mistle Toad Companion & 10k Crowns (2 winners)
Clever Alex Nichols
My favourite part of the holidays is cooking Christmas Dinner + Dessert
James Morgan
My favorite family tradition is that everybody opens one present on Christmas Eve, and we get to pick any present to open. After opening presents we get to eat Christmas cookies.
Prince Yulefest Companion & 2.5k Crowns (4 winners)
Layne Lavish
My holiday tradition for X-mas is taking a family photo. My family and I dress up as Santa or the elves ,and my pets dress up as reindeers. After that, we send our family photo to our friends and family.
David Everhart
My favorite holiday traditions are decorating the Christmas tree and opening all the gifts under the tree on Christmas day.
Fearless Andrea Kelly
My favorite holiday tradition is Christmas breakfast - every year, I drive up to my parents' house and when I get there, they have laid out a spread of food like you wouldn't believe. We have shrimp, homemade bread, cinnamon rolls, breakfast pastries, bacon, eggs, fresh squeezed juice, coffee, lutfisk and rye toast (it's a Swedish thing that I'm not a big fan of but it's a tradition and my mother loves it), as well as my family's famous mint bars. The best part is that it's all laid out on top of a tablecloth made by my great-grandmother, who emigrated here from Sweden in the early 1800's with my great-grandfather (who was named Jack Frost, no joke). On the tablecloth, she stitched the words "Nu är det jul igen" which is Swedish for "Now it is Christmas again." There is absolutely nothing that says Christmas to me like eating Christmas breakfast and seeing that family heirloom and appreciating that it has lasted for over 150 years and someday I'll be able to use it when I have kids and we have our Christmas breakfast.
Dead-Eye Destiny Devereaux
Every year, I walk out into the town and go to the frou-frou garden store - about a fifteen-minute walk - to look at the annual trending decorations. I sample hot chocolate and buy pastries almost every year, but I always make sure to buy myself a single holiday ornament. Not one that I choose out of those that I like, necessarily, but one that has meaning towards the trip. Last year, a child had dropped an ornament; I had picked it up and stuck around, but the the child never returned. This year, my dog pulled me into the display with this year's ornament on it.
One Random Yuletide Pet & 1k Crowns(7 winners)
Cunning Amber Silver
One of my favourite holiday traditions is actually at school: when fundraisers of all sorts are held to raise money for those in need this Christmas. For example, this month our school sold Water Rafiki Friend Chains that would go directly to building schools for children in Africa.I believe education is one of the most important aspects in life, and I love how the holiday spirit reveals the true generosity in everybody
William Blake
At my family home at Christmas we have a fairly traditional Christmas, mum makes Christmas cakes and mince pies, dad makes bad jokes and my brothers make a mess. Over the year one thing that has become a kind of tradition is that we all bring a new contribution to decorate the Christmas tree. It means that the tree is a complete mixture of different styles and sizes of decorations but it is unique and just ours. This year have been added a giraffe with bells for feet by mum, a purple elephant by dad, a tiny cup & saucer with holly on by brother 1, a wooden angel by brother 2 and finally today I will be adding a felt robin. I know this seems like a strange Christmas tradition to other people but it's ours and it means every tiny ornament on the tree holds a multitude of memories.
Romantic Rebecca Irving
My family's holiday tradition is that we go see a play of the birth of Jesus and after that we go have hot chocolate and then we normally watch home alone.
Bloody Wesley Xavier
My favorite holiday tradition is Cookie Day. Every year, about a week before Christmas, my mom bakes 6 dozen different cookies in preparation for Cookie Day. On Cookie Day, my family gathers at Mom's house and Mom has a table in the kitchen covered in flour, anise cookie dough, and cookie cutters. Every makes cookies and Mom bakes them. Everybody is talking, laughing, and having a great time. While the last batch is baking, the family gathers at the dining table for lunch. After lunch, Mom makes anise frosting and everyone frosts and decorates the cookies. My sister, niece, and aunt always end up wearing frosting after one of them starts a frosting war. Afterwards, Mom hands out containers of all the different cookies, including the ones the family helped with. This day has always brought the family together and to this day remains one of my favorite days of the entire year.
Antonio
Since my family doesn't celebrate Christmas, we tend to have a magical and fun night for New Years Eve. Our whole family gathers up in one house, the children bring sweets, chips, juices and go to one room to have fun, while the parents are in the other room and talk their lungs out. Almost every year, all of us (kids) like to come up with an idea to surprise the parents and make them laugh, so this year they planned to immitate the parents and see how they react. Oh, did I mention, the mothers make cakes and cookie, and yum yum yum, pies! After we make the parents laugh, we return to our room and play some games on our phones, laptops or just joke around. When the clock ticks midnight, we go outside and watch the fireworks (we love fireworks) then the parents take us with their cars to the town, so we can see all the stuff that is happening. Lots of people go outside and parade through the streets in their own styles, some walk, some run, some even dance (even though it's freezing outside).
Sneaky Kevin Newell
My favorite holiday tradition is the extended family coming over for Christmas. While it may sound simple, the one thing that I feel everyone should have with them during the holidays is their family. That's what's most important, isn't it?
Two-Faced Anne
My top tradition for the Christmas season is spending time with my family and friends. Gifts can be forgotten or lost, ornaments broken, and cookies all eaten, but the memories made with those most precious to me will always last. If I only had 'one' Christmas tradition I could carry out, it would be time with my family and friends every year!
One random Yuletide pet & a chance at a holiday companion (10 winners)
Victor Hawkins
My favorite holiday tradition? It's the dinner time, and not because of the food, but because of the reunion, the harmony in the family and being thanks of having such privileges, the faces of joy of seeing their whole family grouped up and with a sense of happiness is the most wonderful time of the Holidays.
Lucky Donovan Debouff
As long as I can remember, baking has been one of the biggest traditions our family upholds during Christmas and one of my favorite holiday traditions! My mother and my grandmother have passed on all the recipes for the cookies, candies, cakes, pies, pastries, doughnuts, and other goodies, which I now bake in my own little kitchen. Of course, I love to bake year round, but there are some recipes that are special for Christmas alone!
Fearless Xavier Black
The year I was born, my mother purchased an advent calendar. Every night in December, we would read one window, until December 25th, which was Christmas day! It was a fun way to count down to Christmas, and my siblings and I always looked forward to it each year.
Charming Arthur Burton
My favorite holiday tradition is shopping for my family and friends presents the day before Christmas or making home made presents that they always love,and it puts a smile on my face when i make them happy.
Humble Brandon Quincy
My favorite holiday tradition is lighting the Menorah on each evening of Hanukkah, and then opening the presents afterwards.
Witty Alura
I have a lot of different Christmas traditions, but my favorite is getting the family together and doing something to make life easier for other people. Instead of doing Secret Santa and trading cookies like a lot of people I know, I ask my friends and family to make a difference in the lives of the needy in this time of the year. This year, we made clothes-pin angels to give to our community nursing home. I can't say I made up the idea. My brother's boy scout troop did this years ago. I asked my family to help me make these angels. we went to the store and bought the material, and I set up shop making them. Sadly, my stepmom will only let me make 30 angels, but I'm willing to get my friends to make more for this cause. I know how it feels to be unlucky and unhappy for Christmas, and I just want to let people know they're not alone.
Loyal Martin Xavier
Every year my family and I come together on Christmas and give gifts to kids who can't afford gifts. We give special Christmas presents to the kids at the orphanage.When we buy gifts we make sure we buy the best gifts for them. To do this we spend time with the kids on December 15th and find out what they are interested in and then on 21st we usually donate the gifts to them. Every Christmas like this always makes me happy thinking about how I did something special for other people who couldn't buy their own gifts.They usually send my family and I letters after Christmas about how we made their Christmas awesome!
Chris
I live in Greece so we have some traditions different from your's. In my country every Christmas morning we go from house to house and sing the Christmas carols, and then the house wife gives us some money. After we finish it, we all meet in somebody's house and count the total of the money, and everybody gets a fair amount of money. Christmas carols are different in every area of Greece, as they have religious content. We also eat pork or other meat instead of turkey. I like many other traditions, but this is my favourite (the one with Christmas carols).
Fearless Morgan
My two best friends and I get together each year before Christmas for a wrapping party. Like me, they both hate wrapping presents, but when you turn it into a special event, we all look forward to it. We rotate houses each year and order the family out for the day. One of the "guests" is in charge of coffee and donuts (and sometimes mimosas), and the other "guest" is in charge of lunch. The hostess provides her house, snacks and drinks. We each bring our stash of Christmas wrapping paper, bows, tape and scissors and we go to town for the day with the Christmas music cranked on the stereo. We've been doing it for the last three years and it has easily become one of my favorite holiday traditions.
Holly Silver
One of our family's most loved holiday tradition is opening up one present on Christmas Eve. It's really fun to get something early before the next day comes with all of Santa's presents.
Congrats to all the winners, and thanks to everyone who entered! It was so much fun to read everyone's awesome traditions! The winners have already had their codes emailed to the email they used to enter the contest. I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe New Year! See you......NEXT YEAR! :)
