For many years, my family did the following: - My children and I went as a family to choose our tree on the first weekend in December and brought it home and decorated it. I did lights and tinsel and then the kids hung up the ornaments. Each child hung any ornaments that had been given to them or made by them in previous years and they shared hanging the "family" ones. I also hung a couple ornaments myself that were particular favorites and had been gifts. (In the earliest years, I also "re-dispersed" the ornaments hung by the children so that there were at least a few near the top!!) - Christmas Eve was spent with extended family (usually 60+ strong) at someone's home or eventually a clubhouse we rented due to the growth of our family. We had a pot-luck dinner and exchanged gifts from names drawn earlier. Lately, with economic times being tougher, we started doing smaller token gifts like ornaments. - After the extended family Christmas Eve, we went to the Candlelight Sevice at church. - Presents were opened on Christmas morning as soon as daylight appeared ("dawn" rule was made because Mom is a procrastinator and tended to wrap until the wee hours of Christmas Eve and I needed some sleep!). I always did stockings for each child - even when the were grown and those were opened first (each item individually wrapped to draw it out a bit!!). We tried to open the gifts one at a time, but were not always successful! So Santa's gifts were always wrapped in solid red paper with white bows and the kids were allowed to "tear into" them and we slowed it down a bit when it came to the others. - After presents, Mom cooked a big breakfast and then everyone tended to drift back to their beds to catch up on missed sleep. When my parents were alive, we went to their house Christmas afternoon. My children are now grown, and there are many pulls for their time on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. So I have changed my traditions accordingly. So for the past few years: - Any of us who can will go to the extended family celebration on Christmas Eve (some of the children have spouses or significant others with similar family events, so they are alternating years with ours). - Afterward, anyone who is available goes together to the Candlelight Church Service. - Christmas morning is left to be celebrated at each individual home if desired. When my children eventually have their own kids, they will have this time to celebrate at home with them so that Santa can come to the children's own home and they will be tucked up in their own beds. This allows the parents to come up with their own traditions, ie cookies for Santa, reading of books, etc. For now, with no grandbabies, my children can still come to our house Christmas Eve night and be there for the morning if they choose... but we are doing it differently! - We are no longer doing the dawn rush for presents as there are no small children waiting eagerly for Santa. Instead, we allow everyone to sleep alittle later and I still do the big Christmas breakfast about 9am for anyone staying here or joining us. - In years past, Christmas evening tended to be somewhat of a "let-down" with the presents already opened and all the holiday merry-making coming to an end...and I was so exhausted from getting up at dawn and wrapping till whenever that I did not do a real "Christmas Dinner". So now Christmas evening is when we have our family Christmas celebration. In late afternoon (3p-4p) we have a big Christmas dinner with the best china and all the trimmings. This time-frame allows time for anyone needing to be other places in the morning or midday for other celebrations. Anyone staying home can help decorate cookies or assist with dinner or just watch football etc! I have asked the children to dress up for our Christmas Dinner and make it a bit more formal now that they are grown and I think they actually enjoy it! I asked for "nicer clothes" but now I see even suits and party dresses... and I love it since we rarely have dressy occassions and it makes for wonderful photos!! - After dinner, we open some wine, snack on desserts and goodies, take photos, talk, and play games...just be together till about 8pm. I like to wait till dark because the tree and lights and candles are so much more beautiful. Where my focus used to be on piles of morning gifts, I now spend my energy on the food and decorations...making it a warm, loving evening with lots of old fashioned, traditional charm. Tons of candles, a fire in the fireplace, soft Christmas music, and way too many sweets (I love to bake!) - Finally, we exchange gifts. Having changed the focus of our Christmas celebration, and also the "quantity" of gifts we give, we open them one at a time with everyone watching to make each one more special. I feel it returns us to the days when people selected one or two gifts for a person and they were very special with alot of thought put into each gift and maybe even doing some special wrapping...rather than the flood of gifts I gave the kids each year. We sat down a few years ago and discussed it as a family, so no one was disappointed on Christmas(well not too much!!). It was at first an economic decision, but I think it has challenged everyone to make more of an effort to choose special gifts with real meaning for each other. - After gifts, we continue the wine and goodies and games until people need to go home (only if they skipped the wine!) or retire here for the night. - The other side of our family celebrates the first Sunday AFTER Christmas, so this allows the holiday to flow alittle smoother! I am please with the new changes we have made and hope that it allows my children (and eventually their families) to celebrate Christmas together yet not feel stressed by being pulled in so many directions at the same time! Merry Christmas!!

Christmas Eve, we go to the candle light service at church as a family, (my husband and I, our son, my mother, our grown daughter (my step-daughter), and our granddaughter (see loves it) included.) Then we drive around and look at Christmas lights and then we go by the only restaurant open by that time (the local Chinese place) and get take out, go home and eat together and then try to get everyone that has to leave to go home and everyone else in bed. My husband and I usually go on to bed set the alarm for about 2:00am and get up and put out "Santa Clause". Things will be a lot different this year. My mother always spent the night with us; she and my young son would sleep in my husband and my bed (we would just kind of camp out in the living room). It was a given that "Mamaw" would be at out house on Christmas Eve. Well she passed away in January. We still miss her so much. I don't know how things will work out this year, but I still want to keep as many of the traditions as we can. She would want it like that. She was a kind and loving Christian woman.

Christmas gift-giving within our family is minimal so our first tradition starts a couple of days before Thanksgiving, when all of our family members go out and buy $20 worth of $1 holiday or winter themed scratch-off lottery tickets. Our gift to ourselves is seeing surprised and then mostly smiling faces when we give them away to a clerk at the supermarket, a woman with a whining child, or whenever the mood strikes us. We usually have refill our pocket as the month progresses and itÂs amazing to see the power that a dollar can still have. On Christmas Eve, we usually have beef or cheese fondue or both and then attend a church service. Most years, DH was singing in the choir. Starting when our children were young, Santa never put presents under the tree. Instead, theyÂd open their Christmas stockings and in the bottom was a clue to find the first gift. TheyÂd bring it into the living room and open it. On the back was another clue to find the next gift. As they got older, the clues got harder, sometimes involving going outside. It slowed down the pace of Christmas morning and seemed to make them stop and appreciate the gifts they received, instead of having a frenzy of unwrapping. This tradition continued when grandchildren came along and what they all remember and talk about most was the scavenger hunts themselves instead of the gifts. I think thatÂs why we just do small or handmade gifts now. Another family tradition is NOT to cook a sit-down Christmas dinner. When I was growing up, my parents always had an extended Open House on Christmas Eve and added a few hot items to the buffet for Christmas Day. Most things were made ahead of time so it was always a relaxing day with people dropping in as their schedules permitted. Soon after we were married, DH and I began hosting a Christmas Day brunch from about 10 to 3 and a buffet of homemade soups, breads and cookies on Christmas evening. Chicken-rice-leek is the one that always has to be on the menu. Both DH and my parents are now deceased, as are all of our aunts and uncles except for the two we visited at Thanksgiving. Our children and GCs are scattered about the country so sometimes even when they were at home, weÂve done different things on Christmas, like serving Christmas dinner trays to hospital patients so more of the food service workers could spend Christmas with their families or shuttling truckers who had to spend the holiday at a truck drop to a Christmas dinner. Last year, we went to FL and spent the holiday at SD & SILÂs, cooking a Dickensonian goose on Christmas Eve and learning salsa dancing at their South American neighborÂs holiday celebration next door. This year, DD will be here for her last Christmas before reporting to the Army and her only requests were no gifts, saving a tree for her to decorate and chicken-rice-leek soup on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

I was a long haul trucker for years and travelled throughout the U.S. On a trip in 2003, from Atlanta, GA to Washington, DC, I was scheduled for an early Monday delivery to one of the grocery warehouses. I stopped at a motel in Winchester, VA just off I-81 and went to sleep. I was dreaming a strange dream. I was on an airplane, sitting in first class and smoking a cigarette. Everybody was dressed like extras from a 70s T.V. show. I thought that was strange and I also thought it strange that I could smoke on an airplane. I pulled the airline ticket from my pocket and saw that I was on TWA Flight 514 from Columbus, OH to Washington, DC. It was dated December 1, 1974. Well, I thought, stop the presses-what's going on around here? So I rang the call bell for a stewardess. I told her I'd like to speak to someone from the flight crew because it's 2003, TWA is out of business, and I want to know what in the hell is going on here. She just smiled and said that the crew had began the descent into the Washigton area and could not be bothered by any one right now. So now she heads toward the cockpit door and opens it. I look through the door and all of the sudden see trees that are way too close. The pilot said something like, "get some power on" as the trees got bigger and bigger. I yelled and dove into the aisle. At that moment I woke up. Geez that was creepy. By now I had to leave the motel to go to DC. It was about 2:00 A.M. I get on Highway 7 heading east out of Winchester and around Berryville and on to the intersection of Highway 7 and State route 601 near the town of Bluemont, Virginia. There was a closed gas station on the NE corner. I pulled in to check my map. As I'm sitting there, I swear, I see this guy in the parking lot walking towards me. Now its the middle of the night and as he came closer into the light of an overhead lamp I could see he is wearing what looks like an airline uniform. He walks up to my truck and asks if I could give him a lift to Dulles International Airport. I asked what he was doing out here. He just says, "please take me to the airport, I fly for TWA and have to work a flight this morning". Against my better judgement, I tell him to go around to the passenger side and that I'd take him to the next open place so he could call a cab. So he walks around the front of the truck and just disappears in the headlights. Now I'm totally freaked out and figure its time to put on my boogie shoes. When I got home I decided to research TWA and this whole area of Northern Virginia. I was totally stunned to learn that on December 1, 1974 a TWA Flight 514 crashed into Mount Weather in Virginia about a mile from the intersection where I saw the pilot. All 92 people aboard the Boeing 727 from Columbus, OH were killed when the flight crew initiated a premature descent for Dulles International Airport. The aircraft was virtually vaporized when it hit the mountain. To this day, I've never had any experience...