Our Christmas Traditions

The Bourke Family Christmas Traditions

I felt that our family traditions would best be told by the person who was responsible for carrying most of them out. Here is the Bourke Family Christmas Traditions written by Pam Bourke, my mother.

Bourke Family Traditions

Imagine being full of Christmas spirit and joy pretty much all year round and having a cross between the Grinch and Scrooge for the master of the household.

The most important tradition of all is putting up the Christmas tree and decorations the day after Thanksgiving. (Ed.'s note: I remember one year we put up the tree Thanksgiving Day after dinner!!) We've been doing this for 20 years now and everytime I make the suggestion to pull everything out of the attic HE looks at me as if I just asked him to hike up Pike's Peak in a thong bikini! Regardless of all his protestations, and there are many, we always get our way. Our tree and everything else was always up and finished no later than the Sunday after Thanksgiving. You see, Christmas at our house is a huge production and we're all willing participants, that is, except for Grinch/Scrooge.

It's an absolute must that at least one Christmas present is bought no later than September 30 or my whole world is out of sync. My goodness, there's only about 11 weeks left and what can you accomplish in just 11 weeks? See what I mean. My Christmas list for everyone started in August and it will be revised, upgraded, or downgraded (depending on availability of funds) until Christmas Eve. I look forward to this madness all year and I do believe I've infected my daughters with this Manic Christmas Spirit Disease!

Another important tradition of ours is riding around neighboring towns to view Christmas lights. We try to schedule this around the week before Christmas because not everyone decorates while the turkey is still warm, like us. Believe it or not, Grinch/Scrooge is the chaffeur. For him, though, I don't think it's the thrill of lighted Christmas decorations as much as the thrill of impressing everyone with his natural ability to find the best lights. I think it's a man thing.

In recent years another tradition we've adopted and truly enjoy is getting one or more names from the Angel Tree at my children's school. They try to pick names of children who request a lot of things because we love to shop and we love to give and this way we can do both and feel really good about it. Every year we keep a list of the childrens' names and what we bought them so we'll always have those memories.

A time-honored tradition in our family is the day we set aside to bake our favorite family cookies. We make them early, sometime in November, because they're better the longer they sit. (Of course, they don't sit because we start nibbling the day we bake and don't stop until after Christmas when we run out!) This tradition started with my Grandmother and my father and I are still carrying it on. In fact, last year we ended up making several different batches of our favorite, Fruit Cake Lizzies, because we outdid ourselves and we kept running out of them! We only made our usual one batch of the other family favorite, Whisky Balls, because, as you can tell from the name, you are only able to eat one or two. More than that and you may have trouble remembering little things like your name, age, etc. We'll share these recipes with you, along with one of my favorite gifts to give,
Rum Pound Cake.

October 1997
Pam
A Tale of Two Terrible Cats!

Here, Mom, shares with you her favorite true Christmas story about our two zany cats, Noni & Noah!

The Noni & Noah Christmas Tree Catastrophe!

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