Christmas Traditions with My Parents and Siblings since 1979
If you’ve read anything else I’ve written about family traditions, you already know I blame my mother for all of this. I grew up in a family that LOVES a tradition. My parents were really intentional about making holidays feel special, and Christmas was the freaking Super Bowl.
Our Taggart Family Christmas Party has been happening for as long as I can remember. At this point, the entire night is practically scripted. We eat the same meal. We do the same activities. We tell the same stories. And instead of getting tired of it, I swear I look forward to it more every year. All of us do!
I really believe these traditions are one of the reasons my family is so close.
My siblings and my parents are genuinely some of my best friends, and I don’t think that happened by accident. My parents gave us reasons to come together over and over and over again. We make memories. We laugh. We annoy each other. We spend TIME together. And now we’re all adults with spouses and kids and schedules of our own, and somehow we still keep coming back.
So welcome to Christmas with the Taggarts. Please steal anything you’d like.
FIRST, WE EAT
Obviously.
We have eaten essentially the same Christmas Eve dinner for decades: shrimp cocktail, stuffed mushrooms, baked brie, homemade eggnog, sparkling cider, prime rib with au jus and horseradish, baked potatoes, Brussels sprouts, raspberry Jell-O, homemade rolls and orange rolls.
My mom has been perfecting that prime rib for 46 years, so I do not say this lightly: IT IS SO GOOD.
The entire meal has become such a tradition that I gave it its own blog post with the full menu, the story behind it and a couple of my mom’s recipes. And if you want to make the whole thing, we’ve also put a few of our family recipes together for you.
See the Taggart Family Christmas Feast →
Next up we do the…
THE CHRISTMAS CHIMES
In 1999, my mom decided our family needed Christmas chimes. Why? I have no idea. But I’m pretty sure it had something to do with it being offered at an enrichment Super Saturday our Relief Society hosted at our church in the late 90’s.
She made them herself out of metal pipes cut to different lengths so each pipe plays a different note. We strike them with giant nails, which sounds significantly less magical when I explain it that way, but just trust me, we put on quite the show for ourselves.
Every year, everyone gets assigned one or two chimes. Someone conducts, and the rest of us attempt to play Christmas songs together.
There is sheet music. There is intense concentration. There are people staring desperately at the conductor waiting for their number. And there is ALWAYS someone who confidently rings their chime at the completely wrong time.
Honestly, that’s half the fun.
We’ve been doing this since 1999, which means these homemade metal pipes have now survived more than 25 years of Taggart Christmases.
And they’re still going strong…ly off key.
THE NATIVITY
With those Christmas Chimes-a-ringing, we also read scriptures from the New Testament that cover the Nativity Story. We have a little song and a little scripture about the birth of Christ. When we were younger these two things were not done simultaneously, now we do them as one.
Christmas in our family is BIG. There are presents and food and games and a million people talking over each other. But we always stop and remember why we’re celebrating in the first place. Jesus Christ is the center of Christmas for us, and this has always been one of the ways my parents made sure He didn’t get lost underneath everything else.
OUR GIFT TO JESUS
One way they kept Jesus at the forefront was this tradition. It means the most to me now and I have carried this onto my children too. Every year, we decide on one gift we want to give Jesus during the coming year. Not something we buy, clearly, but something we give of ourselves.
When I was little, mine were things like:
I’ll be nicer to my little brother.
I’ll help Mom do the dishes every single night.
HAHAHAHAHAHA.
Or:
I’ll remember to say my prayers every morning.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started thinking much harder about what I write. What is something I could change? What could I give more of? What could I do this year that would show Jesus how grateful I am for Him?
Once we decide, we write our gift on a tiny piece of paper, put it inside a small earring box, wrap it up and keep it at the bottom of our stocking. The next Christmas, we open the box, read what we’ve written in years past and add a new gift.
Which brings me to Ammon and our first year of him attending these magical Christmas nights with my family. Apparently he did not understand the assignment, he wrapped himself a Starburst and wrote himself a note that said:
Merry Christmas, Ammon.
So the following Christmas, while the rest of us were opening our little boxes and reflecting on our commitments to Jesus Christ, Ammon opened his and discovered a year-old Starburst.
Now from Jesus to our family talents.
THE FAMILY TALENT SHOW
My mom started this tradition when we were a little older, and I still don’t know if I like it or not. Every person has to perform a talent every year. Some people sing, some people play the piano, some people do magic tricks, or edit videos, or share PowerPoint presentations and all kinds of legitimate talents.
And then there’s Ammon again.
The first year he participated, his talent was blowing up a rubber glove using only his nose. He literally stretched a rubber medical glove over his entire head and nose and blew the glove up with his nostrils.
That was the moment he won over every single one of my siblings.
Over the years, the definition of talent has remained appropriately loose.And that’s probably why it’s so entertaining. You don’t need to be good at something. You just need to be willing to stand in front of the entire family and convince us that whatever you’re about to do qualifies as a talent.
SECRET PARTNERS
What makes this so special are two things: the first, all the gag gifts we give each other. Sometimes they are so funny we pee our pants, truthfully. And second, we give gifts that actually take thought. I love it so much.
We have a big family, so buying presents for every single person would require taking out a second mortgage. So instead, we draw Secret Partners. Every person randomly draws one name and buys a gift for that person.
This particular tradition exposed my terrible gift-giving skills for YEARS. Eventually, I challenged myself to start making my Secret Partner’s gift instead of buying it. And weirdly, that changed the entire tradition for me.
Some of these gifts have taken me hours and hours to make, but while I’m making them, I’m thinking about that person the entire time.
What would make them laugh? What would actually mean something to them? What could I make that nobody else could buy?
By Christmas, I’m usually much more excited to watch my Secret Partner open their gift than I am to open mine. Which I suppose is exactly what Christmas gift giving is supposed to feel like. Trust me on this- nothing fills you with the Christmas spirit more than locking in on being a really good gift giver.
NUT IN THE PUDDING
And finally, we end the night with the most sacred of all Taggart Christmas traditions:
Cold. Hard. Cash.
My dad served a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England and brought a couple of English Christmas traditions home with him.
- Brussels sprouts. We suffered through boiled Brussels sprouts for YEARS in the name of tradition, but that’s another story.
- The Nut in the Pudding.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to understand that the British use pudding to mean dessert. Because there is absolutely no pudding involved in our Nut in the Pudding, but there is Bundt cake.
If you want to read about this tradition please knock yourself out because it’s one you can immediately and easily implement.
Want to read about that tradition here and get the best bundt cake recipe ever?
Here is the Complete Taggart Family Christmas Feast →
AND THEN WE ALL GREW UP
Some of our traditions went away with time like sleeping in the same room on Christmas Eve or unwrapping one gift under the tree because we just couldn’t wait for morning. And I’m sure there were others that have faded into the recesses of my memory.
This is the part I don’t think my parents could have known when they started all of this. When you’re a young mom making metal chimes out of pipes or forcing your children to choke down one boiled Brussel sprout in the name of Christmas, you’re probably not thinking about what any of it will mean 30 or 40 years later. You’re just trying to make Christmas special, but then your kids grow up and you realize that you’ll spend way more Christmases with them as adults than you did as children living under your roof.
They get married and have their own families. LIfe gets busy and inlaws enter the chat. Things shift. Suddenly getting everyone into the same room isn’t nearly as easy as it used to be. So you have to be clever and flexible and roll with whatever you can. I’m glad my parents created a night we all would hate to miss.
Trust me, we’re going to eat the prime rib if it kills us and somebody is going home with the Nut in the Pudding money.
I can honestly say that my siblings and my parents are some of my best friends, and I really do think these traditions have something to do with it. The Christmas chimes don’t magically create close families. My parents (and specifically my mother) created reasons for us to spend time together. Then they kept creating those spaces year after year after year.
I’m taking notes and trying to do the same with my little family and I really hope it’s sticking. I brought traditions from the Taggarts. Ammon brought traditions from his family. We’ve kept some, changed some and created completely new ones.
Want the food too? See the Complete Taggart Family Christmas Feast →
