Anne Benjamin, illustrator and designer, recenlty e-mailed us to introduce her company, Mok Duk. Mok Duk is a line of finely crafted cards and custom invitations. Each one of Anne Benjamin’s designs for Mok Duk is designed and printed exclusively for each client. Here is a small sampling of her gorgeous custom work. Enter the Mok Duk giveway for a chance to win a custom Mok Duk design created for you!
Win: A custom designed wedding logo and 75 letterpressed (with logo) thank you folded cards and envelopes.
How to Enter: Leave a comment on this post telling us about a unique holiday tradition of yours.your favorite holiday tradition. Winner will be chosen at random.
Contest ends Monday, December 29th at midnight!
We always open all of our gifts on Christmas eve and stockings on Christmas morning. But I’m looking forward to creating new traditions with my fiance!
This is an Oklahoma thing, but every year my family sings the BC Clark Anniversary Sale jingle! The jingle was created in 1956 and most Oklahoman’s know it by heart — but my family goes the extra mile, whips out the keyboard, and we all sing in unison. It’s a blast (and oh so catchy)!!
Over the past few years, I have relocated frequently for my job. Some years, I was unable to make it home for Christmas. My mom began the tradition of mailing me my favorite southern grocery store chain cake. Now, even though I’m back in the South and can run down the street to that grocery store, and even come home for Christmas, she still mails me a special Christmas package that includes the cake!
While most people stay home for dinner, we head out to a fancy dinner on Christmas Eve. It’s always fun to see the restaurants decked out for Christmas and they are never crowded. It’s always a great night!
I have 2 favorite holiday traditions now that I’m engaged. When we celebrate with my family, we always go to the movies on Christmas Day. You’d be surprised, but the theatres are actually quite busy on Christmas. And my second… when we’re with my fiance’s family…his mom’s delicious tamales that only come out during the holidays! They’re delish!
I have a huge family, I am one of 5 kids my mom is one of 10 kids. So when all of my cousins and I get together instead of getting gifts for everyone, we have a "Yankee Change". We try to bring the "best" or funniest gift for around $20. Then we pick a number to see who goes first, they open a gift, then the next person can either steal the first person’s gift or open a new gift, and so on. This can sometimes last for hours. Usually siblings stick together to try and steal from other familes, its always a really good time! But I usually end up with a "Chi-a-pet" or something stupid.
My dad used to tie our gifts to kite strings, then wind the bobbins all over the house. It would take hours to find the gifts, and they’d usually be within 20 feet of the starting point. I’ve started doing that with my friends now, and it’s so much fun!My other favorite? Making tons of cookies!
I celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve – opening presents and all. My father was a firefighter for many years and always had to work on Christmas Day. We’d all have a big dinner at my grandmother’s house, then go home and open presents that night. Even though my parents and I live in different cities now, we always still celebrate Christmas on the 24th. Christmas Eve has a magic feeling that Christmas day doesn’t seem to have. :)
Its a tradition that we no longer have since I have taken over doing the preparation of the Holiday meals. However, growing up it was tradition in my house that I was the "taster" for all the dishes. As my grandmother and mother prepared our holiday meal I was called in to taste the dishes as they were prepared to see if they were seasoned or flavored right. I think it started as a way to make me feel as though I was helping out in the kitchen (though I was too young to do any of the serious cooking), however, it helped me to learn all the recipes from my grandmother and mother, ones which I lovingly prepare for my family now.Hopefully when my fiance and I have children we can make them the special "tasters".
Ever since I was a little girl my mother has let us pick one gift to open on Christmas Eve. This tradition started because me and my sister would drive her crazy begging to open presents. Now, even though we are both in our 20’s, we still get to pick one gift to open. :) I’d be lying if I said it’s not as exciting today as it was then. Happy Holidays!
We would go outside and grab some clean snow, then swirl maple syrup over it. Tasty :) and suitable for us poor people. After that, we’d be all sticky while opening presents, but that just made it easier to get the wrapping paper all in one heap — stuck to our fingers.
We have so many – but one of my favorites is that on Christmas Eve my family opens just one present after the midnight candle light church service. We have done it every year since I was young, it’s a tradition that I can’t wait to do with my future family.
Every year after Christmas dinner and the family has exchanged gifts we all sit down and play games– Wheel of Fortune, Deal or no Deal DVDs are among the favorites. It is always extremely intense because everyone is so ridiculously competitive. It definitely makes for fun times every year though!
For the last fifteen years or so, our family tradition on Christmas Eve has been to have fondue for dinner. When I was in high school, we had a German exchange student and she told us this was one of her family traditions. It’s one of my favorite things about the season!
When my parents first moved to the U.S., they didn’t have enough money to spend on unnecessary items like a tree and ornaments. That first Christmas here, my mother and brother hand made ornaments. Thusly, they started a family tradition where each person gets to make an ornament out of whatever they like. They’re considered family heirlooms and every year, we pull them out and decorate the tree with them as well as store-bought ornaments. Each one has a story though and the ornaments have chronicled my family’s history here. My mother keeps them all and delicately wraps all of the ornaments up after each Christmas – some are just made with photographs or cutouts of Holiday books with toothpick glued onto them as frames. It’s a tradition I hope to continue when I start putting up my own family tree.
We have a tradition at our house called the "Night Night Fairy." She comes on Christmas Eve Eve (the 23rd, of course!) to bring my Dad, Mom, sister and me pajamas that we wear on Christmas Eve! Though my sister and I have graduated from college, we still come home every Christmas, and the Night Night Fairy still brings us beautiful PJs (we called them "night nights" growing up) for us to display Christmas Eve and Christmas morning when we open presents! The Night Night fairy even brings my fiance PJs!
Christmas eve cooking!!!! Lots and lots of stirring in the kitchen and weird enough, barbecue in the middle of the night. My siblings and I really love it. More than the gifts I think it’s the togetherness of the family that makes holiday worth celebrating.
My favorite holiday tradition is Christmas Eve with all of my dad’s family–all of us (there are 12 now that my sister and I are married or getting there!) pile into the living room at my grandparents’ house for good food and gifts. We have to wait till the sun goes down before we can open presents, and it’s the LONGEST day EVER (at least for the youngest ones!)
We always have my mom’s beef stew on Christmas Eve with homemade cornbread, and on Christmas day we make sure to watch either A Christmas Story or National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation so we get in some good laughs together.
Baking all our old-family recipes for holiday cookies and eating half the batter before they ever hit the oven. :)
For large gifts (coats, sporting equipment, off shapped gifts, etc.) my family starts with one written clue on the Christmas tree that then leads to another clue hidden somewhere in the house. The recepient follows the series of clues and discovers the present at it’s final destination.
When I left for college my mom wanted to make sure I stayed in the Christmas "spirit", so she would send me a "12 Days of Christmas" box filled with little gifts all wrapped with ribbons and bows. I would unwrap one present every day and it always helped me get through the last, tough weeks of the semester. After I graduated I was sure she’d stop…but she hasn’t yet! I still get a "12 Days of Christmas" box and I hope she continues to do it even after the wedding!
Gosh, this is the reason I love Christmas so much…everyone has something so special. We actually do two unique things…when my mom was a little girl her mom always bought pomegranite’s for the children so we do the same thing. My mom also still buys me an Advent calendar every year. I still get just as excited as I did to open it every day as I did when I was a little girl!
We always read the story of Jesus’s birth on Christmas Eve from Luke. It’s a wonderful way to remind us of what Christmas is all about.
We have a tradition at Christmas, every year, no matter how cold it is…all of my cousins, my brothers, my step dad and a few of my uncles and me get out and play basketball in my Ma-Maw’s front yard. Everyone is so competitive and is so much fun trash talking people you only get to see a few times a year. Its all in good fun and we have a blast.
I absolutely love baking and eating sweets, and so for the last few years I have started a new tradition in my house called "Cookie Bonanza." I spend December 23 in the kitchen baking 6-8 varieties of cookies, then package them nicely and give them as gifts under the Christmas Tree. To mix it up, I always try new recipes and everyone is always eager to tell me their favorites. It is really fulfilling to give my family gifts of something I made myself.
We exchange one present on Christmas Eve for a cliffhanger for Christmas morning!!
Usually on Christmas Eve, my 2 sisters and I will take the afternoon and shop for each other. It’s great because we don’t spend a lot of time together since we’ve been in college, and it gives us a bit of time to reconnect (and be sure that everyone will love their gifts!) Then it’s time for cookie decorating, eating the soup my mom makes annually, and opening about half of our gifts!
This is really silly but my sister and I used to dress up as elves on Christmas morning and put all our gifts to our family in a huge black garbage bag (our Santa sack!)…we’d try to get dressed really quietly at 5 am but would be giggling and loud, hahha. We’d go around and drag our family members of bed so we could all go down and sit by the tree and open gifts. Such a great memory.
My father is jewish and my mother is italian so every year we celebrate hanukkah and christmas. When I was growing up my mother and I would always sit down with coloring books and hot chocolate and watch "White Christmas" with BIng Crosby… (that is my favorite holiday movie) and color while we watched. And for Hanukka my dad would always take out the menorah and tell me the story of the "fesival of lights" and then after he was finished he would let me light the candles. After we lit the candles my brother and i would get m&m’s and play dreidel. Im not sure who ever won or if we just ate all the candy. :) I will try to keep these traditions alive when i have my own children because they certainly brought me wonderful memories!
My little brother and I, who is 13 years younger than I am have started our own tradition. For the past five years – we have been doing a "random gift exchange". The price limit is $15 – but most of the time it is things we find. Who ever is the "most random" wins bragging rights for a year! Some gifts have included – raw chicken feet in a cooler, a potato, the scariest looking 6 foot pinata you’ve ever seen, my fiance’s dad’s old ponytail ( he had cut it off, and kept it?? it was about 6 inches long!), a pair of run over reading glasses he found while riding his bike, and a homemade sandwich of worms and dirt. This has become one of the things I look forward to most at Christmas!
Each year on Christmas Eve my family and I have a junk food dinner. Lots of chips and dip and finger foods. I think it started when my sisters and I were younger and my parents were busy trying to get gifts wrapped and ready and they needed something easy and quick to feed us. It’s grown into a tradition that everyone looks forward to each year.
For about 20 years, I coordinated a Christmas Eve dinner (with singing Christmas carols and everything) with my immediate family and family members that live next door to my parents. In the most recent years, I have cooked the entire meal myself. Since I’ve been around, we have had Christmas breakfast next door at my aunt’s house.
On Christmas Eve we always go to the Christmas Eve Lovefeast service at our church. And we alway sit in the same pew, every year. Afterwards, we all meet up at my parents house and open one present. Saving the rest for Christmas day.
One of my favorite traditions is going to my grandparents’ house the Sunday before Christmas. Because my family is huge, everyone draws one name and we all exchange gifts after a great lunch of homemade biscuits, eggs, grits, and cubed steak. (My Grandmother makes the best biscuits!) We have been doing this since I was little and I look forward to it each year. Since then, my family has grown a lot and I am more grateful each year for the time we have together. .
My family has a few holiday traditions, but my favorite is that we gather around and read the children’s story "why christmas trees aren’t perfect" which is a lovely story about imperfections and grace and the christmas season. My fiance’s mom and dad also have great holiday traditions… one is that they always have a soup supper on Christmas eve. This came about since their first Christmas they wanted to have a traditional meal together but knew when they first got married that some years might be financially leaner that others. With soup, they can jazz it up or keep in simple. Anyway, it reminds them of the importance of family tradition not necessarily tradition for tradition’s sake.
Christmas night we always load the whole family up in the largest car available and drive around to see all the local Christmas lights. We’re packed in a car like sardines….but we laugh and have a great time.
My favorite tradition is the tree. Every time I see mine lit up, I feel like a little kid again – where you’re about to have the best day ever. I don’t think I will ever outgrow that feeling, and I treasure the fact that a simple Christmas tree can do that.
We’re an interfaith family, and to recognize both Christian and Jewish traditions, we celebrate Hannukah first, which means we don’t decorate the tree (usually) until Christimas Eve! It can be a little hectic, but that way we celebrate both holidays fully.
Growing up, we were taught to ask permission for things like candy and other treats. The one time this rule was lifted was on Christmas Day, when we could eat as much candy as we wanted as long as we could eat Christmas dinner. Looking back, my parents just didn’t want to be pestered every five minutes for more candy canes, but back then, it seemed like the biggest holiday treat ever!!
I don’t live near my family. They all live at least 1000 miles away. Every year, I send an ornament that reminds me of them to each family member. I also call each family member first thing in the morning Christmas day and listen to them open their presents from me. It’s as close as I can get to spending the holidays with them sometimes!
This probably isn’t an original, but it is our favorite tradition– opening one package up each on Christmas Eve containing new jammies for us all. It’s fun snuggling down for the night in them and then waking up the next morning to start the day!
Now that we are "grown up" my sister and I do not spend the night at my parents on Christmas Eve, but we still come over for brunch in the morning. That time around the table with just our immediate family (and now spouses) is the best.
Since my sister and I have been old enough to drink we choose a Christmas drink – this year is Harvey Wallbanger and last year was Amaretto Sours :) This year FH, my sister and I are starting a new tradition by doing stocking for my parents since they still do stockings for us :)P.S. I just want to add that I LOVE that bird invitation!
While it started out by accident, it is now become tradition — I fall asleep each Christmas Eve to "A Christmas Story" playing on television.
Despite being in our late twenties and early thirties, my two sisters and I still all spend the night at my parents house on Christmas Eve , stay up as late as possible watching whatever Christmas movie is on television, and get up at the crack of dawn to race down the stairs to get Christmas started! Whoever gets up first wakes the others up!
Instead of getting each other presents, my best friend since pre-school and I "adopt" a deserving child from my second grade teacher’s class. It’s so much fun shopping for little kids – especially for someone who has so little. We’ve been doing this since high school and have so much fun shopping together, wrapping the presents, and dropping the presents off from their Secret Santa.
so many! but, we always read polar express on christmas eve and my dad has to do all of the voices. then, we open half the presents and then eat a big breakfast of egg souffle and cinnamon buns–that’s in. then we open the rest, stay in our PJs all day long and watch national lampoons christmas vacation (the best!) and our new movies!!!
Last year, my fiancee told me that we should exchange one gift on Christmas eve. I thought I was getting a Christmas ornament, but he proposed! We decided to exchange one gift each on Christmas eve ever year in honor of our engagement. Its a nice time for us to quietly escape from crazy family events for a few minutes!
My dad buys my sisters and I each a "guess gift". Starting the week before Christmas, we get a hint a day. If we guess the gift, we get to open it early! The older we get…the more random the gifts are!! It’s a fun little tradition we’ve always done since I can remember. ;)
We have the tradition of on Christmas Eve we tell the story of Jesus’ birth to all the children in the family and on Christmas Day after dinner everyone volunteers at the local shelter to give out coats and toys to needy children.
A unique Christmas tradition I have with my family is gathering in front of the tree on Christmas morning and videotaping the whole event of opening gifts and capturing the moments of surprise and excitement! I absolutely LOVE going back and watching old tapes from when we were little and my parents look so young. It’s so cool to remember how much I loved certain gifts and how much they meant to me, and to see how happy my family is on the whole day. It is a great way to be grateful for everything we have and all we have gone through together as a family. I’m excited to get married and someday continue the same tradition for years to come!
My brothers and I would always open our stockings first and eat our Reese’s Christmas trees for breakfast. It definitely isn’t the most healthy meal, but I love our delicious tradition!!
Our family tradition- listening to Aaron Neville Christmas all day while watching old home movies!
Every year on the night before Christmas we all get to pick out one present to unwrap. It’s so great because everyone puts a lot of strategy into the one they pick. There’s a lot of shaking gifts on this night. I personally always try to pick one that I think we can share and enjoy that evening. Coffee table books and games are always fun. This year I opened up fix a flat, a gift from my mom! Maybe better luck next year!!
Our Christmas tradition is a big pot of yummy homemade veggie soup made by my fireman husband. The kids are all grown now, but no subsitututions are accepted.
Ever since I left for college, my mother and I call each other up and light our hanukkah candles together on the phone at the exact same time. We are thinking of upgrading to webcam next year.
We celebrate advent up big, candles and singing every night and focus on the anticipation of Christmas. Christmas is 12 days of food and family and fun, then we have a big Epiphany feast with King Cake and more singing.
My family always makes a traditional scandinavian bread with raisins on Christmas Eve. My mom and I start making the bread in the afternoon, and cook it on the stove in the evening. It doesn’t feel like Christmas without it!
My favorite holiday tradition is called "Mavis cake." Mavis is a friend of my mom’s, and she always made us a wonderful three layer Italian cream cake the week of Christmas. Mavis hasn’t been able to make it the last two years, so I am now the official "Mavis cake" baker for the family! I love to make it and think of friendship and family as I’m doing it.
Instead of presents, my fiance and I place little love notes or hand-made coupons (usually for footrubs) in a small mailbox ornament. Once our christmas tree is up and the ornaments hung, we just keep sneaking notes in there until we take the tree down. That way there is always a little surprise there when you walk by. What makes it even more special is that I have had that ornament in my family since I was a little kid and my mom gifted it to us when my fiance and I moved in together.
Every kid in our family hs a different theme (I recieve Mice, my brother santa clauses, my older brother bears) and we recieve a different oranament in that theme every year on Chirstmas Eve to put on the tree. Now that I am older and getting married it is nice to have almost 30 unique ornaments each with a story for my own tree.
When I was growing up, my mom worked at the Department of Social Services. It took me until I was much older to really realize everything she did, but, I always knew it was important. On the days leading up to Christmas, my mom and I would collect gifts from church groups, families, and community organizations whom my mother had solicited to "adopt" a family for Christmas. These families had often taken on 1 or more foster children and had several other kids of their own. Barely scrapping by beforehand, the addition of foster children placed a tremendous financial strain on the family, especially at Christmas. Mom and I would take these gifts and then wrap them and label them (no easy task!). On Christmas Eve, my mom and I would drive around and deliver "Santa" gifts to these families. I will never forget the looks on their faces and the joy in their smiles as they humbly received the gifts that another family, a family of strangers, had sacrificed for and lovingly bought them. Each year I looked forward to doing this with my mom. Even though it was often stressful and extremely time consuming, my mother never stopped until she knew she had gifts for everyone she possibly could – even buying them herself at times. She really taught me what Christmas was all about!!
Movies! Holiday movies are my favorite. Each season we kick it off right after Thanksgiving by watching Home Alone (my fav) and Home Alone II (my fiance’s fav). Next comes Charlie Brown’s Christmas about a week before Christmas. Most importantly is A Christmas Story, which shows all day long on TBS on Christmas day. Every single Christmas for as long as I can remember this movie has been on repeat in our living room on Christmas day, so much so that for the longest time I didn’t realize there was a beginning, middle, or end to the movie because we just watched it on repeat! I was so surprised the first time I met someone who had never seen it, as to me it is in the very definition of Christmas. To this Christmas, my mom had to ask my 38-year old brother- with his new baby in his arms- to turn it down while we unwrapped presents. And I’ve already promised my new nephew a pink bunny suit when he’s ten years old!! A Christmas Story, on repeat on Christmas day, is my absolute favorite holiday tradition.
One of our family’s favorite traditions is pizza on Christmas Eve. The year after my parents got married, she and my father, who is in the military, went home for the holidays. They went out to dinner on Christmas Eave at a little neighborhood pizzeria with my grandparents and it started snowing – the first snow of the year. It ended up being the last Christmas for my grandmother, since she was diagnosed with breast cancer the following January. That Christmas Eve though was so magical, that remembering my grandmother and eating pizza became a part of our Christmas Eve tradition.
Since I was little, my mom always had Milk Cactus Trees in the house and every Christmas we decorated the 6 foot or so cactuses up like christmas trees. My mom’s famous words have always been "If you can’t afford the real stuff, make best of what you got." Now I’m 25 and seeing those Christmas cactuses make me remember a much simpler time. i don’t miss the thorns in my fingers, but I have to say, sometimes I miss that dang tree.
When I was young, we did not hang stockings in our very large family of 8 children. We decorated the tree on Christmas Eve and then opened one package each Christmas morning from Santa. On the Feast of the Epiphany, or Three Kings’ Day, we’d leave our shoes out by our bedsides and small gifts representing the gold, frankincense, and myrhh would appear…supposedly dropped by the three kings as they made their way to the Infant Jesus’s manger. This event on January 6 would close our Christmas season. It was so fun to wonder throughout those "12 days of Christmas" that I carried on that tradition with my own children.