Our Family Christmas
Can you believe it’s the holidays?
We have finally reached that time of year, where we can take the opportunity to share our gratitude towards everyone who has helped us conquer 2020. Shout out to our family and friends that have made this year so memorable!
We can all agree that this year has felt a little unusual and difficult for all of us. Looking back on the entire year itself, there were some difficult obstacles along the way, but getting through those moments led to great accomplishment. Congrats to everyone who made it through this year, you should feel extremely proud!
As we reach the end of this year and into the holidays, we should always remind ourselves what this time truly means. To us, the holidays is all about the hope and joy this season brings as we enjoy spending some quality time with the people, we truly love the most.
We are sure that everyone has their unique personalized holiday traditions that they thoroughly enjoy partaking in doing with their family members. These traditions may be related to Christmas shopping, watching Christmas movies, to even making a special Christmas dinner for the whole family. Yes, these are some of our family traditions but there is so much more to do this holiday season!
Throughout this post, we are going to share some of our most favourite holiday traditions that we enjoy doing with our family!
Christmas Baking
With our Mom, we thoroughly enjoy baking a wide variety of cookies together! For years we always love to help out with trying out new recipes as well as putting our own special touch on each recipe. This definitely made baking a little each special for us!
For us, baking is more than just creating and eating the homemade cookies but being able to make so many memories in the kitchen makes the experiences that much more memorable. It is honestly so difficult to say what our favourite cookie to bake during the Christmas season, but since our Mom comes from a Greek heritage, we enjoy making a variety of Greek cookies. The one cookie that we have recently baked and was quite challenging was the “melomakarona”. Yes, we know it is quite a long word and is kind of difficult to pronounce, but these cookies are totally worth the challenge!
The melomakarona are considered to be one of the most popular cookies to bake during the Christmas and New Year’s season all around Greece. “Melo” in English comes from the ancient word “meli” which means “honey”. Whereas the second part of the word, “makarona” originates from the ancient word “makaria” which means “blessed”.
These cookies are so delicious as they are baked with a variety of ingredients that are truly perfect together! Honey, nutmeg, cloves, oranges and vanilla extract are just a few of the key ingredients. But the absolute best part of making these cookies is being able to soak them in a cinnamon and honey syrup. So Yummy! Once the cookies are garnished with some fresh walnuts, they are ready to be eaten and shared. :)
2. Winter Nature Walks
Another activity we enjoy doing with our family during the holidays is going for winter walks around our neighbourhood as well as around other scenic areas of Ontario. Honestly, it is such a relieving activity to do especially as some of us may spend some more time indoors. But, actually being inside has reminded us that taking a break to go outside for some fresh air with the family is the best way to unwind.
However, not being huge fans of the cold weather, makes it sometimes a little difficult to feel motivated about going outside in the winter. The feeling cold is not always enjoyable, so we always make sure we are dressed for the cold Canadian weather!
The recent walk we have been on had been a beautiful sunny day, it had just lightly snowed and there was barley anyone around. We could see in a short distance away, some ducks and geese lounging on the ice-covered stream, enjoying the hot beaming sun coming down.
Our short family walk became a photography session as some of the ducks and geese noticed us taking some pictures. They were making eye contact with us the entire time, and even when decided to proceed with our walk, they started to follow us! It was amazing to witness how much attention these geese and ducks wanted given that they were not afraid of us getting close to their “hangout spot”.
3. Playing Christmas Carols on the Piano
We both started playing the piano at a young age and ever since we have continued to build up a repertoire of songs to play and share with our family. Of course, during Christmas time, piano playing becomes even more exciting as we get the chance to learn and practice new Christmas songs just in time for our family gatherings.
We are sure that some of us have favourite Christmas carol, but we don’t really have a favourite to play on the piano as each song that we learn brings about a unique vibe. For an instance, playing rocking around the Christmas tree makes us feel very festive and happy as we play this song when we decorate our Christmas tree.
Now that we have shared a few of our personal favourite family traditions we hope you take the time this Christmas season to accomplish something with your family too. Maybe this year you and your family may start a new Christmas Tradition. No matter how short-lived the holidays are, there is always time to gather with the family and do something memorable that you will remember for future Christmas’ to come!
Happy Holidays everyone and we wish all the best in the upcoming new year!
