A typical Christmas Eve at the Deming house is actually our personal Christmas Day in the sense that we do all our traditions and celebrations on the 24th, so that we can spend the 25th with our extended family. We have many special traditions that carry over year after year, with a specific order to the day. So that you can understand some of what we did and didn't do on the RV (with necessary adaptations to the small space), here's what a normal D-Team Christmas Eve Day looks like:
Wake up and chill in rooms until parents call everybody downstairs. This is necessary because on the evening of the 23rd, after all kids are in beds, stockings are hidden in preparation for Christmas Eve Day.
Participate in the annual Deming Stocking hunt, photos under the tree, and then the unveiling of contents. (At home, we all have matching embroidered stockings that picture the nativity...Unfortunately, they were too big and heavy to bring with us.)
Hang out in our bedrooms again while our parents hide all our gifts throughout the house (although we usually hang out in the big boys' room together as a group so we can chat and speculate about gift locations).
Hunt for gifts (each of us has our own special wrapping paper that we find a scrap of in our stockings so we know what we're looking for) while parents lounge on the couch and laugh. Every kid gets three gifts, and if we find someone else's...mum's the word. Woe to the last person hunting while everyone else looks on and teases. Gifts are brought to a central location in the living room and then opened.
Four big kids exchange secret sibling gifts (having drawn names from a hat over Thsnkgiving weekend) and present the parents with their gifts.
Eat a big brunch, usually including cinnamon rolls, bacon, sausage, and orange juice.
Enjoy family time, play games, and prepare for the annual, long-awaited fondue dinner.
Attend our church's Christmas service and fellowship with friends
Eat the most anticipated meal of the year...consisting of an oil fondue and a cheese fondue. There is no better meal than wonderfully-marinated steak and chicken, shrimp (which I personally think is absolutely disgusting but others do not, LOL) and veggies cooked on skewers in oil and then dipped in cheese. Totally worth the amount of work and cleanup involved in this meal. Oh yeah, can't forget the delicious sparkling juice either.
Sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and eat cake.
Dad reads the final chapter of our yearly advent storybook series and Nativity doorbook, both of which we've been reading aloud for almost two decades now. They are so incredible and worth owning that I'm going to link them at the bottom of this post. Mom actually purchased a copy of the entire Advent Adventure series and an Advent Doorbook for each one of us kids to own when we begin our own families. We love this nightly advent reading together tradition so much that when the big boys began working 2nd shift full-time jobs in the school district a couple of years ago, they scheduled their supper break such that they could tune in with the rest of us over Zoom. No matter how many times we hear these books, they never get old. Definitely check them out and consider starting your own family reading tradition!
Go to bed somewhat early in preparation for a long drive to our Aunt's the next morning for the annual family get-together. For many years, we all slept together under the Christmas tree, parents included, until the big boys decided they prefer their warm beds.
That is the very specific order of our Christmas Eve celebrations every year, along with the various traditions unique to our family. The only thing that might change year to year is number 8 & 9, which sometimes reverse order depending on the time of the Christmas service and whether certain family members have to be to church early for worship team or choir. Other than that, we stick pretty rigidly to this order of celebration, and we love it! This year obviously ended up having to look different... but we kept several of our traditions - just scaled down to RV size.
We woke up early and piled all the gifts on the small table around the even smaller Christmas tree. Then the four of us young people took the little boys and pups for a walk down the beach while the parents stuffed stockings and arranged gifts so Mom could take pictures of her much-hoped-for Christmas on the beach. Once we were allowed back into the RV, there were more pictures to be taken before we could open stockings and unwrap gifts. (No hiding of anything this year, unfortunately.)
For lunch, we had a good ol' cheese fondue with dippers that included chips, honey-ham chunks, bread hunks, summer sausages, green apples, mushrooms (blech) green and black olives, broccoli and cauliflower, peppers and carrots, onions, pretzels, and best of all - PICKLES!!!! To top it all off, we had four different flavored sparkling waters - granted they were room temperature this year since the bottles are too tall for our little RV fridge :)
After fondue, Dominic fed some scraps to the seagulls. We discovered that if you feed one gull, he calls up all his friends and soon you have an entire flock circling overhead (more on that in the upcoming Christmas Day post). While Dominic brazenly stood beneath the circling birds unprotected, Dad - sitting under the awning and complaining that someone was going to get pooped on, received an unwanted Christmas present.
After lunch cleanup, it was playtime...in the water! It was insane to be getting soaked in the waves, digging in the sand, and basking in the sun at Christmas! I've been a lifelong Minnesotan and have only experienced one warm weather Christmas when I was 3 1/2 and we were in Guatemala to bring Maleah home. Obviously my memory doesn't reach back quite that far, so this year has been a new experience for me. I'm so used to snow, hot chocolate, heavy coats, and cold fingers... It has been awesome to enjoy something other than that for once. :)
We are so grateful that we were able to stream our wonderful future Waverly, Iowa church's Christmas service...although bummed that our WiFi connection wasn't strong enough to allow us to use our computer. A little hard for eight people to see a small phone screen, LOL. However, it was still a joy to be able to hear the service and sing and worship alongside our future church family.
Mom's dream has been to have a fire on the beach for Christmas Eve, so we tried... Unfortunately, the wet wood wouldn't light. Instead, we burnt scrap paper, Christmas wrapping paper, completed home school worksheets, paper plates, and other such 'burnables' for about an hour, until we ran out. Mom still considered it a campfire on the beach, so we can check that box. (Ironically, the wood finally lit...at about 3:00am. Ugh)
After our fire-not-fire on the beach, we read our advent books and then sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. I know it's hard to tell, but the cake says "Happy Birthday, Jesus". (First time we've had a cookie cake for Christmas though, LOL). Stay tuned through the end of the video to hear Maleah's amusing statement in response to a melting candle :)
Thus ended a lovely Christmas Eve at Port Aransas beach on Mustang Island, Texas. We had a wonderful time celebrating the birth of our Savior in such peaceful and beautiful surroundings. And the fun was just beginning!
Until next time, God bless!
The Advent Adventure Series:
The Advent Book:
Sounds like a lot of fun! How was the temperature on the beach?