My Favorite Christmas Traditions

*You can always find past the rEAl dEAl newsletters and subscribe to new ones on Bulletin*

Merry Christmas! I hope that you’re staying safe and that you’re taking the time to spend the holiday with your family, friends, and loved ones.

Christmas is unfortunately going to be a little bit different for me this year as I continue to work FOX's new Christmas Day game, but I’m excited to spend the day with my work family as we try and make the day special for us and everyone who’s watching.

I usually spend most Christmases with my family. As much as I worry for them, they are still so adamant about putting up Christmas lights. I don’t love having my dad up that high still, but they always look so good and it makes me happy that the lights bring my family so much joy. My mom is a retired art teacher and is so creative! She’s so fabulous at decorating the entire house and makes an insane bow for the top of the tree every year. I’ve tried doing it for my tree at home, but it never comes close!

This may have been just a Florida thing, but growing up, one of my favorite Christmas Eve traditions was when we would fill paper bags with sand and a candle and light up our entire sidewalk. We would walk around the entire neighborhood to look at the lights together, it looked so magical! My mom also usually buys us something matching we can all wear together. One year it was giant Christmas light necklaces, one year it was giant antlers. We love to walk around wearing them together—like yeah, we’re that family! Haha!

Christmas Day my parents always go above and beyond—even now that I’m still in my 40s! One of our favorite traditions is filling our Christmas stockings. We always try to fill ours with silly things that we find at CVS. I got my dad Pepto Bismol for his stomach, I’m sure there are going to be hand sanitizers and face masks in each of ours this year. The rest of the day is usually pretty lazy for us—we really like to spread out gift opening to an all-day affair. Sometimes we’ll take a break to eat brunch or watch a movie and forget that we still have gifts to open—haha! But maybe that’s just us!

My parents have this super cute present tradition where they say their gifts are from different famous couples. For example, my mom will title her gift “To Fred, From Wilma.” For me they like to get a little more creative, one of my gifts once said “To Erin, from Big Papi or Derek Jeter,” haha! It’s usually people that I’ve interviewed which is super sweet.

My family and I LOVE National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and A Christmas Story and try to watch them every year. The Christmas season is also always soundtracked by Perry Como’s Christmas album—my mom’s favorite—and sometimes my sister and I’s drunken Celine Dion sing-along. She’s just so good, we can’t help ourselves!

Last year was the first Christmas that I had to miss because of COVID which was really sad, but we made the most of it. This year I’m thankful to be celebrating together on Christmas Eve before I have to leave for work and then I’ll thankfully be able to spend the 26th and 27th celebrating our favorite traditions for the first time in a while.

What are some of your favorite Christmas traditions? Do you have any favorite Christmas movies you watch every year? Let me know in the comments, I would love to hear them!

Happy Holidays and stay safe and healthy,

Erin