New Holiday Traditions

Posted December 21st, 2009 by kerri and filed in small house living
Tags:
9 Comments

omc-sdctreeWhen we moved to The Little House we needed to estab­lish some new tra­di­tions on birth­days and holidays.

One thing we had always wanted to do was go to Branson, Missouri dur­ing the Christmas sea­son. The Travel Channel calls Branson one of the most “Christmassy Places on Earth,” and I agree, that it’s hard not to get into the spirit when you’re there. Christmas is lit­er­ally every­where. We live only a lit­tle over an hour away now and we started mak­ing Branson a hol­i­day tra­di­tion. It’s a fun way to get away from every­day life at Campbell Town for a day or even a week­end. This new tra­di­tion is also a great way to com­bine the new with the old — we always go to one of my favorite restau­rants, Red Lobster, for my birth­day din­ner while there — a tra­di­tion we’ve had since my 16th birthday.

The first year we lived here we went for the day, eat­ing break­fast and shop­ping at the Branson Landing until it was time for my fish fix. The Branson Landing is an out­door mall set up to look like Main Street in a small town. It has quite a few shops and eater­ies and is on the banks of Lake Taneycomo. Of course, we don’t need more stuff, but I always find it fun to look and for those few Christmas gifts we do need to find, this is a fun place to shop.

Last year, we made a week­end of it, stay­ing at the fab­u­lous Hilton Convention Center, which is near down­town and the Branson Landing. We also vis­ited Silver Dollar City, where the 19th cen­tury theme park is dec­o­rated for a Victorian hol­i­day. It also has a mag­nif­i­cent 5-story Christmas tree in the cen­ter of the park and a Christmas parade each evening.

This place holds a lot of mem­o­ries for us too. Not only did my par­ents vaca­tion here and make the theme park part of our adven­ture when I was a child, Dale and I used to visit Branson for a week each year before we built The Little House. We would rent a cabin on Table Rock Lake and some­times made vis­its to Silver Dollar City. There might be big­ger and bet­ter roller coast­ers now, but “Fire in the Hole,” a com­par­a­tively tame coaster in an “aban­doned mine” is still my favorite!

Of course, Christmas shop­ping and my seafood feast was on the agenda last year too.

This year, our new tra­di­tion was in ques­tion. It has been a chal­leng­ing year here and we just didn’t think we would be mak­ing the trip, but thanks to sell­ing some stuff we no longer need, we man­aged to get in an after­noon in Branson on Saturday, and I even got my annual fish fix!

By the time we had fin­ished walk­ing the entire length of Branson Landing, tak­ing in the lights and get­ting hit with the brisk pre-winter wind that was blow­ing on Saturday night, we were ready to head home to our own Christmas lights at Campbell Town. With our new tra­di­tional visit to Branson, I’m now all set for Christmas!

How have your hol­i­day tra­di­tions changed over the years? Is there a spe­cial place that makes the hol­i­day sea­son for you?

Keri – You won the draw­ing this morn­ing for a bag of Wellness pet food and a bag of treats! Please email me at fivecoat@​ozarkmountains.​com with your address and pref­er­ence of dog or cat food! Thanks to all who shared their pet sto­ries and entered the contest!

9 Responses to “New Holiday Traditions”

  1. Kim says:
    December 23, 2009 at 2:00 am

    I grew up vis­it­ing Branson with my grand­mother, who loved the old coun­try shows (the Baldknobbers, etc) and was game to take us to water slides and minigolf as well. Living just half an hour from there now, we bought SDC sea­son tick­ets this year and intro­duced my kids (and her cousins) to the joys of that theme park. We're all big fans.

    As for fam­ily tra­di­tions, we're still build­ing ours, and I'm always on the look­out for new ideas! This year we'll be giv­ing the kids a nativ­ity set and act­ing out the Christmas story with it… some­thing I hope to repeat yearly.

    • kerri says:
      December 23, 2009 at 9:35 am

      Don't you just love "Fire in the Hole," Kim! :)
      What won­der­ful mem­o­ries you're mak­ing with your chil­dren. Those are so impor­tant, as I doc­u­ment in today's post.

  2. Grant Wagner says:
    December 21, 2009 at 12:33 pm

    While not strictly chris­mas, it's funny you should men­tion Branson. When I was in my late 0's and pre teens, I lived in the very "mod­ern and hip" city of Virgina Beach. I had shop­ping malls and con­crete and board­walks and sand, and I loved it. About that time, my grand­par­ents retired, descided to start tur­ing the coun­try in an RV, and made Branson their sum­mer home base, so many sum­mers were full of Silver Dollar City, bor­ing RV parks with noth­ing really to do, and shows of old coun­try stars.

    I laugh about it now, and that area does have a spe­cial place in my heart, but I would always remem­ber it as the place where "Has been coun­try coun­try start go to fade away."

    • Kerri says:
      December 21, 2009 at 3:33 pm

      That IS funny, Grant. If you haven't been to Branson in some time, you wouldn't rec­og­nize it. For me, those days back in the 60s and 70s were full of antique and craft shop­ping trips, along with Silver Dollar City. We didn't see the shows there as the shows usu­ally came to us as these coun­try bands would tour all over Kansas and Missouri dur­ing the off sea­son, sell­ing out high school audi­to­ri­ums and we always saw them in our own town. When Brason devel­oped into a Vegas style strip in the 80s and 90s, we missed the old small town quaint­ness of it all. When Dale and I vaca­tioned there as adults, we stayed on the lake far away from the strip and crowds. These days, though, I'm used to the new feel and look for­ward to our vis­its there. This is the clos­est town where we can get food from some of the name chains and if we need some­thing such as new walk­ing or hik­ing shoes. We've also been to the Titanic Museum and the only show I hope to see are the rock n roll impersonators!

  3. Bj says:
    December 21, 2009 at 11:26 am

    I grew up in a mil­i­tary fam­ily, and as such had many a Christmas in loca­tions all over this world. One of the tra­di­tions was, the pink pep­per­mint lozenges…don't know how, or where, but they were always in our stock­ings come Christmas morn­ing, no mat­ter where in the world we were. I have those lozenges, though they are becom­ing almost impos­si­ble to find, even for this year.
    In col­lege, I lived on very lit­tle, so many of the tra­di­tions I grew up with-putting the big tree up after the foot­ball game on Thanksgiving Day, got changed by neces­sity. In an ear­lier post­ing, I men­tioned that in my small motorhome (aka old woman's dorm­room), my tree became a paint­ing or draw­ing of a Christmas tree pinned up on the wall. THat was all I could afford, or had room for!
    I have also begun a Christmas tra­di­tion to include eat­ing a Peanut Butter Sandwich! LOL.…I will have the turkey this year with all the fix­ings, but that Peanut Butter Sandwich sure tasted good fresh­man year when it was all I had in the pantry with five weeks til the next bit of stu­dent finan­cial aid arrived!
    I intend to make Branson a Christmas tra­di­tion once I have moved up there. Actually this was my intent before I saw Kerri's post­ing, but now even more, since I love the descrip­tions she gave and can't wait to see it for myself!
    One tra­di­tion that has been born out of my col­lege days, is I go to the dorms on Christmas day look­ing for those odd stu­dents who did not get invited because no one knew they were left there. These include inter­na­tional stu­dents, who are on a stu­dent visa, and can­not often afford to travel home, and most times do not have enough money to travel around the States either! This can also include non tra­di­tional stu­dents (older folk, like myself) who have returned to col­lege late in life, and every­body just assumes they have fam­ily here. My pro­fes­sors were good to me and oth­ers, invit­ing me into their homes the last two years of my col­lege years for every hol­i­day!
    Merry Christmas to all! May this sea­son be joy­ous as we remem­ber the true mean­ing of Christmas!

    • Kerri says:
      December 21, 2009 at 3:26 pm

      I think you will love Branson, BJ. Your post reminded me of my mom's tra­di­tion of always giv­ing us a box of cherry choco­lates for Christmas — Russell Stovers — if my hus­band can find them, he con­tin­ues the tra­di­tion for me and marks them from "Mom." :)

      • Bj says:
        December 21, 2009 at 3:49 pm

        *smiles*.…yes, many a box of RS can­dies and Whitiers has been found in stock­ings too! God bless your hus­band for con­tin­u­ing that tradition!

  4. kerri says:
    December 21, 2009 at 9:20 am

    That sounds won­der­ful, David! I agree that hav­ing bi-cultural tra­di­tions is won­der­ful. I had this a lit­tle grow­ing up, as my fam­ily always cel­e­brated Christmas the 24th, fol­low­ing my mother's pater­nal German her­itage. The 25th was for play­ing with new toys for the chil­dren and relax­ing for the adults.
    I will post a lit­tle of our new bi-cultural tra­di­tions on Friday.

  5. David N. says:
    December 21, 2009 at 9:15 am

    I live now in Ukraine, where tra­di­tions are con­sid­er­ably dif­fer­ent. The trees and orna­ments and such are much the same, but they revolve around New Year's and not Christmas. Christmas here is in the Orthodox tra­di­tion in early January, and is a quiet, reli­gious hol­i­day. Our friends here, though, come to din­ner at our home on the 25th to cel­e­brate the "American Christmas" in my honor–and it is then, too, that we exchange gifts. Thus, I have two Christmases–one of which cel­e­brates only the orig­i­nal rea­son for the hol­i­day.
    Oh, yes–there is both St. Nicholas, who is rec­og­nized at a feast day on the first Saturday of December, and also two fig­ures sim­i­lar to our Santa Clause–one Grandfather Frost and a female, his daugh­ter I believe, called the Snow Maiden.
    The beauty of a bicul­tural fam­ily is that we blend tra­di­tions and are able to cel­e­brate both.