Traditions-it's about the food [mostly]

As usual I'm a bit late to the party.  Carole has had some great Think Write Thursday topics, so I think it's about time I did at least one post.  Favorite traditions.

Growing up the holidays never were about making the time special for us [my brother and I].  My parents split up when I was very young [4 years old], and I only have a few Christmas photos. Christmas break usually meant extended with my dad and brother.  I can't recall a single "thing" we did together except for when we visited my dad's parents, usually Christmas Day.  I didn't get to help decorate the tree because my older step-sister was "so much better at it", but I was sure good at taking it down- go figure.   I went to live with my dad and stepmother when I was about 10, and didn't see my mother for probably about 3 or so years.  I don't recall baking cookies for friends or neighbors, special programs at church, listening to Christmas music, and I don't think we even sent out cards.  We did visit with my dad's family, he had 3 sisters and 1 brother, so we'd all gather at my grandmother's house for a big dinner and a gift exchange.  It was a lot of fun seeing my cousins and the food was always good.  Having traditions is very important to me, and have come to include the baking of cookies [one year I made 17 different kinds] and sending out cards.  I've always cooked a big "English" dinner Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day included potato sausage and scrambled eggs for breakfast, and snacks/leftovers for the rest of the day, and opening gifts.  I'm still working on traditions that are more mine; the boys were rarely on board with anything I wanted to do, and honestly, it's not near as much fun doing everything solo.  This year I'm going to be adventurous and we're having a Feast of Seven Fishes for Christmas Eve-we'll start with "brunch" at my Mom's and work our way through some dishes I found on-line today. I'm following the advise I found to keep the dishes simple and small.  We'll see how it goes, and I'm hoping Andrew will put his culinary skills to use so we can pull this off!  We're sticking with the potato sausage and scrambled eggs, but Christmas Day dinner will be Beef Wellington [with a mushroom duxelles instead of a  pate.  My list includes a lot of ingredients, so now I've got to come up with a shopping list and a timeline for making all this happen.  One tradition that I haven't done in a while is riding around town looking at Christmas lights.  Now that we are in a different part of Atlanta, I'm hoping to do that this week with Sophie.  She loves to be in the car and I really love all the lights-so magical.  Maybe I'll get myself in gear and blog about this adventure-we'll see!