Trendy Not Spendy

Christmas Eve is my absolute favorite holiday of the year. I’m so excited to share with you our Christmas Eve traditions. We’ve been doing Christmas Eve at my parents house for the past 25 years. Every Eve is exactly the same and every year I’m so excited for when December 24th finally arrives.

We break our Christmas Eve down into two parts. We have my Mom’s side of the family comes over to our house at 2pm and then my Dad’s side of the family comes at 6pm. My parents are still married, but we split the holiday up so we can spend the day with both sides of the family.

My Mom’s side arrives at our house at 2pm and I always get SO excited to see my cousins. On my Mom’s side of the family I have six first cousins and we’re all pretty close in age and are great friends. I’m kinda of obsessed with them. Every cousin is so unique and all very special to me. I can sit around with them for hours in any situation and have the best time. Fun fact…my sister and I are the only brunettes out of the eight first cousins in total. Yup, they are all on my Mom’s side and super white. Haha, seriously though blonde and light skin. You wouldn’t even know we’re cousins.

For Christmas Eve we make my Nani’s famous Posole. It’s so funny we grew up hating it and she’d always make us white spaghetti, but over the years we finally learned to love it. It sounds kinda odd that we eat soup for Christmas Eve, but we LOVE IT! My Mom makes two huge pots of verde posole and empanadas.

My Mom’s side of the family finally decided the easiest way to share gifts with so many people is just to do a Secret Santa. For the past couple years we’ve done a Secret Santa and it is so much fun. After opening gifts we take our traditional family photo and then close out the first family shift with a good old fashion round of Catch Phrase.

Come 6pm we swap out the fams and my Dad’s side comes storming through. Holy hell this side is wild. We have a ton of Aunties, Ninis, and Ninos that come over for dinner. I then proceed to fill up on my second bowl of posole and catch up with the family. After dinner is MY FAVORITE time of all….time for Christmas Carols! Well not carols, but carol. Every year we sing The Twelve Days of Christmas. Everyone plays a special part in this song. My god mother is always first with a partridge in a pear tree, my Mom is two turtle doves, I’m five gold rings (duh!), and my sister is seven swans a swimming.

I’ve been five gold rings and for as long as I can remember I’ve sung my part as absurdly dramatic as possible. I stretch out the lyrics and belch as loud as I can. I honestly think people look forward to how dramatic I get. Shit, I hope so. It’s my favorite part of the evening and my favorite holiday tradition. After the traditional version of Twelve Days of Christmas we then do the dirt nasty version. I bet you’re wondering what “dirt nasty” version even means.

The dirt nasty version is just us sticking with our same numbers and then making up our own dirty, inappropriate, and funny versions. I’m sure you can use your imagination and guess how bad it can get. Sometimes when we have friends over and I forget to warm them they are incredibly shocked on the things that come out of our mouth. From me, my Mom, and even my 80 year old auntie. The funny thing was when my Nani would always say something dirty for eight maids of milking because she got so uncomfortable and then laughed cause she thought she was funny.

After Christmas Carols we’ll all help ourselves to another bowl of posole, catch up, and enjoy each others company. Oh, and heavily drink of course. I love Christmas Eve so much. I love that though my Nani has passed away we keep her posole tradition alive and singing dirty Christmas carols never gets old.

We have a huge open door policy for Christmas Eve. If you ever find yourselves without plans or looking for a home for the holidays the Romero house is always open and anyone is welcome to join. But, if you come over don’t try and call a certain number for The Twelve Days of Christmas because most numbers are assigned by yours truly.

Thanks for reading along and allowing me to share my holiday joy with you. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.