My memories start before the presents

Christmas morning. The moment everything leads up to. All of the lights, songs on the radio, and presents people struggle to find lead up to one morning.

Every Christmas morning, my sister and I wake up first. We creep into the other’s room and wait for an appropriate time to awaken the rest of the family. Next is my brother, and not bothering to creep, we go and jump on his bed, doing whatever we can to wake him up in the early hour we insist upon the night before.

As we wait for him to fully awaken, we sit in the coldness of the upstairs and get all of our jitters out and plan our attack on our parents.

Once we drag my brother out of his bed, we slowly open the door to my parents room.

However we decide to wake them up, it takes them at least another 30 minutes—which feels like three hours for us to actually get them out of bed, despite our continuous singing or talking or bouncing.

As the final sleepyhead makes their way to the lineup of running downstairs, my dog takes his first lap around the house, sniffing out his new treats, but he always makes his way back up to lead us back down.

As we make our way down as a family, we make sure to cover each other’s eyes, double checking no one peeks in case there are presents under the Christmas tree that are unwrapped, for before we get to the Christmas tree, we must start with the stockings.

After the stockings, my parents always say they are going back to bed, but they never have, they get their coffee, and we continue on with the day.

Our traditions define the day. We each have a certain spot where our presents go; we have cinnamon rolls after the presents have been opened.

My family made our traditions. We have been doing this for as long as I can remember, and I couldn’t imagine it any other way.