A Ferriani Christmas

When I think about Christmas I think about family and traditions. Anyone who knows my family knows that we've got a thing for traditions. From birthdays to The Fourth of July we have something that we typically do on that day and Christmas is no exception.

Christmas in the Ferriani (Ferrara and Mariani) households stretches throughout the whole month of December with little landmark traditions every step of the way. It all starts with cookies with Nana. This is a staple. We've been doing this for as long as I can remember. All of the cousins bring dough to make a different kind of cookie to add to the pot. The most important cookie on this day are the wafer cookies. These cookies are the taste of Christmas. They are like tiny lil baby sugar cookies made into a sandwich with homemade icing in the middle that melt in your mouth.

The second landmark in this December Christmas parade is the Yuletide and dinner. This is basically a Christmas musical of sorts. It is hard to explain without going to see it for yourself. All I can say about dinner is that it was quite an adventure this year.

My favorite night of the holiday season is Christmas Eve. It's full of family and food and laughs. This year was slightly different because illness hit. We were popping vitamin C and not allowed to touch each other. Because we are just one big Italian family we always have lasagna for dinner. Then we move the the sunroom and put on our pajamas and exchange gifts.

Christmas morning passes by too quickly. This year pretty much everyone went back to bed because we were sick. We did make it to the movies in our pajamas though. That's the last landmark on the long journey.

I appreciate a lot about my family. It would take me forever to write all of that down, but one of things I love the most is that Christmas doesn't revolve around gifts. That is just a small sliver of the season. God gave God and that's what matters.