Dec 11, 2014 5 min read

“It is so cold!” I shiver in my coat as I rub my gloved hands together. My fur boots shuffle along the snowy sidewalk reluctantly. “I am going to freeze to death pretty soon,” I whine.

It happens every year, just like that.

My dad takes the family out in the cold every year to get into the Christmas spirit, no matter how cold it is or how much I complain about the frigid temperatures. There’s nothing that can stop him – not snow, not wind, not fingers numb from the cold. When my father begins his quest for the Christmas spirit, long about the last week of November, there is simply nothing that will stand in his way.

The journey towards holiday joy typically begins on Thanksgiving Day, when we get Christmas decorations out of our attic. The Christmas festivities begin simply enough, with a fake pine tree in our living room, covered in lights and tinsel and every ornament imaginable. Our “exterior illumination,” as my overly festive father calls it, includes colorful Christmas lights on every tree and every bush, along with a light-up deer, a light-up Christmas pig and a white nativity. Our house turns overnight into a winter wonderland.

The next step in Christmas tradition is Christmas cookie baking – chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies, just to name a few. The kitchen counters will be lined with colorful icings, festive sprinkles and ingredients to basically every cookie you could imagine. By the end of the night, there’s flour on the floor and icing all over the kitchen table, but if it’s part of the Christmas festivities, it doesn’t matter how messy it gets, as long as it’s merry. Within a few hours, we’ll end up with a huge mess and more cookies than we could possibly eat.

On another night, the family crowds around the TV to watch the same Christmas movies we’ve watch every s year. Some of them, we can quote by heart But, again, if it’s part of the search for the Christmas spirit, it is a mandatory family activity.

Many families would end their list of holiday traditions right about there. Not my family. We’re only getting started.

Every year, we take a trip to the Strip District in Pittsburgh. This is typically the part where I start complaining that it is incredibly cold and that I will freeze to death before Christmas can come. We walk down crowded, snow-covered sidewalks to purchase our annual Christmas biscotti. After a brief stop at the nearest Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts for a cup of hot chocolate or coffee to help our bodies thaw out, my family walks to PPG to look at their Christmas display. Then, we head down to the life-size Crèche. And after all of that, we head back to the car, where we blast the heat and Christmas carols all the way home.

Our family activities aren’t finished there, though. We typically make a trip to Oglebay and other light displays to drive through the decorated scenes. Sometimes, we’ll make a stop at Kennywood, which also decorates for the season. Plus, we always drive through random neighborhoods to see other families’ decorated and brightly lit yards.

And don’t forget about shopping! Around Christmas time, the malls are packed with people carrying shopping bags stuffed with gifts for friends and family. Every year, my family is one of those families rushing around in a bustling shopping mall in search of the ideal gifts for every relative.

Finally, Christmas Eve rolls around, and by that time, we’ve done enough Christmas activities to be in the Christmas spirit. But the Christmas festivities are not yet finished.

Every Christmas Eve, we have lunch at my grandparents’ house, complete with a desert of – as you probably could’ve guessed – homemade Christmas cookies. Then, we go off to Christmas Eve Mass. And from there, we go to dinner at the home of my grandparents on the other side of the family.

By this point in time, the entire family is exhausted from all the holly, jolly Christmas festivities.

Though some of the traditions might have resulted in numb fingertips or too many cookies or even entire weekends spent outside in the cold, it wouldn’t feel like Christmas without those traditions.

Even if they start a month early, each Christmas festivity is a little stop on the quest to the Christmas spirit. The Christmas spirit does not revolve simply around old Christmas movies or a string of lights on a fake tree in the living room or even the messy nights spent baking cookies. Certainly the Christmas spirit isn’t about trudging down icy sidewalks or slowly letting your fingers freeze in their gloves.

Yet, somehow, as my family and I go through these annual events, we get closer and closer to Christmas. Somewhere among all of these crazy festivities, we always succeed in the quest to find the Christmas spirit.