What are your holiday traditions, Idaho Falls?
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I think it’s widely acknowledged the holiday season starts Thanksgiving weekend. I was wondering what similar or different holiday traditions we celebrate in Idaho Falls?
My family sets out our Christmas decorations on Thanksgiving weekend. We have two fake trees now, one for upstairs and the basement. We only setup one at first with wooden ornaments, to observe our two-year-old does with those ornaments. In a week or two we will setup the other tree with the glass ornaments.
My family has a set of four Christmas candles that we light on each of the four Sundays before Christmas. Tonight we light the first, next week we’ll light two, so on until they are all lit and the next week is Christmas Eve. We light the candles after Sunday dinner, and eat Christmas treats and read Christmas stories to each other.
I inherited a “Saint Nicklaus” holiday tradition from the German side of my family. On December sixth, we put a boot or shoe out on the porch in the evening. Santa Claus will come by sometime that evening, fill them with some goodies and a small present, ring some bells, and leave the bells there. We usually give a DVD of the latest big-hit kids movie, this year it is Pixar’s Cars. I give the stuff to a good buddy beforehand, and he stops by to plant the stuff, ring the bells, yell “ho ho ho”, drop the bells and run. The second year I asked him to do it, he started asking me to do the same for his kid.
Since Idaho Falls has been putting up the large Santa Claus statue on the greenbelt (east side), we have been taking our kids down there the first week of December for them to mail their Santa letters. Kudos to whoever thought that idea up.
We like to drive around Idaho Falls once a week to see the Christmas light displays. Candy Cane Lane is a destination every week. How many years have those cheery folks been doing that?
What are your holiday traditions, Idaho Falls?
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1 
0 This tradition started some many years ago when work was long and money was short.
The kids wanted to decorate the trees out in the front yard. We had no extra money to spend on lights, let alone the electricity to light them.
I have no idea where the idea came from, but I got a flash of inspiration. I skipped a lunch and bought a package of balloons, some food coloring, and a ball of string. Then the kids and I set to work. We put a few drops of food coloring into each balloon, threaded one end of a length of string down into the balloon, filled the balloon with water, and tied the end off. Then we took them out and hung them in the trees. A few hours later, we went out and peeled the balloon off the colored ice balls. They were stunningly beautiful during the daylight hours, and, in the cold climate, they lasted until Spring!
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1 0 That’s an awesome idea! I want to try that now.
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1 0 Just one question: Where is candy cane lane? I want to check it out! I don’t have kids, but I get a smile every time I pass the Santa on the greenbelt. I have nieces and nephews that would get a kick out of it. One of these times I’m going to take a picture for them.
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0 0 My family started a tradition last year of celebrating Festivus on Dec. 23rd. You may recognize it from an episode of Seinfeld - “A festivus for the rest of us!”
The concept is this - Christmas is too commercial, so Festivus involves no gift-giving, but a family meal consisting of hearty, filling comfort foods (pasta, mashed potatoes, steak, etc.). There is no Christmas tree, but a lead pole (we leave this tradition out in exchange for the more mainstream Christmas Tree). Then, there is the airing of grievances, where friends and family tell each other how they have upset one another - then, the grievance is forgotten for the rest of the year! Finally, there are the Feats of Manly Strength, where the head of the household (we hold it at my home, so this is me) challenges a particular family member to a feat of strength (wrestling, lifting, etc.) to prove their Manhood.
Then, we celebrate Christmas on the 24th by eating lasagna (I know, it’s weird), reading from the bible, and spending time together. Lots of wine and usually A Christmas Story of TNT is involved!
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1 0 Not totally on subject but 8B, I tried your thing with the baloons, however I should have read the instructions better. I tied the string to the outside of the baloon and then hung it in the tree just as a test to see what they looked like. This morning I was pondering how I would get the baloon off considering the string is hooked to the baloon and there is the usual air pocket at the top. DUH! I guess I will have to cut it down and try again doing it right this time!
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0 0 lol, Roxy!
Here’s another that I came up with a couple of years ago. It’s not really a tradition, just something that I found to be kinda fun, and they turn out quite pretty. Plus it’s a way of recycling all those AOL CDs.
I found that if you take the lid off a mayo bottle (the narrow mouthed bottles, not the wide mouthed ones), place it on a cookie sheet so that the flat top part is up. Then place one of the hundreds of AOL CDs you get on an almost daily basis shiny side up, centered on the mayo lid.
Place the whole thing in the oven and turn on the heat. You have to watch them closely and remove them as soon as the CDs droop over the lid.
Tie a little string onto the cooled CDs and hang them were they will catch the light! The rainbow effect is nice.
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1 0 got anymore fun holiday projects, 8B?
I forgot to mention we also do advent calenders, opening a new door each day to reveal a small cache of chocolates.
I highly recommend getting one that you can fill with your own choice of chocolates. Kids really love it.
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1 0 One thing I failed to mention in the CD instructions — make sure you use a metal mayo lid, not a plastic one!
Now on to new stuff. I’ve a dear friend who loves her horses. Last year I made her a rather unique Christmas wreath.
I bought a few yards of 3/8″ hemp rope, tied a hondo on one end, and coiled it in the fashion of a lariat.
Then I wove in and fastened some sprigs of holly, pine boughs, mistletoe, and some kind of red berries that grow around here.
It was a real hit with her!
(Just as an aside, last spring one of horses died. She now keeps that wreath on the barn wall as a memorial.)
So, if you have a western-themed friend who needs a little something special, you might give this a try.
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1 0 Hey Joe, where do you get the advent calanders that you can fill yourself? I have never seen those and the chocolate in the ones I have bought the last couple of years has left a lot to be desired.
I have my kids make gifts for family members and friends. They choose what it is that they want to make and then assemble the projects. This year my daughter (age 6) is making “pink flying pig” ornaments that hang on the tree. They are really cute. My son is making finger flingers (they look kind of like a rocket with a rubber band that comes out of the nose that you put your finger in and then pull the rocket back and watch it fly across the room). The flingers are decorated to look like little airplanes that have a penguine as the pilot. We will also be decorating brown paper lunch bags to wrap the gifts in. The kids love making the stuff and we label them with their name and the year that people can look back at them and remember (great for grandparents).
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1 0 Great question!
I got mine at Target a few years ago. It is a little wooden cabinet, about 1′ tall and wide, and about 3″ deep.
You open the “cabinet” doors and see four rows of little drawers. Each little drawer is painted and numbered for each day 1-24 in December up to Christmas.
So then we pick out our own chocolates and of course the kids have a ball filling the drawers up with four each (one for each member of our family).
I remember finding it on a housewares aisle where they usually clearance stuff, it’s opposite from the toys area.
It is fun, every morning the kids are running to go open the drawers and take turns giving the chocolates out to everyone.
We have to keep the cabinet up high, or else the kids would be in it all day long eating.
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0 0 We have some of the same traditions listed here, but also try to do something new or unusual each year to keep things fresh. Our kids loved having their ideas used and occasionally we repeat them.
I’m going to try the balloons idea this year…thanks, 8B! 
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1 0 We celebrate Festivus and will be putting up our aluminum poll Christmas eve, followed by feats of strength as well as leg & thumb wrestling competitions.
Happy Holidays everyone!
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I just read on KPVI’s site that Candy Cane lane has been decorating for about 20 years.
Cool.