Mistletoe and memories

We sip eggnog, go caroling and trim our trees. We hang mistletoe in doorways and stockings by the fireplace. We bake cookies, exchange gifts and eat candy canes. But many of our best-loved holiday traditions and customs are much more personal and unique.

So this Christmas morning, Press newsroom staff members share some of their own favorite holiday rituals and memories.

In an effort to de-commercialize Christmas, the Selle family started a tradition of putting nothing but homemade ornaments on our Christmas tree (well, except for lights). Now that all of our kids are grown and forming families of their own, we started a new tradition a few years ago. We all buy presents for the younger children, but the adults draw one name to buy for and we usually have some sort of theme for the gift. One year we all had to make our gifts by hand and stay under $20. It takes away a lot of the stress of having to buy for everyone in such a large family.

- Jeff Selle, reporter

When I was a little girl, I had the honor of helping my dad, Richard, paint Christmas scenes on the big picture frame window in the front room of our house.

First, we would open a coloring book and choose what to paint. One year it was Santa and his overstuffed bag with toys and goodies spilling out. Another year it was Rudolph, with his bright, shiny, red nose, standing in snow next to the candy-cane-striped post at the North Pole.

Dad would use a dry erase marker to outline the image on the window, and he always did it so well. Then we would squirt paint onto his old metal artist palette and dip into the whites and greens with freshly cleaned brushes. I remember Dad standing there in his gray sweat pants and worn-out, much-loved sweater, painting away while the white snow fell on our front yard. It was magical how he could make a page in my coloring book come to life on our window.

The best part was running outside to see the masterpiece from the street. It was so exciting, especially when it was night and the Christmas lights framing the window illuminated the painting with multi-colored bulbs. My mom, Vicki, made sure we didn't spill any paint on the floor. She would usually be busy baking her famous banana bread for our friends and neighbors and listening to her Elvis Christmas tape as Dad kept me occupied with the painting. My parents are pretty awesome. They have always made Christmas a special time for our family.

- Devin Heilman, reporter

We watch all the traditional Christmas movies, which I enjoy immensely. Of course, I need to stick toothpicks in my family's eyelids to force them to watch "Christmas Vacation" for the 843rd time, but that's all just part of the fun.

Also, in honor of "A Christmas Story," I take Old Blue out of the hall closet and let loose a hip shot into the backyard on Christmas morn. Never hit one of the Bumpuses' hounds yet, but I'll keep trying.

- Mike Patrick, managing editor

For as long as I can remember there has been one Christmas tradition in the Cousins family - spending the night at Grandma's house on Christmas Eve. The tradition creates a hectic Dec. 24 for everyone in my immediate family, with my brother and sister always scrambling to help my mom wrap gifts and my dad and I running last-minute errands. On many years, my dad would bring my siblings and I up to my grandparents' house while my mom stayed behind to complete all of the wrapping and preparation.

But all of the chaos and insanity of preparation had a tremendous payoff once the Cousins crew made it to grandma's house. There was always something so special about being able to camp out in their living room with my siblings and cousins. Always something about getting a new pair of pajamas from my grandmother every year. Always a sense of pride in being the first person awake in the morning (this was never me, but I can only imagine how proud my brother was at consistently being first) and waking everyone else up.

More importantly was the sense of family and community created by all of us lazily walking to where the gifts were placed under the Christmas tree and spending the morning together. Although it was, and still is, our only Christmas tradition, it is one I will forever keep close to my heart as an embodiment of what the holidays are all about.

- Keith Cousins, reporter

One Christmas, when our parents left the house for a couple hours, my older sister talked me into gently lifting the tape from our packages under the tree so we could see what was inside before we re-wrapped them just as they were. I didn't quite do a good enough job on one of my gifts, so we got caught. I blamed it all on my sister, especially for ruining the element of surprise. Of course, this was years ago and not recently.

- Brian Walker, reporter

Like most kids, my brother and I would wake up giddy with excitement on Christmas morning. The year that John was 3 and I was 6, we were particularly exuberant. We were delirious, really - out of our minds with anticipatory glee.

When the sun came up that morning, John and I went into our parents' bedroom and rousted them from bed, so the festivities could begin.

Mom and Dad needed a few minutes in their room, to finish signing Christmas cards for each of us. Finally, my mom licked the envelopes, handed one to each of us, and said, "Let's go."

Like maniacs, John and I took off, skipping down the hall in our "footie pajamas," headed for the living room where the tree stood. But once again, we had to wait.

My parents stopped us at the end of the hall so they could go flip the switch that would set the tree aglow with lights and reveal the gifts waiting below it. In our excitement, as we clutched our Christmas cards and waited in the hall, John and I started a sing-song chant as we marched in place, "The mail came! The mail came!"

Over and over we said it, holding up our envelopes, our voices rising as we waited for the signal that we could go into the living room. When my dad said, "OK, come on," we continued our chant. "The mail came! The mail came!" We raced into the living room, doing a few exhilarated laps around the coffee table before stopping to finally unwrap some presents.

That was nearly 50 years ago, and to this day, when John, my parents and I exchange holiday cards, we say, "The mail came! The mail came!"

- Maureen Dolan, city editor

Growing up I had a great-aunt who was a nun. Every Christmas when the family gathered, she would give all of her great-nieces and nephews two carefully wrapped gifts each. We all looked forward to unwrapping Sister Mary's Kleenex and Ivory soap, and it became a much-loved (and laughed about) family tradition. She left us with many wonderful memories and lots of fun photos!

- Camie Wereley, newsroom assistant

My family had the worst Nativity scene set ever produced.

All the characters - Mary, Joseph, the Wise Men, even the sheep - were weirdly shaped like puzzle pieces to fit into the special box that doubled as the backdrop. Mary, for example, was an S-curve, while Joseph had his face on the side of his head and looked like one of the Seven Dwarfs. It was hideous, but my brother, Alex, and I loved it because of what we did with the Wise Men.

The Wise Men weren't present at the Nativity, rather they arrived two years later, so my brother and I would always put them somewhere else in the house as "on their way" to see Jesus - marching along the wine-glass cupboard, inside our bread machine or trapped in the lizard cage. Most creative placement goes to my brother, who tied a string to one and had them trying a bungee-jump descent to reach the Nativity below them on the record player.

- Mitchell Bonds, copy editor

Like many Catholic families in the Midwest, we usually went to Midnight Mass.

Christmas Eve included dinner (and a few presents) at my grandma's house, then we would leave around 10:30 or so and make our way to church. We kids usually conked out at some point, but it was always an event with the fancy church decorations, extra Christmas carols and (in theory) a chance to sleep in Christmas morning.

Besides the religious importance of the Mass, as we got older, it also became a social occasion - a chance to see people who only come back "home" during the Christmas season, and catch up with them while the choir belted out carols before Mass began.

Now as I'm getting older, it's a chance to see the college-age kids of people we know come back to town ... and belt out a few carols myself!

- Joel Donofrio, assistant news editor