House Beautiful Editors Share Their Favorite Holiday Traditions
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Whether you spend the holidays honoring past family traditions or creating new ones to share—or a bit of both—these customs instill a sense of continuity and joy that lingers even after the decorations are stored away. At House Beautiful, we love the holiday decorations, of course, but each of us has our own festive ways to mark the season.
Below, our editors share their unique, thoughtful traditions, from wrapping every handrail in the house in lights and gold ribbon to passing down the talent of homemade Italian treat-making and singing along to Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas music. (You’re going to want to try the best simple recipe for candied orange peel yourself.)
Along the way, we hope to spread some holiday cheer, inspire some fun traditions you might adopt as your own, and invite you to pause and treasure the moments that make this season so cheerful and magical. Let the festivities begin!
Cooking With My Sister
—Laura Tarafa, Editorial Assistant
"My younger sister and I have been cooking Christmas dinner for the last several years. It's a newer tradition in our family, and seeing as we are the 'chefs,' they leave it up to us to come up with a delicious spread. I usually try to go back home to London for Christmas, and we always do a traditional British Christmas dinner. I'm typically responsible for the turkey, and my sister Isabel is incredible at making the fluffiest Yorkshire puddings. We designate the table decorating to our other siblings, and we always bring out dish-ware our family has used for as long as I can remember. The meal with my family is definitely my favorite part about the holidays."
Decorating Together
—Kate McGregor, Digital Editor
"As my brothers and I have gotten older and moved out, one holiday tradition has truly remained mandatory: we decorate the house for Christmas, together. And while we have our standard, hodge podge of family memories tree ornaments, my mom has been crafting all year for a new kind of tree, a destinations one! We love to travel together, and she's started a new tradition by completing a needlepoint canvas for each destination we go to. This year's latest additions are a Copenhagen boarding pass and a Great British Baking Show ribbon for our UK jaunts."
Making Candied Orange Peels
—Meghan Shouse, Assistant Editor
"It turns out a lot of my family's traditions around the holidays focused on the entire family being home. Who knew! So when I, the youngest Shouse child, finally moved out, we realized it was time to make new traditions that better fit into our shifting lives. I decided that one of those would be to make candied orange peels each year. It's shockingly simple to make them, even if you have no cooking skills like me, and it's easy to move around the date we do so, if other things come up—unlike decorating the house the way we used to when my sister and I were kids, which was an entire day's affair. While I definitely miss being the one to put up the ornaments and hang the lights, this is a relatively new (and tasty) tradition I look forward to doing with my whole family, even as my sister and I begin families of our own."
Baking Christmas Cookies
—Catherine DiPersico, Assistant Market Editor
"When the holidays roll around, my mom recruits all my cousins to help bake... in mass quantities. She makes anywhere from ten to twenty different kinds of treats every year. From the classic (and her famous) chocolate chip cookie to cookies made from two dyed batters wrapped into the shape of candy canes to tart yet sweet rasberry cheesecake bars. While we would happily keep all these sweet treats to ourselves, my mom makes enough for the whole extended family, friends, and neighbors and delivers them with a new tray or tin each year."
Relaxing by the Fireside
—Melanie Yates, Senior Digital Editor
"Each year, I spend the majority of the holiday season at my parents' house in Connecticut, which has everything my NYC apartment doesn't: views of the shoreline, space for a full-size Christmas tree, and a fireplace. Because the holidays are usually a low-key event in our household, the only must-do festive activity I look forward to indulging in is building a fire, pulling up a chair and footrest, grabbing a good book, and cueing up the Christmas Cocktail Jazz playlist on Spotify."
Singing to Cheesy Christmas Music
—Janae McKenzie, Associate Shopping Editor
"We love to lean into the cheesy parts of the holidays in my family. Specifically: the music. It simply isn't a Christmas with the McKenzies until the Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas album is playing. We always put it on before trimming the tree over Thanksgiving. Yes, it's a little corny, but when I hear my Dad do his best high-pitched chipmunk voice, how could I not be filled with holiday cheer? It means so much to me that I bought the album on vinyl to play in my own apartment."
Learning Italian Treat Making
—Catherine DiPersico, Assistant Market Editor
"Every Christmas for as long as I could remember my Dad, a proud Italian man, would make us two Italian specialities: gnocchi (from scratch) for Christmas Eve dinner and pizza frittas—fried dough covered in powder sugar—for breakfast Christmas day. He'll spend the day cooking and prepping—carefully rolling and cutting dough and working on his homemade sauce. As my sister and I got older, he taught us how to make each so we could help and eventually keep the tradition going one day. These dishes are two of my absolute favorites because of the taste (delicious!!) but more so the nostalgia and sentimental value they hold in my heart. It's what I look forward to most at the holidays."
Eating Christmas Cake
—Soumi Sarkar, Digital Designer
"If there's one thing that my little corner of India loves, it's a holiday. Despite us having our own native holidays in the fall, Christmas has always been a Big Deal. It is a reason to eat and drink and celebrate with family and friends after all. Key to that experience has been the holiday plum cake. Sold in shops around the city, the cake is a boozy, fruit and nut filled indulgence. And everyone has strong opinions about who does it best, with a particular 120+ year old Jewish bakery often a front runner. Such is the frenzy over these cakes, that bakeries, over the last decades, began holding special events a month prior, centered around the soaking of the required fruit in rum. As to where I land on this debate? I still long for the one my best friend's mother made, and can taste it like it was yesterday. Now, given that nothing else compares, I've begun replacing that sugary need with panettone, which too I can't get enough of."
Decking the Stairs
—Janae McKenzie, Associate Shopping Editor
"The most time-intensive yet rewarding part of my family's Christmas traditions? Wrapping every handrail in the house in garland, lights, and gold ribbon. It's always a mess, faux pine needles get everywhere, and it requires some serious coordination. After we've vacuumed and turn on the lights, though, there's this magical glow that makes all the hard work worth it."
Watching The Sound of Music
—Soumi Sarkar, Digital Designer
"I often wonder if I might be one of the people on planet earth who has cried the most to 'Edelweiss' the. I grew up in India, and one of the few constants in my life has been one of two English-language TV channels playing Sound of Music on loop in the weeks leading up to and during the holidays. Growing up, my mother, my sister and I would cozy up at night and watch it together, singing with abandon like Maria and the children, as if the Captain was nowhere around. Despite the physical distance between us over the last decade, it is something we still try to do "together"—she, on the many more channels that now show it, and me, on my on-demand streaming network, and bringing in new friends each year to join in on either side and share the love."
Enjoying the Run Up
—Elizabeth Angell, Senior Features Editor
"I have two kids and they are intensely focused on Christmas Day and all that implies (gifts, it implies gifts). But I have worked really hard to help them enjoy the anticipation and all the many smaller celebrations that happen along the way. Getting out all the decorations and working on our tree, then taking the time to enjoy it every day until Christmas; making cookies with friends and delivering them as gifts to teachers; going to the Nutcracker with friends; our annual caroling party: These things all happen before Christmas day, but they're as much a part of the season as the rush to open presents."
Snowshoeing in the Mountains
—Janae McKenzie, Associate Shopping Editor
"Ever since my family relocated to Denver, we try to visit Vail when we can at Christmas—it's a winter wonderland that gets us in the mood for the holiday! We're not big winter sports people, so instead of hitting the slopes, we go snowshoeing at the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens and explore the snowy forest. Inevitably getting stuck in the snow is part of the fun."
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