The Island of Misfit Traditions

Remember the Island of Misfit Toys from the Rudolph cartoons? (If you don't, stop everything in your life and immediately go and watch them. They're classic and you're really missing out.) All of those crazy toys that were just not quite like the others?

My house should be called the Island of Misfit Traditions. We love Christmas. We have lots of wonderful traditions. It's just that many of them are not considered normal. At all. In any way.

Eccentric? Maybe.
Odd? Definitely.
Certifiably insane? Possibly.

I have evidence.

For instance, when putting up the fake tree each year, it's considered improper if you don't first take a picture of the kids with the pole & the top. You know, the annual Christmas asparagus picture.



Once you finally put up the whole tree, you have to place two very important objects on it before you can begin hooking on all of the ornaments:

The Christmas Octopus


My mother in law gave this octopus to my husband years ago as a joke. How it ended up on my Christmas tree with a handmade (by said husband) santa hat, I'll never fully understand.


And, my favorite, the Christmas Commando.



Everyone should have an armed SWAT guy rappelling down their Christmas tree. It's just anti-Christmas if you don't. Besides, he guards the gifts from present predators. Well, when one of my children hasn't re-aimed his hand toward the bulldog ornament. Sheesh.


But just so you know we're not completely off our rockers, I'll share with you one of our sweet, normal Christmas traditions.


This Nativity set was made for my parents by my uncle when he was in the military. It's 41 years old and lives with my family now. It's my favorite Christmas decor and I love that I get to share it with my children each year.

It's good that I can share something normal and sane with these children. They are, after all, the same children who turned a sweet, Norman Rockwell-like cookie decorating session into a bevy of zombie guitarists and mutated reindeer. But I blame their father, the man who fashioned two gingerbread men into Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris a la "Way of the Dragon".

Maybe we are certifiably insane after all.