Every year on December 24th, I spend time doing absolutely nothing all day except eating and talking and watching movies with my parents, my partner, and my brother and his wife. It’s a tradition of ours to keep close to the core 6 and do nothing else but be in the presence of one another.

And when we get together for this day, it’s customary that we all prepare a dish or two of finger foods to munch on throughout the day. Oftentimes there’s a shrimp cocktail board, and we make sure to find the spiciest cocktail sauce around in order to get our horseradish dry heat kick. (It typically ends up devolving into a “Who can handle the most heat” contest between my dad, my brother, and me.)

Still, I’ve been excited thinking about what I may bring this year, especially now that my partner and I have gone plant based. While we’re sure to bring a few candy boxes along too, which are always traditional, they’re not something we actually made ourselves (though nonetheless, candy boxes are a great addition to finger food snacking).

I’m thinking some sort of dish like fresh homemade jalapeno poppers would do the trick. Considering we all like a little bit of heat in our food, it would be an upgrade from frozen jalapeno poppers that we used to have in years past. Or, now that I think about it, it could be fun to bring along one of our own little recipes that we recently found involving baby bok choy. If you’ve never sauteed some baby bok choy with soy and mirin, you have got to try it. The savory flavor with the bok choy’s fresh and pungent aroma is one of the best things I’ve ever had, and it’s ridiculously easy to prepare.

I think that traditions are meant to be updated from time to time. A tradition is just that because it’s always the same, but in my opinion, traditions should evolve a little bit along the way in order to keep it familiar, yet new and exciting.

No matter how you look at it, I would say my family has a pretty solid tradition set in place that won’t be going away any time soon. So many families put the emphasis on December 25th when it comes to the holidays, so it’s kinda nice that we all look forward to December 24th more than anything.

This past weekend my fiancee and I had our first vegan Thanksgiving with both of our families at separate events. And I’m proud to say that it honestly went a lot better than expected on multiple accounts.

To start, our families were both quite supportive, though we did catch a bit of flak here and there from certain family members that we wanted to avoid conversation with altogether. Nonetheless, it could’ve been a lot worse or annoying, so that was great. But we also were able to completely fill our plates and get multiple helpings of food, so there was no shortage of legit Thanksgiving comfort food made vegan by either us or our moms. I think that was the most surprising part: that we had so much good food to eat and it didn’t feel like we missed out on taste or being full enough (like many people think happens).

So, this already gives me hope for our trips home for Christmas. There’s always cardboard boxes filled with gifts to make us excited for going back home during the winter holidays, but it’s great that our dinners with family will continue to be great for them and great for us without missing out on anything good. (Though I must say that those very cardboard boxes disguised as colorful wrapping are my favorite still, even though I’m no longer a kid.)

This is encouraging not only for us and our future holidays with family, but it’s also great for our families to see that we’re just the same old people hanging out with the same old family and doing the same old traditions. I feel like some people let things that are new or different than them scare them into not wanting that thing around them. But if they just learned to embrace those things or at least the people who like/do those things, everything would be fine.

So, I just wanted to share how great it felt to go forward with something new but yet stay bold on our decision to do so. Sometimes when people go home to family, they compromise on some of their ideals or beliefs just to fit in with the family and not stir the pot. But sometimes bucking the system and traditions can be a very valuable thing for a family. Change is important to developing a relationship, and yet so many families remain unhappy because their relationships within the family didn’t evolve and grow for the better. And that growth was stunted because of a lack of change and new experiences.

Over the past weekend, I had an absolute blast celebrating the birthday of one of my buddies. You always know it’s bound to be a good time when multiple friends can make it over for some late gaming, good food, and a great selection of craft beers.

And in fact, that’s exactly what transpired at our place. What made it so great in particular was that we were able to have a lot of fun with a new video game that just released last Friday. Considering it was something that we all had never played before, we were all on a similar footing and were able to navigate the world of the game together, often doing raids with one another thanks to wireless play.

Of course, once the weekend was over, there was a bit of work to be done. I’m never a fan of hosting mini get-togethers since it inevitably means cleaning up after your guests. Nonetheless, I tried to predict this and avoid messes, left out dishes, and other similar things so that the mess would be manageable after everyone happened to leave. To my surprise, there were just a few cardboard boxes to pick up, electronics to put back where they belong, and just a handful of craft beer cans that were still in the basement. I’d chock that up as a win.

It’s times like these with close friends that make me realize I need to do it much more often. It’s not that I need to (or even want to!) meet up with them every single weekend, or even every other weekend. But being able to hang out like that once every month or two would sincerely make me feel closer with my friends while also being able to kick back and truly enjoy myself from time to time.

Of course, doing so means more cleanup after I have them over, but the great thing is picking up cardboard boxes and empty cans is a fantastically simple chore compared to mopping up actual messes from “parties” that people like to get pretty wild at. I’m the type of person to go with a much more mellow and chill gathering rather than force something you’d only experience while in college. The fact that some of my friends still like to do such partying blows my mind, but I suppose that’s a part of aging and realizing what you enjoy in life and what you don’t.

I always love it when November rolls around, if only because it signals two things: my birthday and the upcoming winter holidays.

I’ve always been a fan of my birthday landing in the middle of November simply because it starts off a great sequence of holidays and days off of relaxing and lounging. In fact, it’s the perfect way to “wind down” the remainder of the year before starting it back up again in full force when January rolls around.

So for next week when I have buddies over, I plan to pretty much play video games in my basement with them on 3 different TVs. This will be the perfect setup for gaming and hanging out all weekend, and we won’t have to bother my partner who will most likely remain upstairs the majority of the time. It works for us and it works for her.

But one thing I know I’ll have to take care of prior to my birthday weekend is cleaning up the basement. It’s not necessarily that it’s a “mess”, per se. Rather, there just happens to be extra folded laundry down there (since that’s where our laundry appliances are) as well as a lot of old cardboard boxes full of belongings that are being kept in storage. If I can put all the laundry away, consolidate the storage boxes, and do a quick sweep through of loose items and whatever else needs picked up, it’ll be ready to go.

There’s also the fact that I’ll want to have multiple televisions set up down there. Unfortunately for me, my basement only has one outlet, so I’m forced to rig up multiple extension cords and drop cords to be able to run multiple TVs. While this sounds super crammed at first, it’s really not that bad thanks to the multiple cords spread out along the basement (in a manner that won’t cause anyone to trip, of course).

From there, it’s just configuring the table and my small home entertainment stand to make sure all TVs face the couch and none of those aforementioned cardboard boxes full of things are in the way. Throw in a thorough sweeping and dusting and I’ll have brought the basement together quite nicely so that everything is ready to go ahead of time.

I’m sure a lot of people don’t spend their birthday this way, but it’s what I prefer to do this year (and it helps that a new game is dropping on the day after my birthday, so it only makes sense to enjoy the weekend appropriately).