Bobcat Beat Staff Shares Their Favorite Christmas Traditions/Memory
Ever since my mom was little her grandma would always make Huckleberry CheeseCake. When she died she took that recipe with her. My mom was heartbroken and decided that she was going to figure out how she made it. After a few failed attempts my mom finally figured out the recipe.
So, every year during the summer my family goes to Moody and we spend a few hours picking huckleberry’s. We freeze them and save them for Christmas. On Christmas we make Huckleberry CheeseCake together.
The Recipe is pretty simple-
Ingredients-
Crust:
1 package graham crackers, crushed
1/2 cup butter, melted
Filling:
2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1 (12 ounce) container frozen whipped topping (such as Cool Whip®), thawed
1 cup powdered sugar
Topping:
1 package of Danish Dessert Raspberry Pie Glaze
1-2 cups of huckleberries, fresh or frozen
Mix graham cracker crumbs and butter together in a bowl until crumbs are evenly moistened. Press over the bottom of a 9×13-inch baking pan to make a crust.
Mix cream cheese, whipped topping, and powdered sugar together in a bowl until smooth. Spread evenly over the crust.
Follow instructions on Danish Dessert for the pie glaze recipe, add huckleberries and chill for 30 minutes, then spread evenly over filling.
-Marz
Christmas Eve might be the best day ever besides Christmas itself. My favorite Christmas tradition comes from my Dad’s side of the family and my Mom’s side of the family. Each Christmas Eve night our family eats a nice Christmas dinner, hang out with family and reenacts the nativity, but my absolute favorite tradition is getting to open one present on Christmas Eve night, which is always our pajama that we wear that night.
This is such a fun and loving tradition for my family and we all get so much more excited for Christmas after we open this present. Some of the pajamas me and my family got include Nike shorts, Duke basketball tshirts, and awesome Christmas Story pajamas.
As I get more and more excited for this upcoming Christmas season, I am looking forward to the Christmas Eve fun time we spend with my family and friends. I hope everyone has a fun time sharing their traditions with the people they love this Christmas. Have a happy Christmas and holiday season this year, and I can’t forget, have a Happy New Year too!
-Trey
For the past six years, my family and I have gone to our church down in Idaho Falls on Christmas Eve and Christmas.
My church does a very nice Christmas Eve and Christmas service. Sometimes they put on a little play, or the pastor preaches the Word and Good News to the congregation. Tons of people show up to these services and it’s amazing to see the sanctuary fill up with so many people. When the service ends, it’s around lunchtime and so we head over to Fuji, which is the restaurant where they cook right in front of you. The cook always flings the food at me, so I try to catch it in my mouth, but unfortunately I am not coordinated enough to catch the food.
After we finish eating, we head home and my parents begin to cook Christmas Eve dinner for the family. My older sister and I then get a really old chrome book and play Fire Boy and Water Girl. By the time dinner is ready, my sister and I have completed all of the levels on mostly all of the different themes of the game. My parents usually make prime rib, mashed potatoes, rolls, and we eat a variety of different cheeses with crackers.
Afterwards, my parents let us unwrap one present on Christmas Eve and can you guess what it is? Ding, ding, ding, you probably guessed it…Christmas pajamas! We then read the Christmas story from the Bible and head off to bed in anticipation of tomorrow morning.
-Hannah
Christmas time is the best part of the year. But everyone loves it for different reasons. For some it’s the presents, others it’s the snow. But mine has got to be our family tradition of the trap. Ok so let me explain, my dad does this thing where he builds this trap to prevent us from getting upstairs. And it’s stinking crazy cool. Like one year he got some giant cardboard boxes and completely blocked off the stairs and it was crazy.
There was another time when he completely covered the stairs with cups filled with water and we had to tiptoe around all of them and my siblings knocked a bunch of cups and my parents came and told us to go back to bed. But my favorite memory of that tradition was when we all got up at like 2 in the morning and we played the wii and watched movies until it was time to go upstairs. It was honestly the most fun I’ve ever had on Christmas Eve. But I hope there’s a lot more memories I can make in the future before I go to college.
-Trace
Every year a week before Christmas my parents would take me to Salt Lake City, Utah and we’d stay in the Little America hotel. The hotel has a huge display of professional gingerbread houses, towering Christmas trees decorated with colorful, glass decorations and the halls are smothered with the scent of pine trees!
My parents and I would walk through temple square to look at the Christmas lights and enjoy the carolers! Later we’d end the night with eating at Salt Lake’s famous bakery, Gourmandise that sells the BEST Italian pastries. My mom would buy loaves of fresh sourdough bread, almond horns and Éclairs to eat in the hotel.
On the second day, we’d have a family breakfast with my cousins from out of state at the Little America restaurant! They have the best breakfast that always served the fluffiest pancakes, tastiest soup and the best gelato! Their restaurant has different types of ethnic food too. After filling our stomachs past their breaking point, we’d drive down to Murray and shop at the mall. My family is very over the top about shopping and our motto is “shop til you drop.” Unfortunately for me, my mom has good insoles in her shoes and made me stay for well over eight hours.
We’d spend one day at the mall in Murray and the next day at City Creek in downtown Salt Lake! My family would hit every store making sure we’d have the best Christmas. My favorite part was going to Build-A-Bear every Christmas to make that stuffed animal for Santa! Santa never took the bear and the underneath of my bed has served as their graveyard for many years.
-Brooke
A normal Christmas tradition might include warming up by the fire and praising a baby, but while my family does that, we have enjoyed the white, cringy movies Hallmark has to offer.
Hallmark movies have been around longer than Christmas itself and the LaBaugh family loves them. These movies are so predictable and cheesy that it doesn’t require brain cells to watch. Perfect for the average American. My family enjoys watching the movies to see if we can guess the plot and the outcome. It is a game that can get intense. Somehow my dad knows exactly what is going on. I swear he watches it before all of us.
There are only so many Christmas classics. Elf, the Santa Clause and Home Alone to name a few. And when you finish all of them, there’s no more to watch. That isn’t a problem with Hallmark because they can churn out movies faster than the reindeer that ran Grandma over.
A plethora of Hallmark movies exist and there is never a short supply. Each one follows the same exact mundane plot and just when you think there is no possible way that Hallmark could make the same thing, they do it. And they do it well.
COVID 19 is cancelling Christmas plans left and right. A lot of families are finding themselves stuck at home with extra time. If you need an activity to do, turn on your tv to channel 185 and crack open a cold Coca Cola and enjoy watching a perfect story unfold.
-Bennett
For christmas our tradition comes from my moms side of the family which is from the east coast of canada, the tradition is to put out lumiars out in the driveway. They are meant to be able to lead Santa Claus down the driveway to the chimney which will let him into our house. The only way to do this is that we get paper bags and tea candles and some sand to keep the bags down from the wind.
After we do that we open up Christmas pajamas together as a family, then once all the little kids go to bed the bigger kids help mom and dad set up the magic that takes place in the morning. After that we make our cookies and set out the milk. We allow all the kids to sleep downstairs and sleep in the same bedroom. It’s not ideal but it is fun nonetheless. We then open the presents at 7 am and then clean up the wrappers and go back to bed and sleep until early afternoon. Then we set up presents until dinner which we have at my grandma’s house.
-Quin
