My favorite holiday tradition is celebrating Christmas Eve with our good family friends (instead of our family). They have adopted us as their cousins, and after all the adults go to bed, we get together at someone else's house and have "cousin time" until early in the morning on Christmas day.   - Hall from D.C. 

Probably my favorite Christmas tradition is baking sugar cookies with my sister, Mitchell. Even though we have lived in separate cities for the past few years, we are certain to make time for this special task together. We use an old sugar cookie recipe from my mom which calls for sour cream to make the cookies extra moist and gooey. After making the batter and letting it chill in the fridge for a few hours, we pull it out and the real fun begins.

We take over the entire kitchen counter and sprinkle it with flour (after cleaning it of course). Then we roll out the dough and use the same cookie cutters that my mom has had for over 30 years. We are constantly filling baking sheets and popping them in the oven, while new cookies are being rolled and cut. By the end we are both covered in flour and have ingested about 8 pounds of raw cookie dough. Once the cookies have cooled, we ice them with a mixture of powdered sugar and milk. The secret to this is not adding too much milk so that the icing isn't too runny. We also add food coloring to make green, red, and yellow icing. One of us is usually in charge of icing the cookies, while the other follows behind with sprinkles.

At the end of the night we are left with about 4 dozen brightly colored, delicious cookies that look like a couple of 3 year olds made. But what matters most are the memories that are made right along with them. - Christine from Nashville

I will be going to my mother's Christmas dinner for the 58th time this year with my children who are 26 and 22 and they have spent their whole lives doing this, we meet at l2:00 and open gifts and eat the big turkey and trimmings on Albemarle Farm, an almost 200 yr. old home recognized by the Kentucky Historical Society and was on the home tour last year in Bourbon County!!   - Mary Louise from Lexington

Decorating the Christmas Tree. We always decorate the Christmas Tree and listen to Aaron Neville's Christmas CD. My husband, David, always complains about listening to Aaron Neville. I however, believe that you have to be a little cheesed out when decorating the tree. - Brook from Murfreesboro