Christmas Jammies

Dressed in their Christmas jammies, time stands still.  It’s as if they’ve never moved out, never gone away to school or started families and real life adulting.  In their Christmas jammies next to the tree, they are just my little Christmas loving children again, festive and happy and excitedly waiting to celebrate.  

The “kids” put the ornaments onto the tree.  They recite favorite lines from, Elf or Christmas Vacation.  They eat their body weight in Chex Mix and Christmas cookies, laugh, reminisce, joke around, and giggle while taking videos and watching Tik Tok on their phones.

We have worn matching Christmas jammies for the past twenty plus years.  Sometimes in flannel, sometimes footie pajamas or onesies.  Sometimes the boys wore one style and the girls wore another, but we always had matching jammies.  I know that isn’t original, lots of families do the same thing, but it is still one of my favorite parts about celebrating Christmas.  It’s such a simple thing, but it ties us all together, and I love that.  They love it too, and I love that they love to wear their matching jammies.    

Our closets and drawers are stuffed with pajamas from Christmases past.  And, honestly we wear them all year long.  Christmas in July anyone?  

For the past several years we’ve pre-ordered our Christmas pajamas from Burt’s Bees Baby at the end of the summer, which might contribute to us thinking about Christmas pajamas all year long, but it’s part of the tradition now. As soon as the new designs are announced we start our family voting process.  Which means I text every family member and ask them to choose their top two or three designs.  Then I set up an old school chart and start tally marking the favorites.  Sometimes we have a clear winner, but often we narrow it down to two or three, and then vote again choosing only their absolute favorite.  So far this has always resulted in a winner, but I think it is possible that at some point in the future there will be so many of us that we choose two coordinating designs.  And that’s okay with me.  I always love all the designs anyway.

We always pose for pictures.  It’s tradition.  All of us in our jammies.  The traditional sibling height line.  Grandkids.  Pets.  The girls, the boys, the couples.  Even the year covid kept us apart for Christmas, we ordered the jammies and did the pictures in separate houses.  Because tradition is tradition and I’m so thankful this is one of ours.  

For the past several years we’ve been so lucky to add to our family – spouses and grandkiddos. And I’m here for it. I love adding people to the family and the to pictures. I’m excited for the day there are twenty or thirty of us crowded around the tree in our matching pajamas. It is Christmas.  It is family.  It is a tradition.  And it is love.