Christmas traditions

Every year I go through the same pattern: first I loath the idea of getting the house ready (the organizing and cleaning it spotless prior to decorating), then I start baby steps (which usually show nothing for a week or so :) ), then we slowly get into the spirit:

• we make cards - although this year the child was not very co-operative, he did the embossed face and let the assembly to me :) "team work" he called it!
• we put the lights up - this year the weather was quite strange and we ended up on the ladder just this past week
• we slowly decorate the inside: first I see the face of my desk, then I fill my desk with flowers (I have a hot house living on my desk right now), then - depending on weather - I pretend to clean up the windows (this year is more pretend than clean, it's brutally cold out there and I can't go on the outside), then I decorate the windows (while the boys cheer me up, apparently window decorating is not a male activity).
• we bring the ornaments downstairs and we bump into them for about a week - while I put decorations up and before we finally get the tree
• we go to the farm and cut our own tree - the boys want a 9 ft tree, I insist on a 7 ft - we usually end up with an 8 ft that scratches our ceiling (we live in an 8 ft tall house :) )
• we decorate the tree - the boys put the lights up, the big boy then sits on the couch, while the small boy puts a number of ornaments in... then he arrives on the said couch while yours truly finishes the decorating. Yeah, I have great helpers :) 
• we start the baking and cooking and celebrating :) 

I'm sure I forgot some steps - but that's in a nutshell :) 

Here you have the child helping with the making of the sweet bread (under the watchful eye of Cora, who's probably thinking "what got into them?! they better give it to me instead of beating it up like this!" :) )

Making the sweet bread

For Paula who asked a couple of days ago - this is how the ornament curtains looks like (it's from last year, I'm debating if I should bring the ornaments down today and start it for this year or I should wait one more week):

How do you prepare for the Holidays - being them Christmas or something else (isn't it funny there are so many various celebrations around the same time?!)