Christmas Eve is 23 days away and Christmas day is 24 days away. It is now appropriate to blast Mariah Carey's or Michael Bublé's Christmas albums to get us into the holiday spirit. Christmas time is a great time to spend time with your family and get some new goodies. Every family does something different for Christmas, which makes each person's Christmas unique and special. This article is to share some of my family's Christmas traditions that I have grown up with and will continue to keep for the rest of my life. These traditions have been in the family for years and are not going anywhere anytime soon. Here they are!

1. Sorting and opening up presents on Christmas Eve.

Everyone comes to my house for Christmas Eve. When everyone is coming in, they place their gifts in my living room. Once everyone arrives and the presents are all in the room, my cousins and I sort them. We pick a spot in my family room where we want to open our presents and we take our presents to that spot. After dinner everyone gathers into the family room and we all open our presents. We save the presents from Santa for Christmas day morning, though.

2. Christmas Eve Mass.

Before the Christmas Eve celebration begins, my family and I attend Christmas Eve mass at my local church. Since being able to get to mass Christmas morning is usually a struggle, we all go to mass the night before. I like this tradition because it reminds us of the true reason of Christmas and how grateful I am.

3. Christmas Eve Dinner.

My dad is from Germany and it is a German tradition that you eat goose for Christmas. Well, one year while my grandpa was carving the goose...he found a tumor. We have not eaten goose since then. Now for the past couple years, my dad makes prime rib (a fam fave). We have lots of appetizers, tomato soup, pop overs, prime rib, lots of side dishes and plenty of dessert. I think my family eats more for Christmas Eve than we do for Thanksgiving.

4. Family Bus Trip and Dinner.

Each year, my mom's whole entire side of the family gets together and does something for Christmas. We do things like go into New York City to see a broadway show, go to a local play house, go to the movies, etc. No matter what we do, we always go to this Italian restaurant after and have a huge dinner. I love this tradition because it allows us to spend time with our family members that we don't get to see often. It's a nice time to catch up with the rest of the family and have fun together.

5. Pictionary.

The way that my family and I play Pictionary should qualify it as an Olympic sport. We take this game so seriously as if winning was life or death (which it basically is). Our Pictionary games get so intense and it's wonderful. Christmas would not be Christmas without trying to kill each other over a board game.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my favorite Christmas traditions that my family has. What are some of yours?