How do Dublin residents get ready for their holiday? What traditions do they have? Check out what they have to say in their own words:

Brad Webb
It’s always a last minute scramble. That’s kind of the thing. Every year you sort of plan in advance and hope that by November it's all going to be done but it never works out that way. It’s always the 23rd something’s coming together.
The majority of my family is English, so we try to take care of as many of those holiday traditions that are more English traditions. Things like Yorkshire pudding, things like that. One thing we do is the cracker thing. They’re these (paper tubes) that go on the table. You open it up and inside there’s a toy, there’s usually a riddle, and there’s a paper hat. It’s like a crown. Everyone around the table wears these paper crowns, which is really pretty hilarious. When everyone dresses up for the holiday, to have everyone sitting around the table wearing these paper hats, it’s funny.

Becky Shaffer
We put up our tree on Thanksgiving. We have some (decorations) from when my husband and I got married, things from when (our son) was born. I like decorating the house and having it feel Christmas-y and homey. We always go to the zoo and see the Christmas lights. I guess that’s kind of a tradition. I can’t wait to take him to see that this year.

Cara Monnin
I’m a wait-‘til-the-last-minute type of person, so I don’t really decorate anything. I like to put the tree up a week or two before Christmas and get all the special ornaments out. Now, having a child, though, I’ll probably set it up a little earlier so he can have fun and enjoy that. I always like to have music out and listen to that while decorating. I like Nat King Cole Christmas music. That’s probably my favorite to listen to.

Debbie Parker

We do a lot of cooking and baking. We decorate the house. We decorate the trees and we have a great big wreath that we put upstairs, so it shines outside. It takes a good day to get everything done. We do a lot of cookies and cut-outs and everything for Christmas. I make the Chex cereal mix. That’s a big hit with my family. I make lots and lots of it, over and over.

Tom Smithhisler, 16
We wait until the very last minute, and then we all are forced to go out and put out all the Christmas lights. The tree is normally very last minute and my dad makes us all go to the tree lot and pick out a tree, but we have to look at every single tree until we find the perfect one, which isn’t very good.

Mark Ruf, 14
My sister makes cookies, and she doesn’t let anyone eat them. We put up Christmas lights, and I try to leave the house when we do.

Rebecca Thompson
Because there’s so many of us in our family – I have six brothers and sisters and I have three kids, and all my brothers and sisters have kids – we celebrate Christmas two to three times. We do it at my kids’ house, we do it at my house, and then we do it at my brothers’ and sisters’ house. We all have to bring a dish, which is a good thing. My traditional dish is a ham, because I’m allergic to poultry.

Robin Boggs
We get the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. We all go together as a family to pick one out: we have a 9-year-old and a 6-year-old. Also, everyone gets a pair of Christmas pajamas the night before Christmas that we all wear. We all wear them the next day. Our tradition is we stay in our house all day on Christmas to enjoy all the Santa gifts.