Finding Christmas Traditions

The Christmas season has come and gone for another year. Once again I've spent days leading up to Christmas waiting for the spirit of the season to take hold of me. I read about Christmas traditions families have and hear all about couples having problems creating a Christmas experience that they both feels captures that feeling they had growing up with their families. Something about the season that is brings up sentimental feelings and memories of past Christmas joys. People have events they they look forward to each year: trimming the tree, exchanging gifts with family members, having a certain kind of food that is only made at Christmas, writing Santa your wish list(or the Christmas Pig if you were a Buell), opening gifts on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning, and making your loved ones feel the love that you have for them.
When I was younger, I was blissfully unaware of what was going on behind the scenes to make Christmas happen..
The more I found out what actually went into making Christmas happen in my family, the less I felt a connection to it. It didn't take long before my Christmas season completely lost whatever it had contained when I was a kid. I had written many Christmas lists at the request of my parents only for it to inevitably be ignored, if they even remembered to get me gifts, regardless of how easy I made it for them. The tradition of the Christmas day let down and apology. It was lucky if the tree was up and decorated before Christmas morning at 3 AM. A tradition of losing ornaments to the bleary eyes of sleep deprivation and poor planning. My siblings and I never really got gifts for each other, because by the time any of us had any extra money to spend we'd already scattered off to college or a new city so it never came up. A tradition of being broke-ass kids and harboring animosity towards one another.
There was always a tradition of having a meal with my extended family. I never liked it as a kid and the older I got the more it became clear that no one in my family enjoyed it. Every year I'd get dragged to the home of my aunt and uncle to eat a meal prepared by people without a sense of taste or possibly just an unrelenting passion for exceptionally bland food. I was given a new piggy bank every year for most of my youth with no clear explanation other than: "you've got a piggy banks so we got you a new one this year;" which translates to "We gave you a bunch of banks, so now you have a collection so we'll continue to assume you want a new one for every Christmas and birthday you have with us." Eventually someone from my extended family suggested a Yankee swap gift exchange, so gifts became even more generic and terrible. This was where my extended family re-gifted the unwanted gifts they got from office parties and friends. This gift exchange became a tradition that I was never invited to, or was told about but then after purchasing a gift for it find out they decided to have the gift exchange that morning while my family wasn't there instead. To top all of this off my family and my extended family have been butting heads over every family gathering for years. The extended family does what they can to exclude my family from anything they may be doing. Frequently not even letting my family know that they are in town until they've been there a few days. I could go on about inappropriate comments blamed on too much holiday drinking by kind-hearted spouses and hours of sitting on the couch waiting for a ride home. This was always accompanied by a hope that I wouldn't have to converse with any of my inebriated relatives.
Through all of this I saw nothing among the traditions of my family that I wanted to continue on without them. Trying to recreate any of them doesn't feel like it'd help me get that Christmas spirit back all of a sudden either.

This year I don't like that I feel that way. I want to have Christmas traditions that I can enjoy for years. I want to feel the season in my guts not have to double check a calendar to see when the actual day is going to be. I don't even know how one starts a tradition. Doing something once with the promise to do it again the following year seems like it has a high probability of not becoming a tradition for the following year.
This year I finally started working on a new tradition. This year being an unemployed Christmas, I had to set the bar low for new traditions. I came up with the holiday lights hunt. In the evening, going for a walk to find a certain # of houses with Christmas lights. Can only count houses you walk past, can't go down the same street until you've reached your #, can't count houses you pass everyday already. This is the start of a tradition. I think having some sort of warm alcoholic drink would improve the tradition (eggnog with bourbon, mulled wine, etc). I feel like this is a step towards creating that Christmas feeling I used to have when I was a kid. I'm not sure if it will work, but I'm tired of having a tradition-less holiday season.