Your Family's Christmas Traditions
 

Anybody out there have some Christmas traditions, even unusual ones, that you want to tell us about?

Our family always has clam chowder on Christmas Eve. Then we carol and take homebaked cookies to the neighbors.

We also work at the local fiesta for underprivileged Hispanic kids and try to sponsor at least 2 families to make Christmas for them. This year, my Spanish students will take a family as well! Boy, does this teach middle-class kids to appreciate what they've got.

We also pool the money we earn from prizes at the fair and go to a Chinese restaurant during the holidays. (For "Christmas Story" fans--DECK the halls with barrs of horry, fa-ra-ra-ra-ra....)

We usually celebrate a fun Christmas with family and friends on Christmas Eve. My mom cooks ham and pork roast, along with a lot of other food, and we play the steal the present grab bag....makes for a lot of humor and hilarity in this house!

On Christmas Day, my parents and grandparents and I just started the tradition last year to get together at the grandparents for Christmas breakfast, and then we open our gifts afterwards....it makes it so nice to get up Christmas morning! :)

Christmas Eve service at the Moravian church...lots of great songs and the coffee and sweet roll!!

Christmas Eve we light the lumeneries on the path to the house and put out glitter and oatmeal on the lawn for the reindeer!

All through December we use those advent calendars where each day you open a little window on the calendar and see a new christmas symbol. We also have an advent wreath with five candles, light one every night the first week of Dec, and so on and read from a christmas devotion book each night.

My family is super laid back when it comes to Christmas.

On Christmas Eve we always go out for Chinese food and order Peking duck. I have NO idea why we do this, but we've been doing it my entire life, and I love it. :)

Then on Christmas day after we eat breakfast and unwrap gifts we sit around in our pj's all day and eat popcorn and watch movies. Everyone in the family gets to pick one movie, last year I picked Lilo & Stitch (yay!), my mom picked Changing Lanes (HORRIBLE!!), my brother picked Resovoir Dogs (one of my favs!!), and I forget what my dad picked...but it is soooooo fun!!! :D

my family is busy busy busy during Christmas! Both sides of my family are huge and they like to celebrate. On Christmas Eve we have christmas with my mom's side of the family, and usually at our house! We decorate the house so it's very festive and fun (i love that part!)

People usually start arriving around 4. Everyone mingles, has drinks (grandma's egg nog - YUM!) and appetizers. We ALWAYS have italian food for Christmas eve. I don't know why, maybe because there's so many people, but we've been doing it since i can remember. Garlic bread, bruschetta, lasagna, meatballs, italian sausage, big salad, eggplant. Lots of food :) After dinner the little kids go crazy because they get to open their presents. We do a grab bag, so everyone gets a present. After all of the little kids open theirs, everyone crowds around grandma and grandpa because they have a pile of presents in front of them! We watch them open and ohh and aww when appropriate (lol, one year grandpa wanted some odor eaters!!)

We have dessert, the little kids play with their toys, and there's always people playing cards or something. A lot of my aunts or uncles with little kids slip out to go put their presents under the tree (so santa has been there) because we all go to midnight mass together. When we were little and still thought Santa was real, we always got to open one present before bed after mass!

On Christmas morning my family gets up, has a huge breakfast with the fancy china and silver. Then we light a fire and open presents! Then we bum around the house for a few hours before heading over to my dad's side of the family. We usually have ham, turkey, and all the fixings. Again we open presents and all that hoopla. Christmas is fun :)

One of MY traditions is to go out right after Thanksgiving, charge up the ole MasterCard and wait for the Sh---- to hit the fan in January!!!!:eek: ;) :D

the day after thanksgiving we cut down our christmas tree

christmas eve we celebrate with my mom's family. when i was 7 a candle caught a silk plant on fire. i was the one who noticed and told all the adults so every year after dinner my uncle asks me if there are any fires everyone should know about. also we always take the little ones to my grandparent's family room where there is an entire wall made of glass and we look for Rudolph's nose to blink in the sky. amazingly enough there is always a red light in the sky. then santa comes in and hand out presents.

on christmas day we all get up at 8 and open presents, and then we go to my dad's friend's parents house and open more presents. this is where each person gets a christmas package consisting only of underwear and socks. finally we have my dad's side of the family to go to and after dinner we always play trivial pursuit, which my dad almost always wins.

The only real "tradition" that remains in my house is my mom being totally ungracious for whatever I get her (it used to be my dad). It's especially fun when I get the job of returning it.

I'll be interested to see how she reacts to the present FI and I are giving her - replacement dishes to her everyday china, so she'll have a full set of 12 bread and butter plates. We got them on eBay, so she can't quite return them.

After coming home from midnight mass, everyone got to pick one present to open.....the rest wait until after santa eats his cookies and beer and the reindeer get their carrots and water.


during the week b4 xmas my mom and i would bake cookies, sometimes there'd have to be a few batches to "get it right" for santa.

I always like opening stockings, b/c that's where santa put fun stuff like jewlery boxes.

christmas eve we have homemade lasagna (no im not italian!!) and have been since i can remember but i dont know why!! christmas day we go to the movies usually. im jewish so we dont really celebrate christmas the way yall do!! lasagna on christmas eve is a definite tradition though!!

We used to bake "reindeer treats" every year for Santa's reindeer. They were like little gooey oatmeal cookie concoctions, and we would set them out for Santa & reindeer. The year I figured out there was no Santa Claus, Mom still wanted to bake them...but I was like "I'm only baking them if I get to eat some, too!" because I had figured out that, after I went to bed, Mom and Dad ate all the delicious gooey reindeer treats! :D I think after that year we quit making them.

our family tradition is that my grandmother is dictator of christmas. :D

we always have either ham or turkey, depending on what we had at Thanksgiving (we alternate), homemade mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, just a lot of good homemade food that my grandma won't let us help make. we don't get to open presents until AFTER dinner, which usually starts at 8 pm. grandma decides who gets to pass out presents.

we also have other small things, like we always put up our "family tree", we always put up the nativity scene the night before christmas, we always get ornaments from grandma.

it's nice.

We go to my dad's on Christmas Eve. We have dinner and open presents. After all the presents are open we all head to out own houses. As soon as we get home the kids lay out cookies and milk for Santa, reindeer food and water goes in the front yard, and the boys open up the glass doors on the fire place so Santa won't get stuck.
The boys go to bed and Santa goes to work. We put the presents under the tree, eat the cookies, drink the milk, pour the reindeer water out and scatter the reindeer food. We also leave personalized letters from Santa to each of the boys, and I put baking powder footprints on the carpet going from the fireplace to the tree.
Christmas moring we wake up early and have breakfast (usually cinnamon rolls), open presents, play with the new toys, and then have a traditional dinner.
After dinner we watch movies.


-wendi

When I was growing up, we'd go to Mass on Christmas Eve. Dinner was fish (which is traditional). We'd have a fire in the fireplace (which we were always careful to extinguish for Santa's benefit ;) ).

I would get one gift to open on Christmas Eve, which was always my Christmas nightdress. I had some cute ones; my favorite was a red flannel nightie with white lace trim.

We opened the rest of our gifts in the morning. I always got a few little things in my stocking plus a few larger gifts. I usually spent the morning assembling my new Lego castle/spaceship/town/whatever. :)

Then family came over and we'd have a huge Christmas dinner. Turkey or ham, stuffing, potatoes, veggies. Plum pudding for dessert, which my mother usually tried to flame, with varying degrees of success.

We had a nativity scene, which we'd set up a few weeks before Christmas with everything except Baby Jesus. On Christmas morning we put Jesus in his manger.

We did an Advent wreath too.

Now, we visit my parents for Christmas, exchange gifts and have a big meal. My mother still hasn't learned how to flame the plum pudding. :p

On December 25th, we go to a movie theater and see a movie because we're Jewish.

Traditions
 

We have multiple "Christmas celebrations." On Christmas morning, we open presents at our own home, then to my parents' home where we have oysters, boiled custard, and ambrosia. After lunch, we go to my grandfather's home for fried country ham and red eye gravy. The Saturday before Christmas is at my other grandparents' home for banana pudding. The day after Christmas is my in-law's home.
:)
Silver

In the Hootie family we celebrate by opening presents on Christmas Eve. But before we do that we prepare lots of food - all the yummy cookies, lunch meat, crackers and cheese, carrots, dips, and my grandpa's famous little smokies...
We get everything out and ready to eat, but before we do all of us kids load up into the car with our favorite Christmas cd while mom and dad take forever.
As soon as they come out, we all go look at Christmas lights. We always hit the same neighborhoods (the ones that are on the paid light tour). After we're done with that we come back home to find that SANTA has been to our house (LOL). We get our Santa gifts first and then my youngest two siblings, Jessica and Andrew, pass out the rest of the gifts.
From there we take turns opening gifts (youngest to oldest) and then we watch tv or a movie as a family.
On Christmas morning we get ready for my relatives who all come over. That's another thread in itself :)

Thought I'd bump this, as it's been awhile!

Wow, this is a blast from the past - there are a lot of names here that I haven't seen in a long time.

For Christmas Eve, my family would always go to my grandmother's house and have spaghetti and meatballs. It's at my house for the first time this year!

Christmas Day is breakfast and dinner at my parent's house with church, presents and stockings in between.

This weekend, we start new ones, although this is the second year in a row that I drove in horrible weather, late at night. That's one tradition that has just got to stop! Hopefully, we'll be starting new ones now!

All of our Christmas traditions fell apart when my grandmother died. No one gets together at my uncle's anymore, we don't do Christmas dinner, etc. I guess the new tradition is for everyone to stay home and do their own thing. But we used to always decorate the tree with the ornaments I made in elementary school. We would back cookies from scratch on Christmas Even and set them out "for Santa" (which means we'd pig out on them in the morning :p). Put lights up in the windows. Then all the relatives would get together at my uncle's for Christmas dinner. None of that happens anymore but it was good times when they did.

My Christmas traditions seem intense by comparison to everyone else's. :o:p Warning, this is going to be pretty long.

Christmas Eve: We have to have cheese soup for lunch (it's actually more of a vegetable and cheddar chowder, but we call it cheese soup), then we go to church. The church does an early (starts anywhere from 5:30-6:30) service and a late (10:30-11:30 start time) service on Christmas Eve; we go to the early one. After church, we have Christmas Eve Snack, which this year consists of the following:

Shrimp cocktail, chips and dip, cheese, sausage, crackers, cocktail weiners, chicken salad croissants, smoked salmon, peanut butter blossoms, scotcheroos, fudge, and other stuff I'm probably forgetting, but I can't think of anything right now. Drinks will be scotch, gin-and-tonics, and champange for the legal ones who want to drink, and wassail, water, or soft drinks for those who can't/don't want to drink.

We'll open the presents which are at my grandparents' house that night, because everything else will be at my parents' house, so it'd be too much of a trouble for my grandparents to bring those over.

Christmas Day: We normally have eggs Benedict, but since my family doesn't want to make that for 10 people (there's 4 more people than we normally have), we're doing a big buffet-style breakfast with waffles, bacon, sausage, fruit, preserves, and the cookies that didn't get eaten the night before. The drink choices will probably be orange juice and champange (we don't do mimosas, for some reason). Then, since Christmas Day is on a Sunday this year, my family is going to church. Then we'll open the Christmas presents at our house, and then we'll have the big Christmas dinner. It's different every year, but this year sounds especially good:

Beef tenderloin with royal butter, scrumptious potatoes (it's got cream cheese and sour cream in it), fresh green beans, carrots, with pecan pie and cookies for dessert. We'll have wine and water or soda/milk/water for drinks.

I think my mom's glad she has the next day off after all that craziness. If you got through this post, here you go:

http://freeinternetcookies.com/cookie/cookie.jpg

Being a "broken" family has its advantages for my kids at Christmas. Tonight, Festivus, is Christmas Eve at my house. When the kids wake up in the morning, they will open presents here. They have several hours to chill at home goofing around with their gifts and then we spend Christmas Eve with my mom's extended family: My aunt & uncle and their 3 kids. This year, we have an additional fiance (who is with child). We alternate who hosts and this year it is my turn. I always used to make lasagna at my house only because it is really easy to prepare in advance and just put in the oven while the guests are here so I don't spend the whole time in the kitchen. This year my aunt offered to bring ham so I also bought a nice roast and I'm making green bean casserole, cheesy potatoes, cinnamon apples, rolls and a salad. They will leave around 9:30 or 10 pm usually, and then the kids will head to their dad's house for their second Christmas Eve/Christmas morning. At that point, I usually light a fire in the fireplace, pour myself a glass of wine, and veg on the couch watching movies with no lights on but the Christmas lights. Christmas day, I deal with the mess in the kitchen and go to my old neighbor's house to bring them cookies and hang out with them. They are very laid back and usually do something like a taco bar and then play group games like Trivial Pursuit, Apples to Apples, etc. My team always wins.

Is this normal lingo for you or are you just really in the spirit? :p

A different kind of tradition - celebrating Epiphany. The pressure is off - you can take advantage of after Christmas sales and you don't have much competition with other family members. We have King cake, the kids get three presents (usually books or more educational toys) and we once again focus on the significance of the birth of Jesus.

LOL.. I believe I'm in the spirit. It is interesting to watch some ultra conservative parents dealing with this situation. Their son graduated from college and has a job but his fiance is still in school. (could be fiancee'? Never did get those differences down). The kids are waiting to get married because they want a traditional wedding. My aunt and uncle are uber Catholic so it is just.. interesting :)

Please tell me there will be an airing of grievances and feats of strength!

For the longest time my family hosted Christmas Eve at our house with my dad's side of the family and my mom's grandparents hosted Christmas Day with that side of the family. It worked out pretty darn perfect.

But time has passed and there are fewer family members with us so things have changed. Christmas is different every year now, but that's ok with me. On more than one occasion my family has hosted both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, because my mom is basically the crazy Target lady and loves Christmas, even though she makes herself nuts with preparations! lol My brother, dad and I help out as much as possible, of course.

One tradition that has not faded, however, is the Polish oplatek!

Now that I have another family in the mix, it has definitely shaken up Christmas even more (but in a good way)! My fiance's family always goes to his mom's cousins house for Christmas Eve. This is always interesting because his mom's cousin is an older gentleman and a retired doctor who lives alone. Needless to say he has some money to spend and he does so in interesting ways. Every year he has a themed Christmas tree...and no it's not just a matter of buying new ornaments and decorations. One year was an upside down tree. Another year was a 3 piece string trio instead of a tree. One was a tree made completely of poinsettias. So that's always interesting. The only thing is I'm getting used to it being more of a formal Christmas (I'm used to wearing nice jeans and a cute sweater for our Christmases).

His parents usually host Christmas day and invite the rest of their family who did they not see on Christmas Eve. This year it's a tacky sweater party (which reminds me I need to find mine...)

Fiancé = male member of an engaged couple
Fiancée = female member of an engaged couple

When I was planning my wedding, I lurked on a couple of wedding-related Usenet boards (remember Usenet? :p ). I couldn't begin to count the number of times "fiancé" or "fiancée" got auto-corrected to "finance". LOL

</hijack>

Enjoy your Festivus and Christmas.

My mom was born and raised in southern Greece, but she moved here with my grandparents when she was 16. My dad was born here, but my grandparents (from his side of the family) were born, raised, married, and lived in Italy until their late 20s, when they moved to the states. My dad, although born here, was always raised in a traditional Italian home. So, I grew up an only child in a very traditional Greek/Italian home. After my parents got married, each year, they would alternate, celebrating both Greek and Italian Christmas traditions, long before I was even born. So, as a result, I was born and raised (an only child) in a Greek/Italian home, also being raised on both Greek and Italian holiday traditions. Even after the passing of my dad in early 2006, my mom and I still practice and alternate both traditions every year.

I was tempted to do the airing of grievances at Kroger today.. but I refrained :)

As for feats of strength: Demonstrating the utmost will power in not eating all the fudge that I made is the biggest feat of strength in the world and I am succeeding so far!

Aww, I like this thread! We had some fun traditions when my sister and I were kids - now that we're grown up and scattered around the country they've gone by the wayside, unfortunately. I can't wait to have Christmas with my own kids so I can bring them back! :)

First, my sister, my Dad, and I used to always go swimming on Christmas Eve (in an indoor pool somewhere, not outdoors!). I'm pretty sure this got started because we were all wound up and driving my Mom crazy while she was trying to cook and wrap presents, so my Dad would take us to a local Y or something and let us swim until we wore ourselves out. We did this every year until my sister and I were in college!

After swimming we would go to the Christmas Eve service at church. Then later we would watch the old claymation Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and read some kid's Christmas books together - even when we were too old for picture books. We would also put a "landing strip" of Christmas lights on the roof so Santa could land his sleigh, then we put out cookies and milk, and a carrot for Rudolph. We each got to open one small present, then it was time for bed.

There was always some sort of time limit in the morning (like, no getting out of bed before 6:30am) but inevitably my sister and I would be awake and barely containing ourselves by 5:30am. When it was finally time we would run into our parents' room to wake them up, then head down to the living room. My parents were pretty frugal in general but did like to go all out on Christmas, so there was always a really beautiful display. We would open our stockings, then eat breakfast - a traditional bread with nuts and cinnamon that my Mom makes every year. Then, back to presents! Later in the day we would go to see grandparents and family and have a big family dinner at my Aunt's house. Lots of great memories.

True story about how I love Christmas.

When my husband and I started dating (10 years ago...holy smokes), we started our little Christmas schedule. Christmas Eve was huge in his family. There was a big dinner at his Aunt's house with pierogies, fried fish, about a million other foods, and we always did oplatek too. Usually we'd sit around and BS, then go to our friend's parent's house and have yet more food and BSing and games. Then we'd go to midnight mass at my husband's childhood church (and the church we were married in and will be returning to when we move).

Christmas morning we usually get up and have a big breakfast (pancakes or french toast) and exchange presents with each other. Then we go back to my in-laws for lunch (usually leftovers), and then go to my parents for Christmas day. We do gifts, eat, and usually board games.

When we were kids, one of my favorite traditions was luminaires. My dad used to do them on the sidewalk up to our house, and then all the way down the street and up to our neighbors houses too. He always used the clay stuff he uses in his garage to clean up oil spills to keep them standing up, and my job once I learned how to drive was to procure plumbers candles for them. Once we get our house, we'll do this, too.

Growing up, my largish family had LOTS of traditions. Now that I live on the other side of the planet (and consider myself non-religious), Christmas has definitely gone down on the list of priorities. I definitely wouldn't fly back to the US just for Christmas - why leave awesome weather to arrive to probable flight delays, cancellations, snow, frustration - but I do miss the dress-up Christmas Eve dinner and the whole extended family being together on Christmas day.

Last year we were invited on VERY last minute notice to a friend's house for Christmas Eve with her family. I was kind of hoping that would become a tradition, but now that it's evening, I guess not. :( If we're far away again next Christmas (wish us luck!) I think I'll have to do the hosting of family-less friends on Christmas Eve or Christmas day.

Take a break and make the Pillsbury Dough Boy dance! :D

http://www.pillsbury.com/Doughboy/Dancing

I have enjoyed reading about everyones traditions. We have our big meal on Christmas Eve with Ham, twiced baked potatoes and other yummy side dishes. We always finish the meal with peppermint ice cream with hot fudge sauce. We also have homemade fudge and Mexican Wedding cookies. (We are not Mexican)
Then it is off to Christmas Eve service and on the way home we always drive through certain neighborhoods to look at the lights. I let my kids open 1 gift on Christmas Eve.
Christmas Day we always have a delicious breakfast casserole( made with left over Ham.) We open gifts and then usually play board games or go to the movies. When my kids were little I made a choice to never buy an XBox or Nintendo or whatever the latest thing is called. They will all be in college next fall and nothing beats the whole family sitting down with a board game IMO.