My Christmas traditions seem intense by comparison to everyone else's.
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:
