Christmas Traditions

'Tis the season after all...

So, what is the tradition in your house and what was it when you were a kid?

I am the youngest of eight so the house was always filled with people when I was a kid. My eldest brothers and sisters would stop by with their spouses and children and more often than not we had about 20 for dinner in a small "veteran's" house (built post WWII for the soldiers coming back home to Canada)

Christmas morning we lined up at the top of the stairs (me first!) until mom and dad gave us the green light as they were still putting together toys or wrapping something. Although we didn't have much money, the living room was half filled with gifts.

Christmas dinner was ALWAYS a turkey, home made bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, but I couldn't tell you the vegetable - likely peas(?). I think mom made the christmas pudding and sauce but... coulda been store bought.

Through the dating years, my wife's Christmas dinner was home made ravioli (Italian heritage) so I longed to have turkey again. With the passing of her parents the large family gatherings became a thing of the past and now we share Christmas with just the three of us, the third being our 18 year old son. We have had turkey on Christmas I believe since he was a baby.

We have also had a real Christmas tree every year since he was born and the past three years we have gone to a tree farm to cut it down. He is 18 but he still loves riding the slaigh out to the trees, cutting down the tree, and drinking the hot choclolate at the tree farm :o) The real tree is in our living room now although the puppies have taken to eating the fallen balsam needles this their first Christmas - nice minty breath but it doesn't agree with Guinness' tummy :(

On Christmas day we open our presents in the morning with a log on the fire and head out to a local trail for a hike, provided the weather is cooperating, and bring a bag of seed for the chicakdees and nuthatches.

We spend the rest of the day getting ready for dinner, decorating the table, digging the "good china" out of the basement, and of course cleaning up the living room, and playing with our presents!

We used to avoid the malls like the plague on Boxing Day but have been a few times. Last year I did my Boxing Day shopping online via futureshop.ca - TOO EASY! This year though, we are headed to the malls, thankfull that we have Saturday and Sunday to recoup!

We just ensured that the holiday would end, as always, with sirens going off in the distance.

Our tradition involves waiting at the top of the stairs at the crack of dawn while my parents (and then my mom, as we grew older) arranged the gifts and made sure Santa was gone. Then the kids had a full-on war to get downstairs, which involved lots of shoving and elbows to skulls.

As a kid?  Like, little kid?  My sister and I would stay up really late, almost until 10:30, to constantly check and make sure Santa ate our cookies that we worked so hard to frost.  After we got too tired we'd go to sleep and wake up to a big breakfast, usually pancakes or waffles, something fluffy and sweet that Mom would make to fill us up and keep us busy for a while.  After we all ate breakfast together, it was presents time.  We'd have to hold each gift, unwrap it, then hold it up for the camera before we could play with it or try it on.

As a teenager, it involved more of a... hush-hush Christmas?  Dad was nuts, Christmas was a hard time for him to cope, so he was always packing up or leaving to go to Battle Creek or Ann Arbor for a stay in the psychiatric ward.  If he was still around, we kept everything relatively hidden, except for the tree.  We just waited to decorate it after he was gone.  Because he was gone, all money had to be used to pay the bills so there weren't presents, just family time.  And family time consisted of me and my mom, so we were always pretty happy around the holidays.

Now I no longer celebrate Christmas.  :D

Aw this post made me miss my grandma.

Christmas Eve I would make peanut brittle with my grandma in the kitchen (and if anyone has made this, it takes SKILL). Then we'd cook a big dinner of some type of soup or stew, and sit around and just talk all night listening to Christmas music.

On Christmas morning I was normally the first one up, and I would shake my mom and dad until they couldn't stand it anymore. They would usually tell me "10 more minutessss" but I was a kid and couldn't wait that long. Sometimes I'd open my stocking even if both my brothers wern't up. Then we'd all open gifts, make a mess, and call our school friends to see what they got.

All the kids in the neighborhood would be outside riding their new bikes or playing with their remote control cars.

It was a good time.

It's much different now that I don't LIVE in the same state as my brothers and mom, and I'm learning a whole bunch of new traditions being with my boyfriend. It's almost depressing. But change is always a good thing.

After my grandma passed away, and my parents got divorced, Christmas has never felt quite like Christmas. Almost a memorial instead.

Our tradition is to open one present on Christmas Eve, always pajamas or a new blanket.  This is a tradition from when I was a kid.  We eat breakfast Christmas morning and then open gifts, one at a time.  My husband always gives me a new cookie jar for my collection. 

My parents generally leave town on Christmas day, so on Christmas eve we take all the ornaments off their Christmas trees, cut the trees up into pieces, and burn them in the fireplace.

This tradition absolutely horrified my sister-in-law the first time she saw it. 

Other than that it's just the usual Christmas Eve at my parents', Christmas morning at home with the girls, Christmas Day at his parents'.

star... re: baking with Grandma.

That home made ravioli I talked about was quite a tradition in itself that I got to be a part of until my wife's Grandma passed away. There was an assembly line of about a dozen family members (and invited guests such as myself!), starting with Grandma making the pasta by hand, followed by someone rolling the pasta and cutting the circles for the ravioli, another few people laying on the home made sausage stuffing and crimping them shut with a fork, and lastly someone laying allllllllllllllllll the little ravioli on screens in the basement overnight so they could dry.

This ritual happened a week before Christmas and we'd drink wine, and chat chat chat followed by a large dinner.

I do miss the big family gathering as the current Christmas involves just the three of us but that has its own definite charms (add in the two puppies this year)!

Interesting Julie... ummmmm why?!?! :-/

My family's tradition is to open all our gifts on Christmas Eve after dinner. Very simple. :)

Original Post by sandy_lang:

Interesting Julie... ummmmm why?!?! :-/

 Well, mainly because my parents wouldn't be in town to deal with taking the trees down after the new year and so they started disposing of them before they left.  And, if we are going to have a fire anyway...

An important note:  If you happen not to have any implements of destruction with which to chop up your tree, DO NOT try to edge your tree into the fire place a little bit at a time.  It doesn't work that way. 

Not that I've ever tried it and singed the stockings hanging from the mantel before I was able to get a pot of water from the kitchen and douse the tree to put it out.    I would never do such a silly thing.

We didn't really have anything special, as far as traditions. I'd call it "routine". Christmas Eve, we would be allowed to open one gift, of our parents choosing. Then on Christmas morning, my baby brother and I would get up and go downstairs. My parents were usually sipping coffee and smoking. If we got up too early, they would make us sit and wait, usually till about 8am, before letting us start opening our gifts. Dad would take the stockings down first, which always contained candy, a ginormous candy cane, something small and thoughtful, and lottery tickets. Then my mom would hand out our gifts one by one, and we would open them one at a time, so everyone could see what we got. After opening gifts, we would have breakfast, usually something hearty like sausage biscuits and gravy. It's a family favorite. Then we would get cleaned up and go get my step sisters from their mom's house. I was always jealous because they got 2 Christmases. They were always jealous because my brother and I got more stuff than them. (But they always failed to understand that with the 2 houses combined, they still got more than my brother and I). They would open their gifts the same way as we would. In the afternoon, we would go get my grandpa, and he would open his gifts, and we would open the ones he got us. Then we would have dinner, usually a ham.

Things have changed a little bit. My parents live far away, in a tiny house. And I have a daughter (who I have to share with my ex husband) So we are having a new tradition this year. Christmas Eve, I will pick my daughter up from her dad's house. We will make sugar cookies and decorate them with icing and sprinkles, and leave them out for Santa. She will be allowed to open 1 gift. We will drink hot chocolate and read "'Twas the night before Christmas" before bedtime. In the morning, she will open her gifts from "Santa". Then I am making a huge breakfast of sausage biscuits and gravy (a vegetarian version for me), scrambled eggs with cheese, cinnamon rolls, and english muffins with jam. Then my parents, siblings, and nephew will come over. We will have breakfast. Then we'll open the rest of our gifts. Then we will kick them out and head out to my bf's family Christmas.

I said then a lot.

Then.

The end.

This is going to be my husband's and mine first Christmas together as a married couple (we were engaged and living together for last years) and this year we began the tradition of buying one nice, new ornament for our tree.  I am going to start a scrap book of sorts to keep track of which ornament we got which year, our adventure to find it, where it was purchased, etc.

Savin! You reminded me of a new tradition we started which you might consider adopting since this is your first Christmas!

Every year we buy a new ornament, one that is relevant to something that happened in our lives that year. We have Baby's First Christmas 1-5 years and after that we have a Snoopy (we got a dog that year), a Disney ornament (went to Disneyworld that year), and so on. Camping, golf, Train to Toronto, San Diego, etc... Every year we decorate we get to recall the memories of those events.

Juliemae2: I totally thought you meant that you cut all the decorations up and burn them in the fire. It sounded really ouchy and dangerous! LOL!

We celebrate Christmas with my husband's family on Christmas Eve. We always read the Christmas story, eat and open gifts. When I arrived on the scene 12 years ago, they (thankfully) had already dispensed of the "perform for your presents" routine. YIKES! When I was a kid, we always opened one gift on Christmas Eve from our parents - always a new pair of jammies! And now my babies do the same.

On Christmas day we wake early and open gifts. Breakfast is always croissants and cheese and then we sit around play with gifts and eat what we call "turkey buns" (turkey leftovers on buns...go figure).

As a kid we were always up before the sun, sneaking down to see what santa brought us. We would usually harass my parents around 6 or so, open presents, eat breakfast and take a nap by 9 :) It was awesome.

Original Post by kmleela:

Juliemae2: I totally thought you meant that you cut all the decorations up and burn them in the fire. It sounded really ouchy and dangerous! LOL!

 Oh.  It was sort of worded that way.  I edited it.

We take to ornaments off and burn the trees in the fireplace.

Aww.. this post made me miss my parents so much! We make our big celebration on Christmas eve not on Christmas day. We would have dinner at midnight on the 24th .. yes, it's a long wait before we can eat! this is mainly a Catholic / Latin American tradition by which we celebrate Jesus' birthday at midnight. What is so interesting about my family observing this Catholic tradition is that we are not Catholic.. yeah.

Anyway, Christmas for me is filled with memories of my mother's freshly baked bread, roasted pig's leg (not ham) decorated with pineapple, homemade gravy, potato salad, rice with corn, peas and raisins, green salad, tamales, upside down pineapple cake, tres leches, key lime pie, wine, and homemade eggnog (spiked of course)... there was so much food, we would eat the same things for the entire week and then make it all again for New Year's!

Once we grew up, we started having dinner ealier in the evening so we could be done before midnight at which time everyone would go out into the street and wait for the fireworks.. and we then would walk around the neighborhood congratulating our friends and wishing them a merry Christmas.

My father was not a big believer in presents so we never really received many, although my mom always made an effort to get us something special...

Hmm.. another one? Our Christmas tree is put up on December 1st. The ornaments all have special meaning... from things made by my brother and I when we were kids, to ornaments that have been passed down through our family. There are a couple of ornaments that are from the turn of the century! The tree will stay up until after January 6th which is 3 Kings Day... =)

Lovely memories!

Wow... I think about it every year - how different yet the same Christmas is for me...

Our Christmas typically starts on Christmas eve - my mom is a trauma nurse and often had to work Christmas day when we were smaller.  So at midnight, we would get to open all our presents so that mom could see us open them.  Once she got a little seniority and didn't have to work on Christmas, she figured it a bit cruel to make us wait ALL THE WAY TO CHRISTMAS MORNING to open presents, so we get to open 1 present (of MOM'S CHOOSING) on Christmas eve at midnight.

All Christmas Eve day we spend singing Christmas carols, and preparing Christmas dinner.  Christmas eve dinner when we were younger was always tuna fish sandwiches (my mom has a BIG family and every holiday dinner is a potluck so she would be cooking something for Christmas to go to which ever relative happened to be hosting so tuna fish was always easy to throw together and it became our tradition).  We would watch It's a Wonderful Life, drink eggnog and maybe bake cookies if she wasn't working 7-7.

Now we still open one present (of mom's choosing) at midnight on Christmas eve... and we still sing Christmas carols and bake cookies (now, me and my kids do so) and watch it's a wonderful life and drink eggnog.... my mom is a bit spoiled my kids and I have ALWAYS lived nearby, so she drives over to my house on Christmas morning to watch her grand kids open their presents.  The kids know they HAVE to wait for Grandma to get there, and they call her phone every 15 minutes til she is at the front door.  She likes to torture them by telling them Grandpa is still sleep, but I will TRY And wake them up...

Dang, I love Christmas.

When I was Younger: We would have an extremely large (live) tree, decorate it with all our old orniments, my dad would cook pies, cookies, a buche de noel, lobster, roast lamb, etc... My grandparents would come down and bring a car full of presents - my siblings & I never believed in Santa... We believed in Grandma! ha ha... We would open presents Christmas Eve (French tradition) and then have dinner, sit by the fire, watch a Christmas Carol, go to sleep & wake up - play with our new stuff, have a fashion show (because my grandmother ALWAYS got my sister & I matching clothes)... Go to Church, have Christmas Day Dinner around 3 or 4... which would probably be lobster and that's about it...

These Days: We no longer live close to my grandparents... and all my siblings are out of college and I am trying to finish it up... So I come home for X-Mas and stay home for about a month to detox from first semester! ha ha! And well now we open gifts on Christmas Night when we also have a big dinner... My sister and her boyfriend come over and my brother comes home too... My sisters boyfriend is pretty much a staple in my family holidays now but he is not one to hang out with family constantly which is why we only do something on Christmas Day... 

This yea for Christmas Day Dinner we will be having a Whole 12 pound Wild King Salmon shipped to us from Pikes Street Market... It really was a reasonable price for wild king salmon at $17 a pound (including shipping!!)... I am excited for this fish because fish is my favorite! ha ah! 

Ha! I thought so too kmleela!! Now Julie your story makes sense... I thought.. "WTF are the burning the ornaments!?!" :o)