Holiday traditions

I thought I would start a thread for holiday traditions. I feel like I spent so much time counting my calories and doing leg lifts, Christmas is falling by the wayside on my radar.

As of last night, our Christmas tree went up as well as the little light-up village with all the little bits and pieces I collect each Boxing Day sale. In a pile outside the village is a handful of pieces from a Nativity Scene. Being a non-religious household, it's anyone's guess why we own these pieces, but each year we assemble them anyway. This year, however, Mary is a single mother being visited by two wise men. (Joseph has gone missing and the third wise man was beheaded thanks to poor planning when we packed up last year.)

Holidays at our house are normally punctuated by food. I bake more cookies than any human requires and there's usually a pan of mince tarts for when guests pop in. (I don't know why I do this. No one I know likes mince tarts.) We have a party at our house in two weeks so we can all dress up in our finest and gossip around the punch bowl.

Despite my diet, I still plan to bake up a storm and I still intend to make the punch bowl a good place to hang out. My diet is about me, not everyone else, so the traditions aren't really going to change in my house, except that I'll have less punch.

Anyone else have some good things to share?

I have a collection of Santa's and Father Time - I love them.  I also have a nativity scene but would like to get a better one. 

The decorations that I love the most are the ones that my kids made and that have survived the last 11 years + !! 

I love to listen to Christmas carols sung by today's singers - I am not fond of most of the new songs though..the traditional favourites are what I want to hear. 

I have to bake Scottish Short Bread, Nanaimo Squares and Ethel's Sugar Cookies or it's not Christmas!  :) 

I also buy the table crackers - the ones that snap when you open them and have silly hats and toys in them! 

I allow the kids to open one gift on Christmas Eve and the rest have to wait until Christmas morning. 

I love Christmas!!

this christmas will be my first away from my family (well actually i was away once while in africa but thats different) anyway, i put up the tree two days ago and decorated it.  I do have my dog gertrude to keep me company.  On chistmas day i think i will take her for a nice walk, and while out, stop over at starbucks for a nice latte.  Then maybe come home and heat the prepurchased meal i plan to buy from a great local store.  Then watch movies like the chirstmas story and national lampoons chirstmas vaction.  And back some christmas cookies.  It will be a new tradition for me.

htide

Our Christmas Eve open house tradition started when my grandmother was alive and living with my parents (she died in 1985).  It was never planned, it just started to happen.

Her traditional meal on Christmas Eve was several kinds of fish & seafood, and a huge platter of linguini with clams.  All of this food had to be cooked and served - it's not the sort of thing you can do it ahead of time and keep it warm. 

Every year, just as we sat down, my cousins would show up at the door, on their way to church for the evening service.  They didn't want to eat, just visit and drop off gifts.  We'd just pull up chairs and make room.  Then my widowed uncle would turn up and we'd all move closer and set another place, he did want to eat, and he needed company too.  The meal was chaos and the food got cold, but we had a good time. 

So we changed it - we invited everybody and fixed food that we could serve buffet style from about 5 pm until 10 or 11.  It's great because people can come when they have time and we get to see everybody.