Christmas Traditions?

[Tiffany0204]

Writing in my xanga this morning made me get on the topic of traditions.... most of this is copypasted from my xanga, but figured I'd share.

I love wrapping Christmas gifts. It reminds me of when I was younger... well, not that much younger but younger all the same. It reminded me of a christmas tradtion that we have at my house.

My father and brother were not much for the gift wrapping. My Dad would always leave it until Christmas Eve, and then would have me help him wrap them up. Same would go for my brother, but not because he didn't feel like it, but going through 9 years of post-secondary education to become a lawyer left him with not much time to do anything, let alone gift shop and gift wrap. He would always do his christmas shopping the day before he came home from either University or Law School, which would frequently be 2 or 3 days before Christmas.

He'd want to vist, and since I love to wrap gifts I'd always tell him that I'll wrap his gifts for him, with the exception of my own. It kinda fell into an unintentional Christmas tradition for my family. My mom never had me wrap gifts, but she was like myself and loved to do it. So Christmas eve day, my brother would always set his gifts down by my and I'd wrap them up all nice for him, Christmas Eve night, after doing our family things, my Dad would come and get me and we'd secretly wrap gifts in my mother's art studio (she's a free-lance artist). She always knew of course, but never said anything.

Since my brother got married, I'm no longer required to wrap his gifts for him. Michelle does that for him. It's kinda sad in a way, because I really enjoyed doing it, but of course some traditions just can't stay the same. Although my father and I still "secretly" wrap gifts togeather every Christmas Eve night.

Once that's done, we always go for a drive or walk and look at all the neighbouring Christmas lights then (being the religious family that we are) we read the Christmas Story from the Bible.

Does anyone else have special Christmas traditions that they do every season? Nativity Scene? Decorating the tree? Baking? I love hearing these stories, please share!

[mrsgrubby]

Tiffany, I too miss the Christmas traditions from being a kid and living at home. I was the middle child of three kids and we always had soooo much fun putting up the tree and stuff.

I am now married and we don't have kids. We have found that it is NO fun to put up a tree and stuff just for the two of us. Both my sisters are now married and have kids too and so they prefer to stay home on Christmas with their kids so the kids can play with their new toys. Sadly, Christmas seems like any other day as most of our celebrating is done on weekends leading up to Christmas.

This year my mom suggested that her and I just go "house hopping" on Christmas day, first to one sisters and then the other sisters. Hopefully the weather will be good, not too much snow, so we can do that. It would be like party crashers only Christmas crashers.LOL

[calgal]

My grandparents raised me as the only child, so we didn't go anywhere at all together except to church. Christmas held no nice memories for me. They would put just a very few bulbs on a tree and I would get only one small inexpensive thing from them. I was raised not to believe in Santa.
When I married I started my own tradition, had several FULLY loaded Xmas trees, LOTS of cooking, baking, friends & family. Xmas eve we took home made cakes & candies to some friends, and went around looking at all the beautiful decorations. Then we came home & ate deli fresh cold cuts & home made bread & pie and had some wine and played catch up. We all opened gifts Xmas morning while sipping hot spiced wine, cocoa, coffee, tea or spiced cider (your choice) (by the way, I have one heck of a recipe for hot spiced wine that is guarenteed to put a smile on ANYONES face whether you like wine or not. Seriously!! ). Then we ate a big breakfast & went out 4 wheeling (before moving to CA. that is. and on to an outpost for some hot cocoa then back home to clean up, and take all the things we have either made or bought to the old folks who have no families at the home. Then came home and played the piano & sang Christmas carols before eating ham, turkey and a few tons of side dishes and reminisce about past things and talk about everthing that's happen in the past year. Then the guys would all crash out in the living room floor while us gals laughed & giggled over things while cleaning up. Ocasionally we would hear some very low mumblings from one of the guys. The ones who weren't asleep would enjoy each others company while laying with pillows letting things digest.
This year is totally different. I'm not decorating and we wont even be home. The boys are kind of in shock, but I think we are too! Next year.

[fireworksinjuly]

Oh I have lots....most of which Ive resurected for one last year before I get married and start new ones...

First starts the day after Thanksgiving. My two best friends with our mothers go to the local Chrismtas Parade. Then we go back to grandmas house where she has hot chocolate and breakfast waiting for us.

Closer to christmas is always getting the tree. Ever since I can remember weve always hunted out and cut down our own Christmas tree. We load the roaps and the dog into the car and go to this amazing tree farm outside of town....

My mother and I always bake cookies while listening to Christmas music...

Chrismtas eve we always have a huge party at my friends house (same as the family we go to the parade with). Its all of her family (I consider them my family also- as mine live 4+ hours away). We open presents and eat lots of food. We always have a glass of wine and enjoy everyones company.

Were going to Hawaii 6 days after Christmas so we havent decorated much other then the tree, and were not doing many presents since we need our money for Hawaii...

Im anxious...yet scared to see how next year is going to go. Itll be our first Christmas as a married couple (even though weve been through 3 or 4 together)

[Jamila]

Wow Great Stories!

I still decorate the tree at my Mom's house with the same oranments I've seen all my life. If it weren't for my Mom raising my eight year old niece I more than likey wouldn't do much for the holidays.

We still do the Santa stocking stuffing for my niece. Every year of my life we have had a tradition of getting to open one gift right before bedtime on Christmas Eve. We do that now with my niece.

We always have a big Christmas lunch on Christmas Eve at my Mom's house. Turkey, dressing, pies, yams, green beans, all that good stuff.

My favorite newer tradition that I started ,which my family is incredibly annoyed by, is watching the twenty four hour marathon of A Christmas Story. I love this movie but am always so busy on that day doing this and that. I never get to sit down and watch the enitire movie so I keep it on where ever I go and catch bits and pieces through out the day. Hahaha my family really hates watching the same movie all day long....but they suffer for me which is nice of them. I love my family!

[Cassiepeia]

My sister and I use to sleep in my room on Xmas eve and we'd sing xmas carols (non religious ones though) until we went to sleep, then we'd wake up at about 4am and because it was too early to wake up our mum and step dad...we'd search through our santa bags for the tiniest present their was and that's the one we'd open...then we'd eat a few of the chocolates that were in our bags and try to guess what was in the othe presents.
At around 6am we'd drag out santa bags into our mum's room and sit on either side of the bed and open our presents...showing them off to mum and our stepdad as if they'd never seen them before. LOL

I kinda miss that, but my mother is the kind of person who LOVES giving presents so even though my sister and I are 26 & 27 yrs old (sister is the youngest) we still get santa bags full of presents and we still have the traditional 'opening of the presents' but the rest of the family join in and we do it in the loungeroom next to the xmas tree instead. LOL

Oh! And my sister still writes a letter to santa with all her 'wants' on it. She pins it to her santa bag every year on xmas eve (although she's made sure to tell our mum months before hand what was on it ).

My family is weird. My mum has a sign hanging on the wall in her house all year 'round that says "This house believes in Santa Claus". Guess that says a lot about our family. LOL

Cass.

[zookeeper]

This is so fun .. hearing what other people's traditions are. My favorite tradition is our Christmas Eve supper. My kids and husband and I all gather in the kitchen and make home made pizza. Everyone adds their favorite toppings and then we cook it and set the table all fancy and eat by candle light. After that we all get in the car to drive around and look at Christmas lights. We actually started that when the kids were young and it put them to sleep. Now the kids are 19, 16, 13 and 11 and they still insist we go. I'm hanging on to every moment of our traditions because it won't be too long in the future when we will need to change them to make room for kids that have moved out and maybe even new in-laws and babies.

[princessjodi]

My bro's b-day is 12/13 so for a LONG time we weren't allowed to do any decorating or anything until AFTER his b-day...which makes sense. But now that he is older (in his 40s) and quite loser-ish, my mom doesn't care about it so much so we start shopping, decorating, etc when we feel like it.

But, now that the baby (me) is out of the house for good and the grandkids are a bit older, my mom doesn't decorate as much as she used to as we do the whole family thing at my sis's house now. I used to decorate, but then little by little I stopped so now I hang something on my office door and that is about it.

I go home (Los Angeles) for xmas and my sis, mom, and I all make the dinner together...we have a routine down for getting the turkey ready, the yams done, the cornbread, the stuffing, etc. We all drink wine or kahlua and cream while doing this so by the time dinner is ready we are pretty toasted! lol

My mom and I used to spend days baking pies, cookies, and whatnot but then we decided we didn't really need all those extra calories so now we only bake two pies...cherry for dad and apple for me. Oh, but we do make kringla...its a norweigan pretzel type thing and it is sooooooo gooooood! My great grandfather came to the US from Norway and to this day we still use the recipe card HE wrote out. Thats kinda cool. It literally takes the whole family to make because it has like 8 cups of flour (for a double batch) and gets hard to mix so all of us take turns mixing it.

I guess the 'tradition' is everyone getting together for the day...oh and my mom, sis, and I getting wasted! How else can we deal with the men?