What's your Christmas tradition?

[Azerane]

Growing up, most families have little Christmas traditions that they do every year? Maybe you don't celebrate Christmas but still have some sort of tradition around that time of year. I'd like to know what special things your family would do each year, did you have a set date you always put up the tree, special foods etc etc.

I'll post about mine in a bit, but for now, lets discuss some fun (and possibly some not so fun -as a kid I found church boring, especially on christmas eve. When would it end!!?) traditions.

Secondly, if you had kids (not saying you want kids, but if you had them) what would you do the same from the traditions you had when you were little, or would you start some new traditions of your own?

[nathalie]

Even though, I may not get along with my family all that great, it's the only time of year, I wouldn't wanna be anywhere else.

We have been doing gourmet ever since I can remember.
http://s.s-bol.com/imgbase0/imagebase/large/FC/2/2/7/5/9000000011035722.jpg


It's always just been our family alone.
My family is:
- parents
- brother
----- latest editions (lol): sister, sister-in-law, 2 little nephews, my boyfriend

What we do is, my mom/dad make some snacks (just stuff to put in the fryer, lol, chicken nuggets, finger food type of things), mini burgers etc ...

Hours changed a little due to the 2 rascals.
But it usually is now, that we start around 5-6 pm with the snacks.
We usually stuff our faces with those already before actually having the big dinner, haha.
And we say it every single year, to not eat so many snacks, because every year, more and more food of the gourmet doesn't get eaten (more left-overs for the next day, lol).

Then, about 7 pm the 2 youngest get to open their presents already, and the youngest would go to bed after it, but since he's already 2,5 years old, I'm guessing he'll stay up this year, and also eat some gourmet along with us.

Around 8 pm, we'll have the gourmet dinner.
And we have never ever opened present on Christmas day itself, always on Christmas Eve.
Which is usually around 10-11 pm for the past years.

That alwyas takes a while, and brings more crap in wrapping paper along then actual gifts :lol:

After that, my brother sometimes starts up the gourmet set again, and eats a bit more, haha.
While I usually head to bed around midnight / 1 am.


For New Year's Eve, we've been doing fondue (meat) for ever since I was little.

[Sombolia]

Christmas!

Well, when my extended family used to live closer to us (1-2 hours away), we always used to go to my great aunt's house for Christmas. There'd always be a ton of people, lots of food, lots of drinking (for the older crowd, of course), lots of presents, lots of kids running around, some occasional family drama... xD A few years back though a lot of my extended family ended up moving up north, and while we sometimes still go see them for the holidays, it's a long (8 hours!) and expensive drive up there, so sometimes we can't or just... don't want to bother, haha.

So now usually Christmas is just me, my mom, my stepdad, and my mom's sister, with my cousin and her family stopping by for a while too. It's a lot smaller and quieter, but I don't mind. :3 We usually open presents first thing in the morning on Christmas, and later we have a big meal (ham or turkey, with mash potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc).

These past couple years our tree has been kind of lackluster but I'm determined to have a cool one this year! :lol: I haven't decided what I'm going to do with it yet, but it'll be awesome dammit! I love decorating the Christmas tree, there's something really nostalgic about it.

Oh, another thing I love about Christmas is driving around at night and seeing everyone's houses decorated... some people just have fairy lights strung up but some people get really elaborate!! In my neighborhood there is a house that has a ludicrously tall tree and they somehow decorate the entire thing with lights and baubles, it's crazy (and looks adorable).

I always found church boring as a kid too, but the Christmas service was a bit more spirited, so it was pretty fun nevertheless. I haven't been to church in years though and have no desire to return, though, so.

As for kids--I don't want kids atm, but that could very well change in the future. It would be fun to have some sort of Christmas tradition with a significant other, but I've got no ideas for what that would be :p

[Azerane]

Growing up our Christmas tradition was pretty much the same each year, at some point during December we would usually have a giant gathering with my mum's side of the family, and often on Christmas day or soon after we would go up to my nanna and poppa's from my dad's side and usually stay there at least a few days. Christmas itself at our house was always immediate family; Dad (if he wasn't away working), mum, my older sister and older brother. A couple of days before Christmas we would usually head out to get the tree, often us kids with dad. I don't know if we always went to a Christmas tree farm, but I remember doing it. You go there and walk around, pick out your tree, chop it down, then pay for it on the way out based on how tall it is. So we'd get our tree, there was usually some drama on the way home in the car involving some sort of insect that crawled off the tree near one of us kids.

Getting home we would put up the tree and decorate it. At which point we would also bring out other decorations, a bit of tinsel (garland for you u.s. folks) to stretch across some spaces in the room, the nativity scene, a few other bits and pieces, but really not a whole let. Our Christmas decorations were always minimal at best. When we were little we had these big plastic bags (sounds dodgy, but really wasn't) with a Christmas picture on them that acted as our stockings, we used to lay them under the tree (we've never hung up stockings except really tiny knitted ones on the tree for each of us that would get a packet of lifesavers in them). One year my mum actually made huge stockings for us for all of our names stitched on and we would lay those under the tree instead.

Come Christmas Eve we would have a very light, early "dinner" before heading out to church maybe around 6-6:30pm. That's when the magic happened, because even though our parents were with us the whole time we were at church, somehow when we got back, there would always magically be presents under the tree in our stockings! It was like :gasp: But were we allowed to go near them? Oh no... first we had to sit at the dining table, Christmas music playing the background and we would enjoy all the delicious special Christmas treats that were on offer. Chocolate Rumballs, Christmas Dip, Honey biscuits, coconut marshmallow slice, fruit punch, and probably some other things I'm forgetting.

Even though I was so eager to get to those presents, sitting at the table before hand was always one of my favourite things, we'd have the Christmas music, we'd all be cheery, lights would be on on the tree and we'd just have candlelight. Magic stuff :)

So after stuffing ourselves, it was present time. Most of the presents would be in our stockings, but usually there was at least one bigger thing each under the tree that didn't fit. We would take in turns opening presents and my dad was the designated present dispenser from under the tree. After much excitement of presents, we would play with them as long as we were allowed, eat some more food and go to bed.

Christmas Day was relatively uneventful. We would go to church again in the morning, have some sort of special lunch, often ham I think.

And that's our Christmas. As we got older things changed a little, we had a Christmas or two at my sisters place. One year, for some reason everyone bought gifts that were in HUGE boxes. So then after all the presents were unwrapped and taken out of them, the whole floor was a foot deep in wrapping paper :lol: After it was just me left at home, there were a couple years where we had one of my friends and a friend of mum's over because neither of them had family to be with that year. So that was nice :)

This post has gotten kinda long, so I'll come back another time and write about stuff I might do different if I had kids :p

[KanuTGL]

Ooh, here come the Christmas threads... xD I'm a little torn still on when it's "okay" to start thinking actively about Christmas, start playing the music, buy the presents etc etc :lol: Early or late November? I love Christmas music, but I don't want to start too early... :P

Anyway, we have quite a few Christmas traditions, come to think of it. We celebrate on Christmas Eve, so the 24th is the big day for us :3 Christmas is normally at my parents' house and only the closest family is there; my grandparents on my mum's and dad's sides take turns in celebrating with us, haha.

The house is decorated on one of the Advent Sundays and that's when we bake our gingerbread and saffron buns too :) We get the tree a couple of days before Christmas and decorate it with lots and lots of baubles, tinsel and lights.

Early on Christmas morning my mum and dad come in to wake me and my brothers up and they bring candles that they leave by our beds <3

When we were younger, "Little Santa" would come in the morning too, bringing gifts. The "Little Santas" were pictures of "tomtar" sewn on a piece of canvas, with pockets to put very small presents in. Like so: http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/KanuTGL/Lilltomten_zpsf45c5505.jpg My grandmother on my dad's side made them and my dad and my uncle also used to see them on Christmas morning when they were little, hehe. Now only my youngest brother, who is nine, gets a visit from Little Santa :P

After this we have breakfast. It's extremely rare that everyone eats breakfast together, in fact I think it only really happens on Christmas Eve, so it's lovely to all sit together by candlelight while it's still dark outside. During breakfast we watch the final episode of Julkalendern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julkalendern) as well.

Then we generally scatter again until lunch xP Christmas lunch consists of ham, meatballs, small sausages ("prinskorv"), potatoes, bread, brown beans, many many types of herring and several other things. I tend to stick to the meatballs, sausages and potatoes xD The lunch is one of my favourite things, for the same reasons as Azerane. Christmas music, lights, good food... So nice :)

At three o'clock it's time to watch Kalle Ankas Julafton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_All_of_Us_to_All_of_You), as has been Swedish tradition since 1960(!), and we generally have some cake or chocolates with it. There was some controversy over the program last year, as Disney had cut out a couple of scenes from one of the shorts that showed characters that were based on racial stereotypes. Fair enough. The funny thing was that some of the characters were cut but other, I imagine, equally offending characters got to stay. And personally I reckon that if Disney is going to start censoring some of itself because old material doesn't conform with today's views, they should do so to all their productions. And there would be very little left if they did.

After the program finishes it's time to start looking out for Santa xD Usually the dads pretend they have to go and "buy the newspaper", then dress up as Santa and deliver all the presents. In my family Santa tends to be whoever wants to do the dressing up thing now, as no one is young enough any more to believe in it. For the last couple of years my youngest brother has been doing it xD I can remember a couple of times when I was little though when I couldn't recognise who was behind the mask/beard and I still don't know who a couple of them were. Santa hands everything out, then he leaves and we start opening our presents. We take turns too and after that's done we're allowed to play with our new things :P

The rest of the evening is pretty calm and everyone is free to relax.

Christmas Day is generally pretty uneventful for us; it's kind of the day of relief after the very scheduled Christmas Eve, hehe xD

If I have kids I'd probably try and keep most of these traditions alive. It's my favourite time of the year and Christmas Eve is nearly always a wonderful day.