Holiday Traditions Thread

[BLAZEY]

Today is Thanksgiving here, but we have our dinner for 19 last
night. We do potluck and rotate who host the dinner. This year was our turn. We did the bird, a ham, potatoes and a vegtable. The rest was potluck. We had my family and the DH family, plus my sisters parents in-law. we find it easier to do it this way that having 3 different meals to go to. Christmas Eve was singing carols and DH Nana's house, whe she move to an independant living complex DBIL got the piano and they now host the carol sing. Christmas morning at my mom's house, brunch and stockings taken to the care home where Grampa is (93 with dementia) with dinner on a different rotate schedule. Our families all live in town. We consider ourselves fortunate that our families get along so well and are able to get together like this at most holidays.

 

[BLAZEY]

Today is Thanksgiving here, but we have our dinner for 19 last
night. We do potluck and rotate who host the dinner. This year was our turn. We did the bird, a ham, potatoes and a vegtable. The rest was potluck. We had my family and the DH family, plus my sisters parents in-law. we find it easier to do it this way that having 3 different meals to go to. Christmas Eve was singing carols and DH Nana's house, whe she move to an independant living complex DBIL got the piano and they now host the carol sing. Christmas morning at my mom's house, brunch and stockings taken to the care home where Grampa is (93 with dementia) with dinner on a different rotate schedule. Our families all live in town. We consider ourselves fortunate that our families get along so well and are able to get together like this at most holidays.

 

[sunflowerfields]

My mil has 23 grandkids & 34 great grands. Our family tradition on my husbands side is that Santa comes the day we have our family gathering. Each child (until they are out of high school) sits on Santa's lap and is given a special bag of treats with a handmade and dated ornament in it. Most yrs. my sil has made the bags and stitched each childs name on theirs. Some yrs. the ornaments have had extra special meaning like the yr. my fil passed away the kids got tiny baseball bats with our last name and the date on them. My fil made baseball bats as part of his woodworking hobby. It gets really funny when Santa brings up something about the teens that they are surprised he knows. Santa never embarrasses anybody and they all have a great time. This yr. we will have 28 little ones for Santa to visit with including a baby boy who will arrive in late November. For some of these children when they graduate from high school they will have 18 special ornaments for their own trees when the time comes.

 

[gracie1]

My mil has 23 grandkids & 34 great grands. Our family tradition on my husbands side is that Santa comes the day we have our family gathering. Each child (until they are out of high school) sits on Santa's lap and is given a special bag of treats with a handmade and dated ornament in it. Most yrs. my sil has made the bags and stitched each childs name on theirs. Some yrs. the ornaments have had extra special meaning like the yr. my fil passed away the kids got tiny baseball bats with our last name and the date on them. My fil made baseball bats as part of his woodworking hobby. It gets really funny when Santa brings up something about the teens that they are surprised he knows. Santa never embarrasses anybody and they all have a great time. This yr. we will have 28 little ones for Santa to visit with including a baby boy who will arrive in late November. For some of these children when they graduate from high school they will have 18 special ornaments for their own trees when the time comes.

What a cute tradition!

 

[Deffenm]

Thanksgiving tradition: We host brunch and then got to inlaws for traditional dinner. My mom and I then head out around 10 pm for Black Friday shopping. We usually finish up about 8AM the next day.

Christmas Traditions:
Visit tree farm and cut down christmas tree, spend the day decorating tree, watching Christmas vacation, drinking egg nog and eating cookies

We have an advent calendar that is a box. Each year I put either little trinkets, candy, or pieces of paper with things to do like go to zoo to see lights, get frostys and drive around to see lights, go see movie, etc..

Put up holiday village

Kids and hubby get Pjs and small gift like book or legos to unwrap on xmas eve.

When the kids were little they would make reindeer food and sprinkle on the front lawn (oats and sugar sprinkles)

Our DD's birthday is Dec 24th so we always go out for breakfast and she opens her Birthday gifts. We do not do any Christmas Eve activities until we are done celebrating her birthday (I try to make it special for her).

We eat pizza on Christmas eve and visit with family.

Christmas morning I make monkey bread and then snack all day on things i have pre made.

 

[MomToOne]

Traditions? Where to start, where to start...

Halloween: Nothing really. Just handing out candy (the good stuff!) to neighborhood kids.

Thanksgiving: I don't have any extended family nearby, and both DD14 and I don't really like turkey, so we have our own unique tradition. Christmas movies are banned in our house except for the period from Thanksgiving to New Years to keep them special. So on Thanksgiving Day, we watch our collection of Christmas movies from the minute we get up, until we go to bed. We typically stay in our pajamas all day, and we eat an endless stream of our favorite appetizers all day long. I admit by the end of the day I start getting a bit restless, so this year I think I am going to start a bit of decorating on Thanksgiving Day too.

Black Friday: In recent years, we've started going out to Kohls at about 4am, when all the crazies are gone, but the store is open and there are still some good deals to be had. From there, we go to Home Depot for their opening to pick up some $1 Poinsettias and our Christmas tree. Yes, we are those crazy people buying a Christmas tree at Home Depot at 6am on Black Friday (Last year we actually met the guy who drives the truck delivering the trees from the Christmas Tree farm - he told us how he likes to help families pick out trees that day, then goes back and tells everyone else on the farm about it all. That was a nice encounter - and he really helped us pick out a great tree!) After we get our tree, we go home, and decorate the whole house with all our decorations and put up the tree. That fills the day. We usually finish exhausted about 5 or 6pm. So it's a quick take out dinner, then home to another Christmas movie - usually Polar Express which we like to watch with all the lights turned out except for the Christmas Tree

Saturday after Thanksgiving: AmEx Small Business Saturday. We take advantage of this. This year they are allowing 3-$10 purchases, so I think we will go to a tourist section of town that has a lot of little independent shops and pick up a few small gifts for folks.

Between Black Friday and the time we leave for my mother's (more on that in a minute), we typically:
- Go see some sort of Christmas movie in a theater
- Decorate a Gingerbread house
- Pick out a new Nutcracker for our collection (a mainstay of our Christmas decorations!)
- Make ornaments to put on the outside trees for the neighborhood critters. We usually just put pieces of cut up apples and oranges on pipe cleaners. While I usually hate all the squirrels in our neighborhood, I figure they along with the birds deserve a few Christmas treats. And DD loves doing it. This year we might try making some ornaments I saw that are made out of birdseed and gelatin.
- Bake lots and lots of cookies and other treats.
- If weather permits, we will drive around town one weekend evening looking at Christmas lights. But the weather doesn't always cooperate.

"Santa Mom" actually visits our house a weekend or two before Christmas, because we travel cross country to my mother's for Christmas proper. DD wakes me up WAY too early, she opens her packages and we make some sort of large breakfast. Then I usually spend the rest of the day packing

We usually head out to my mother's the weekend before Christmas. We seem to have established a new tradition of me cooking Tortilla Soup our first full day there for whoever shows up at the house (usually one or two of my brothers, maybe my nephews and sister-in-law depending on their schedules). Christmas Eve we have our full family gathering at my brother's house - myself, DD, my mother, my 3 brothers and one sister-in-law, my sister and her long-term boyfriend, my 2 nephews and sometimes some friends of my brother who can handle our crowd We drink too much champagne, my brother cooks a huge dinner, and we exchange our gifts (a tradition my parents started with us when we were little-family gifts on Christmas Eve, Santa gifts on Christmas morning). The kids love it, but it kills them to have to sit through the long dinner before they get to the gifts LOL We give the kids and my mother regular presents, but in the last few years my siblings and I have started a gag gift exchange between ourselves that usually leads to some pretty good laughs! It started with me and my little brother reviving an old tradition of gag gifts between the two of us, then it grew to include all the siblings. Sometime during the day my sister also plays a game of Jeopardy with the kids, with questions she has made up, often about family or events during the year. She hands out cash for every correct answer, so the kids love this event too!

Christmas Day Santa Mom brings DD just her stocking - I do a GREAT stocking since this is the extent of my gift interaction with her on Christmas Day - then we get all dressed up and go to my brother's in-laws (note that's not "my brother-in-law's", it's "my brother's in laws"!) for dinner and yet more gift exchanges. I know it might seem weird to spend Christmas Day with your brother's in-laws, but our two families actually lived next door to each other growing up (yes, my brother literally married the girl next door!) so they are almost like family to us all, and this gives my nephews the chance to spend the day with both sets of Grandparents.

Now, all of that said, I've noticed in recent years that while I love having traditions, some of them seem to be getting a bit "stale" for us. So I am looking for a few ways to liven some of them up - not change them drastically, just infuse something new into them. I need to figure out how to add something new to Christmas Day, and maybe Thanksgiving Day. So I am reading everyone else's posts with interest!

 

[MomToOne]

Weird question about the train around the tree, where do you put the Presents? Inside the train? I don't think they'd fit? Outside the train? How do you see the train? I want to get one, just not sure on the logistics!

We also have a train around the tree. We don't put presents under the tree until Santa comes, so we leave the train "parked" in the front of the tree between the time it goes up and the time Santa comes. When he comes, the train is repositioned at the back of the tree (it isn't big enough to hold any presents really - maybe a small box or two, but Santa usually saves stuff that small for the stocking) This works for us because Santa only leaves presents for DD14, and the front of the tree is enough space for him I guess if you have more kids that won't work though - I know I had 4 brothers and sisters growing up and there wasn't ANY room under that tree come Christmas morning! It also works for us because our family gift exchange doesn't happen at our house, so those gifts aren't under our tree.

Putting ornaments on the tree always involves a lot of storytelling. Every year everyone in the family gets a new ornament, sometimes commemorating some milestone, sometimes just reflecting their interests or personality. We have all the ones that were my Mom's, and use the time to remember her. Some of my ornaments are over 100 years old, and I can remember them on my Grandmother's tree and hearing stories about her Mother when she hung them.

Our ornaments are like this too. We have ornaments made by me when I was little, ornaments DD has made, ornaments that used to belong to various family members, ornaments from our trips, ornaments that reflected different interests over the years, etc. Each ornament has a story, and DD loves hearing ALL of them as we decorate the tree. I call it a "family tree" for that reason - it's not a tree any decorator would put up, but it totally reflects our family and I love every inch of it.

On top of the tree, we put what looks to be a sad, ratty Santa Claus tree topper. Paint is chipping off in a lot of places, and the cap has been broken in half and glued back together. But it is hands-down the most meaningful ornament for me. My father picked it out to top the tree when we were kids - we loved it, but my mother hated it. She always wanted an Angel on top of the tree. So the minute all the kids were gone out of the house, she banished the Santa and bought an Angel. My father gave the Santa to me at that point, probably because I was the only child that realized what had happened and quickly asked for it It always makes me think back to those happy Christmases as a child and of my father, even more so once he passed away - I always was a hardcore Daddy's girl!

 

[Sparkly]

Something I did last year and now want to do every Christmas (well, as long as I live here anyway) is see the local village's Christmas lights. I got a bus to the top of the village, walked down from one end to another and got fish and chips for dinner before returning home. I just love lights!! I must be half moth.

 

[tcherjen]

On the night we decorate the tree we have summer sausage and cheese and bake cookies. I also buy my kids an ornament every year. When they start their own families they will have a start to their tree. I get the ornament to reflect whatever they were into that year. Great memories looking at them each year. ( Tommy and Angelica Pickles are on our tree each year)

 

[Mrs Lapo]

I love traditions! This thread is a great idea. I've seen a few things that I would like to adopt for my own family Here are our traditions:

Halloween: I work as a haunter at a local attraction so I get to celebrate Halloween a lot longer than most. It's a lot of fun to get paid to scare the pants off of people. Especially since my kids are still younger and I can't have scary decorations or anything like that at home.
Halloween night I'll stay home to take the kids trick or treating. DH will stay home to give out candy. Then we have a big bonfire with our neighbors & their kids after tick or treating is done. (I'm very thankful Halloween is a Fri this year)

Thanksgiving: We use take turns between friends hosting a friendsgiving the weekend before Thanksgiving. But now that everyone has kids it's kind of fallen through the cracks. And usually we host Thanksgiving for my husband's family & my immediate family but this year we'll be in WDW. Woot! Woot! So not only do I get out of all the cooking, cleaning & drama but we will be in the most magical place on earth! (it's not a coincidence we'll be in WDW this year.. it was very carefully planned Haha)
Usually I am up at the crack of dawn shopping on black fri & then I spend the weekend decorating for Christmas but that will all have to wait this year.

Christmas: When I was a kid my Great Grandmom would always sleep over on Christmas Eve. We would go to evening mass, come home, have dinner, open one gift (our pj's) and then she would sleep in our room with us and be there with us when we woke up the next morning. It is one of my fondest memories. So when I had children she was delighted to continue the tradition with them. When she passed away in 2011 I didn't think I would ever make it trough Christmas without her. But we found a way. And then last year my Grandmother who lives in Cape May stepped in to save the day. She now comes to stay with us on Christmas Eve.
Christmas morning I have a buffet brunch for family & friends without kids. We keep the kids upstairs until our family gets there that way they can see their excitement when they come down to see what Santa brought. We stay home all day in our jammies & people stop in throughout the morning. But Christmas night is just me, DH and the kids. We watch movie, play new games that Santa brought & the best part... we order Chinese food for dinner. (again, no cooking for me yay!) It's my favorite day of the year!

New Years: We host a NYE party every year since 2004. The kids have their own party in the basement while the adults are upstairs. Everyone has a great time & a few close friends even stay over. Then in the morning we all get up, have a big breakfast and go downtown for the Mummers parade. Love our time on 2 street! (really Philly people know it 2 street and not 2nd) The kids have a great time doing the mummer's strut and dancing. One of the best parts about living in Philadelphia

 

[lovemy2girls4eva]

These are all great! Thanks for sharing!!

 

[DisneyWalle]

Fall Tradition:
I cook Pumpkin Stew (which my son loves). I only make it once and then everybody has to wait til next year --- makes it very special.

Thanksgiving Tradition:
I cook the same menu every year but again we only get those foods on that day: BBQ turkey, Sweet n' Sour turkey, Cornbread dressing, Giblet Gravy, Deviled Eggs, Sweet Potato Casserole, and Pecan Pie.

Christmas Traditions (favorite):
The same day that I decorate the house - I also wrap presents and put them under the tree.
I cook Christmas cookies and other desserts every week so something special is always available on the counter.
Christmas music plays throughout the day during the month of December
We visit a local park called Holiday Spectacular which is decorated in tons of lights, sit around the fire, and drink hot cocoa.
Sometime during December, we will have a bonfire on the farm and roast hotdogs and Marshmallows. We will just sit around the fire and play word games that we make up (sometimes these can get very entertaining).
On Christmas Eve, we make Santa cookies, feed the reindeer, make the Happy Birthday cake, watch It's a Wonderful Life, and I always wrap my son's door in wrapping paper after he goes to bed.
On Christmas Day, I always get up first...put on the Christmas music, turn on the tree lights, and start breakfast. Then we all gather around the tree - starting with stockings first then presents. Afterwards, we watch Christmas movies all day, play games, and snack on appetizer foods that my son chooses the week before.

 

[lovemy2girls4eva]

Fall Tradition:
I cook Pumpkin Stew (which my son loves). I only make it once and then everybody has to wait til next year --- makes it very special.

Thanksgiving Tradition:
I cook the same menu every year but again we only get those foods on that day: BBQ turkey, Sweet n' Sour turkey, Cornbread dressing, Giblet Gravy, Deviled Eggs, Sweet Potato Casserole, and Pecan Pie.

Christmas Traditions (favorite):
The same day that I decorate the house - I also wrap presents and put them under the tree.
I cook Christmas cookies and other desserts every week so something special is always available on the counter.
Christmas music plays throughout the day during the month of December
We visit a local park called Holiday Spectacular which is decorated in tons of lights, sit around the fire, and drink hot cocoa.
Sometime during December, we will have a bonfire on the farm and roast hotdogs and Marshmallows. We will just sit around the fire and play word games that we make up (sometimes these can get very entertaining).
On Christmas Eve, we make Santa cookies, feed the reindeer, make the Happy Birthday cake, watch It's a Wonderful Life, and I always wrap my son's door in wrapping paper after he goes to bed.
On Christmas Day, I always get up first...put on the Christmas music, turn on the tree lights, and start breakfast. Then we all gather around the tree - starting with stockings first then presents. Afterwards, we watch Christmas movies all day, play games, and snack on appetizer foods that my son chooses the week before.

Do you mind sharing which Christmas cookies you make? Thanks!!