Holiday Traditions

[Poohlove]

I love reading everyone's traditions, thank you all for sharing!

I forgot about a couple of ours, my sister and I exchange ornaments every year. We get the wackiest most outrageous one we can find and everyone gets a laugh out of it.

We also drive around and look at the lights. There is a family in our town that has a beautiful display the attracts many people every year, we also go see that.

 

[adisneyaunt]

Thought I'd share this strange/funny/wasteful Tradition that a friend of ours has... hubby reminded me...
Well this friend usually has a large gathering for Christmas.. I think 20 or thereabouts.
Every Summer she buys dishes at garage sales... mix n match etc.
then they Use those dishes for the family meal and
DITCHES them after the meal!!!

She says that it makes for an easy clean up and its fun for her family.
I think it's kinda crazy... but it's Her tradition lol

 

[Poohlove]

Thought I'd share this strange/funny/wasteful Tradition that a friend of ours has... hubby reminded me...
Well this friend usually has a large gathering for Christmas.. I think 20 or thereabouts.
Every Summer she buys dishes at garage sales... mix n match etc.
then they Use those dishes for the family meal and
DITCHES them after the meal!!!

She says that it makes for an easy clean up and its fun for her family.
I think it's kinda crazy... but it's Her tradition lol

That's different lol

 

[Aliceacc]

My kids and I have had conversations on this topic. Our consensus is that it doesn't matter what your traditions are, but that it's important to have some. Seven fishes on Christmas Eve? Christmas Caroling? Watching Rudolph every year as a family (one I forgot to mention-- we're not allowed to call my husband to the phone unless it's a medical emergency during Rudolph.) It doesn't matter what you choose. What matters is that your family does some things that make this very precious time of the year special, build some memories for your kids to perpetuate to their own kids one day.

They don't have to be grand, expensive, time consuming traditions. They just have to be yours.

I LOVE the garage sale plate idea. It's light years away from our Christmas china, but that doesn't matter. It's uniquely theirs, and something they'll do with their own kids one day.

 

[PigletsPal2]

Some of these are making me tear up!

We've had many "mini-traditions" go in and out over the years, but the ones that have stuck are driving around as a family looking at Christmas lights, opening one present Christmas Eve (carried over from my own childhood) and cinnamon rolls for breakfast Christmas morning! DS also cannot come downstairs until I've turned on the tree lights, but "Santa" always leaves one present in his room.

We had a similar deal (once we were old enough). - We couldn't wake our parents up until coffee was brewing!

The Christmas Eve present is one of our traditions as well. DH and DGD get a movie to watch that night, DD#2 and I get books, and DD#1 gets a new yearly planner to start filling out. DH, DGD and I usually go to church and then ride around the neighborhood admiring the decorations while DDs#1&2 make dinner. After dinner and dishes, we open stockings and the one gift.

When my sisters and I were growing up, we always got new pajamas on Christmas Eve, and gifts weren't opened until after breakfast, which always included (and still does!) cinnamon rolls, and the dishes were done. And if Christmas fell on Sunday, we had to go to church before presents were opened!

But my very favorite tradition is my family's unique tradition of the craziest, weirdest, most unconventional to/from cards that we can think of. It started in the early 1990s when I addressed a pair of slippers to DD#2 from The Barefoot Contessa. DD#2 was really getting into cooking right about then, and she was sure the gift was a copy of Ina Gartin's latest cookbook! From that point on, it became a competition to see who could come up with the most confounding card. This year, I think I have it in the bag, though. I got a gift for DD#1, from Miss Jean Brody. The train of thought goes: The Prime of Miss Jean Brody (one of DD#1's favorite movies), DD#1 has an Amazon Prime account, the gift is an Amazon gift card! Did you follow that? Both DDs, DGD and her husband are all getting gifts from ICE - I got them each a AAA membership and ICE stands for In Case of Emergency.

If anyone wants to weigh in with suggestions for DH's custom floor mats for his Durango, a telephoto lens for DD#1's camera, an editing software program for DD#2, and/or a heavy-duty badminton/volleyball set for DGD and her husband for entertaining at their new house, I'd welcome your input!

Queen Colleen

 

[MinnieMouse84]

When I was younger, I watched the Hanukkah candles tried to guess the order in which they'd burn out. It became a race. Tbh I'd still do that if I didn't use an electric menorah now.

 

[Erin1700]

We have a meat-free Christmas Eve dinner of traditional Polish foods. The most important part of the meal is the breaking and sharing of a thin wafer.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt...fer-a-flavorless-tradition-that-s-oh-so-sweet

We do the same thing!

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

Nothing specific, hope to establish some new ones though.

 

[PollyannaMom]

If anyone wants to weigh in with suggestions for DH's custom floor mats for his Durango, a telephoto lens for DD#1's camera, an editing software program for DD#2, and/or a heavy-duty badminton/volleyball set for DGD and her husband for entertaining at their new house, I'd welcome your input!

The floor mats for the ‘Rango from Johnny Depp, who did the voice in a cartoon called “Rango” about a pet chameleon who falls from his owners’ car and gets stranded in the desert.

The telephoto lens from “Hubble” after the space telescope.

The editing software from “Webster and Babbage” – combining famous dictionary writer Noah Webster and early computer inventor Charles Babbage.

The badminton/volleyball set from “A Little Birdie”.

This is fun!!

 

[Aliceacc]

"Nothing specific, hope to establish some new ones though." (oops, forgot to quote.)


This is the perfect time of year, with a thread full of suggestions. Why not choose a few and get started?

 

[quandrea]

So many


Tree goes up the day of the Santa Claus parade

Baking lots of cookies--thousands--to share and to serve at our annual open house

The kids open new pjs on Christmas Eve.

Lunch at mil'S on Christmas Day. Always filet of beef

Every Sunday in the six or eight weeks leading up to Christmas we eat pizza and watch Christmas movies.

Christmas Eve used to be fish for my whole life. Two years ago we shed that tradition (for a negative reason. Whole other thread). Now we have pizza, sushi, samosas and salad along with a movie. After 42 years of a fish meal I hated, glad to change things up.

Stockings between dh and myself. I love them. We don't exchange gifts but those stockings are great.

Gingerbread men are the last cookies we bake, usually Christmas Eve.

Getting ice cream and driving around looking at lights.

Mass on Christmas Eve at 4 PM.

 

[PigletsPal2]

The floor mats for the ‘Rango from Johnny Depp, who did the voice in a cartoon called “Rango” about a pet chameleon who falls from his owners’ car and gets stranded in the desert.

The telephoto lens from “Hubble” after the space telescope.

The editing software from “Webster and Babbage” – combining famous dictionary writer Noah Webster and early computer inventor Charles Babbage.

The badminton/volleyball set from “A Little Birdie”.

This is fun!!

These are great ideas, Pollyannamom! With your permission, I'll use them!
Thanks!

Queen Colleen

 

[PollyannaMom]

These are great ideas, Pollyannamom! With your permission, I'll use them!
Thanks!

Queen Colleen

You're welcome! Let us know whether the recipients figure them out.

 

[tcufrog]

I just realized that I forgot a few traditions.

Christmas Eve I make this very easy but decadent pasta carbonara that's full of bacon. The family loves it but it's absolutely horrible for you so I only make it once a year. Christmas morning the kids open their stockings before we wake up. It buys us a little time.

 

[aristocatz]

On Christmas Eve, we usually snuggle up & watch "Miracle on 34th St" (original & the reproduction) & Emmett Otter. My kids wear matching pajamas to bed & we all stay in their PJ's all Christmas Day playing with our new presents, watching TV, & just being together. We don't eat a traditional holiday meal on Christmas Day. We nosh on appetizers & small plates/snacks throughout the day-lots of stuff from Trader Joe's

 

[Mrs. Ciz]

Christmas pjs here. We do Mass on Christmas eve and when we get home the girls open 1 gift. No other presents are under the tree. It all comes out once they go to sleep. They are big now and still like it that way! I also make pigs in blankets to chow on while we open presents

Sounds very much like our Christmas - no presents under the tree until Christmas morning, new Christmas PJs on Christmas Eve and all day Christmas day, Mass on Christmas Eve followed by dinner at a local Japanese Hibachi place.

DH's family used to do the traditional polish/slovak Christmas Eve meal and gift exchange. As the family has grown and schedules have changed, we've had to move it. It is lo longer on Christmas Eve. This year it will be on the 28th.

My immediate family is trying something new this year. Since it is so hard for us to vacation together now with the kids' summer jobs and school/college schedules not lining up, we are spending a few days at the Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg and doing Colonial Williamsburg for a few days before Christmas. I am looking forward to the fun family time!

 

[Domo]

The only things we strictly do is go to Church for Midnight Mass and watch The Snowman (not Frosty the Snowman, the other one!)

 

[MamaBelle4]

The day after Thanksgiving, we take our kids along with my parents to a local Christmas tree farm where my parents have bought their tree for the past 43 years and do the hay ride and petting zoo and tunnel slide.
Next day we go to my in laws' for a hot cocoa party, my sister in law and I wrap the presents, we decorate the tree, then santa visits with small gifts for the kids.
Then Sunday we decorate our tree.
Early in December, we go to Koziar's Christmas village (just did that tonight, actually).
The girls and I will start baking cookies next weekend. DH eats an obscene amount, so I make an obscene amount. The weekend before Christmas, we will load the kids in the car with hot cocoa for them and coffee for us and drive around looking at lights.
Christmas Eve we have Christmas with my in laws. When we get home, I give the kids their Christmas Eve pjs.
We will get up at 5, enjoy a cup of coffee together, snuggled on the couch. Then about 5:30, I can't stand it anymore and wake the kids.
Then we go to my parents where we will pass around the family Bible and read the birth aloud.

So, we have a lot of traditions I love.

 

[Gumbo4x4]

Tonight was another. Every year, a coworker's church does this thing they call The Living Christmas. You drive through in your car and stop at numerous stations where actors depict the (cliff notes version) story of Christ's birth & life There's interaction - including paying a "gold" coin tax to Roman soldiers - and even live animals most years (last year, the camel wasn't too cooperative LOL). The whole thing only takes 10 minutes, but the line to get in can stretch to 2+ hours.

 

[mikedoyleblogger]

Define "holiday" ;-)

Ryan and I are Jewish converts in Chicago. My family (we're no longer close to his by their choice) is Catholic--800 miles away in my New York hometown. We didn't speak for 20 years, but now we're close again. And although I'm secure in my own tradition, I was also a Christmas Tree maven before converting and didn't want to give up the one December tradition that reminded me of my family. So we decided to create a "Not Really a Chanukah Bush" a few years ago. I used to do massive, Victorian Christmas trees many years ago. So using what I used to do as a guide, we handcrafted or adapted ornaments to represent the entire Hebrew calendar year of Jewish holidays, and we top the tree with a stained-glass Star of David created by a glass artist who herself has an interfaith family.

Now that my family (for 18 glorious months now) is back in my life, they want Ryan and me to move back to New York, and we really want that too. And when that happens, I look forward to my Christian adult nephews and their kids putting Santa ornaments on our Chanukah Bush, to represent that our family is finally one again. Aaaand I'm misting up writing that...