What are your Christmas/Holiday traditions?

[Cheece]

I'm not sure if this has been done before, but I've been thinking about it a bit lately. 5 months ago I moved away from my hometown and my family and friends to be with my long distance boyfriend. We were long distance for 2 years and only saw each other quarterly, so I made the 'leap' and moved approx 2000km away from everything that I knew.

I come from Queensland, Australia, and our Christmas' generally went like this:

6am: Open Presents!!! Usually 1 from Mum & Dad, and 1 or more from Santa, depending on the size of the presents of course
9am: Breakfast - Crepes with fresh fruit and custard, bacon and eggs for the boys, champagne
12pm: Begin to travel to a relative's house for lunch
Lunch: Cold meats, salad, and a LOT of prawns. Prawns in salads, prawns on their own, in their shells sitting on ice. Lunch is always held at a house with a pool, and everyone goes for a swim after lunch because it's soooo hot
By the time lunch wraps up, its 5-6pm and we start to head home. Not much happens in the way of dinner, maybe some cold meat and salad if you're really hungry - it's a fend for yourself situation.

Now I'm in Tasmania - also in Australia.

My boyfriend tells me that Christmas lunch is nothing like my Christmas lunch - it's a full roast!!! It still gets warm here, but not quite as much as Queensland.

This year we have made and decorated our own Santa Sacks (i've never had one before, so it's a must! It's a tradition we have started and will do every year). We each have a *big* present, and smaller presents to fill up our santa sacks. It's just the 2 of us this year, so we're reaching a compromise on the food - I can have my prawns, and eat them whenever I want throughout the day, and we're having a roast lunch. I guess it's something I do need to try! I'm still thinking about trying to recreate breakfast, but i'm not sure I could ever live up to the crepes my godmother makes!

It's scary, and exciting at the same time - this is my first Christmas I won't be with Mum & Dad & extended family - but at the same time I'm creating new special memories and traditions!

I'd love to hear what YOU do for Christmas or the holidays

[clivia]

Well I'm in Sweden and the twenty-fourth aka Christmas Eve is our celebration day. Christmas is the biggest holiday of the year here (we don't celebrate Thanksgiving) and not spending this time of the year with family is unheard of. I live 420 km or 260 miles from my family and usually I go home two days before Christmas Eve. Depending on their working situation most people I know try to take a week off around the Holidays.

We start with breakfast around 9 or 10, my mum makes traditional rice pudding/rice porridge served with ground cinnamon, sugar and milk. We also have vört bread, it's a really dark bread with raisins and spices like ginger, clove, cardamom and bitter orange. This bread is only for sale/made in December and traditionally it's served with mustard baked ham or cheese. Christmas stockings isn't common in Sweden but we usually get a small gift in the morning. When we were kids my mum and dad made a treasure hunt with clues around the house leading to our gifts. Strangely enough they stopped a few years ago, it might have something to do with me turning thirty next year

The rest of the day is spent preparing the food for later, maybe taking a walk or visiting family and friends. In the afternoon, around 3 we start of our Christmas dinner by eating insane amounts of pickled herring, herring salad with beet roots, smoked salmon, various pâtés and other cold cuts. Then it's time for mustard baked ham again, served with different kinds of cabbage, boiled potatoes and Finnish turnip casserole (Lanttulaatikko). We also have meatballs (made of moose) and Waldorf salad. I almost forgot the drinks, we have snaps, Christmas ale and of course julmust. When we're done everyone is so full it's painful even to move/talk/breath. So we lay like digesting lions around the house for an hour or two.

At 6 pm or later we start with the Christmas gifts. Usually one of us "plays" Santa and hand out the gifts one by one. If there is rhyme "Santa" reads it. We drink glögg and eat gingerbread. If anyone has room for dessert my mum mix the leftover rice pudding with whipped cream and vanilla and serve it with slices of orange. It's called ris à la Malta. Later on me and my brothers usually plays poker and drink whisky, we stay up late and believe it or not but we're actually hungry again sometime after midnight. This is a new tradition but it's a really great one, my middle brother makes us barbecued pork ribs and potato salad. And that is the end of Christmas Eve, or maybe the morning of Christmas day.

[karen]

Oh to be able to go swimming at Christmas!!! It's fascinating- and really nice to know what a proper Scandanavian Christmas is like...DH is pretty tight-lipped about it. I think maybe Finns are sworn to secrecy because of the whole North Pole Santa's Workshop being in Finland thing.
We don't have a lot of traditions left...as we've grown Christmas changes depending on who's home, and what we all kind of feel like doing that year.

Usually we have some sort of soup for dinner on Christmas Eve, followed by the re-telling of the story about the year my Mother sent my Father to the corner store for tape, and he enjoyed a bit too much Christmas cheer. They're not really drinkers, so seeing my Father falling down sloppy drunk is a story he wasn't able to live down. Oh, and the story about when my in-laws were living in Bangladesh and my MIL smuggled half a plane load of frozen turkeys for her ex-pat friends past customs by slipping some Playboys in her luggage and using them as sort of a "bribe" (yes, I have a very cool MIL). Then we go to church, and my Mother presents us with our annual Christmas pajamas- like she has since we were tiny kids. My Father was a police officer, and every Christmas Eve there was "Operation Santa watch" on the police scanner. The dispatcher would report on Santa sightings saying things like "Santa has left the North Pole and is headed towards Norway" and then updating it throughout the night. We'd listen to it and get more and more excited as Santa got closer to our house. One year they reported that Santa had flown over our house, but skipped us because we weren't in bed yet. He apparently doubled-back because I don't recall any years without presents. I *think* they still do it.

Then we all gather again on Christmas morning to unwrap presents and eat too much. When we were little we'd wake up early, and my Mother would put baskets of stuff near our beds so we'd have something to play with first thing in the morning- so they could sleep a little. Lately we've been making Finnish pancakes for breakfast (a big puffy oven pancake which is usually dessert in Finland)- usually it's at my Mother's house, last year it was at my brother's house. It may be at my house this year.

We pretty much eat all day- mostly finger foods- and always, always Slim Jims- which are kind of a shelf-stable plastic wrapped "sausage like" product. They're commonly sold in gas stations, and advertised by professional wrestlers. We loved them so much as kids we'd fight over them, and it's just not Christmas without a box of them. We also eat a lot of "nuts and bolts" which was my Grandmother's recipe- it's essentially Chex mix but with Cheerios and a lot more butter. Christmas dinner is usually some sort of roast but often not very elaborate because we really do just eat all day long.

That's pretty much it...Norman Rockwell eat your heart out.

[ladycattat]

What a fun topic!
When I was little every Christmas Eve we'd have fondue....always cheese, then oil(for beef or shrimp) and last but not least...chocolate.
As an adult, our lives are always so crazy we don't have *traditions*. per se. But one thing we are always consistant about is that we don't get our tree until Christmas Eve(you score the best bargains that way). The decorations are already up, so as a family we put on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Holiday Album then decorate the tree. Usually we send the kids to bed pretty early, then smuggle all the unwrapped gifts in from the garage (where they were under lock and key!!!) We lock ourselves in our room and get all the wrapping done about 1am.
We normally go out to my folk's house in Indio(near Palm Springs) the day after Christmas. We used to go on Christmas Day, but it became such a hassle to get the presents from Santa all smuggled out that I finally begged my Muz to let us have Christmas Day at our own house.
This year is going to be weird....this is so soon after my brother's death, but I think we'll be aright.

And Karen, last year the kids went swimming on Christmas day.....my Dad cranked the heater in the pool just for that one day!!!

Laurie

[tizzylou]

From the time I was born until I was in high school we always spent Christmas at my grandparents. My grandfather was a local physcian and both of the community hospitals were ran by the Mennonites. They would carol on Christmas Eve at the various shut ins in the area and at the homes of the physcians. They always did my grandparents last and would come in for coffee and various goodies. The first Christmas that I wasn't at my grandparents on Christmas Eve to enjoy this almost didn't seem like Christmas to me.

My parents always bought me a new ornament for our Christmas tree, and I always got it when we put the tree up, which was the week before Christmas,so that I could enjoy it on the tree that year. When I got married and moved away, all the ornaments that had been mine from childhood went on our 1st tree, it held alot of special memories for me. I have carried on this tradition with my children and now my grandchildren, and yes I mail that ornament early so that they can put it on their tree when they decorate it.

We always go to church on Christmas Eve and then come home and have a light supper, usually inviting several elderly neighbors who don't have family in the area. If I'm not working the next morning then we open presents, if I have to work, then we will open them either late Christmas Eve or on Christmas day after I get home. Christmas dinner is almost always Prime Rib .

[Xarata]

Pennsylvania, USA here.

Growing up, we always got our tree (preferrably Douglas Fir- they smell like oranges and hold up well) a couple days before xmas. As children, we would go to bed and the tree would be undecorated. When we woke up in the wee hours of the morning and crept out to the tree, Santa and his elves would have decorated it in our sleep, and there would be a new special ornament hanging above each child's presents (i am 1 of 4) and the full stocking laid against the presents too. Since Bob and I don't have any kids, our current tradition (a whole 2 years running which is the number of trees we've had together) is to go get our tree when it's snowing.

We weren't really allowed to wake everyone up until an acceptable hour (we usually got up anywhere from 4am to 6am) and in the meantime, we would hunt for the traditional dutch/german "pickle" which is an ornament that is hidden on the tree to teach children to appreciate every ornament on the tree as they hunt for the pickle. The child that finds the pickle gets a special present. Our mom would usually wake up and come out about half an hour to an hour after we snuck out to the tree. She would then let us go through our stockings which always have an orange in the toe because traditionally, fruit is a special treat in the wintertime.

For food, there is a big family gathering of all my aunts and cousins usually on xmas eve or xmas day. We eat dinner around 2 or 3pm so we don't eat breakfast (though we might eat cookies. ha!) Around here, xmas dinner is usually a xmas ham and then a feast of sorts very much like thanksgiving. Our family does something called pollyannas which is a version of secret santas where we draw names and buy gifts for the name we draw and then we all gather and get to open our gift, with the youngest child going first and my grandma going last (she doesn't draw a name, she likes to buy for all and we all buy for her)

[Silverfern]

We do similar things to most people on the eastern coast of the US; Trees, meals on Christmas Eve, waking up early on Christmas morning for presents. But one thing that stands out to me is how much my Dad loves to fill stockings around the fireplace. If we forget to go check for our stockings he gets so bummed out. He fills them with all kinda of crazy stuff from like the dollar store, each item is usually hastily wrapped. So much fun.

[AgnesONutter]

I also live in Sweden and celebrate on the 24th, but since my father is Danish and the cook in the family, our Christmas dinner is a bit different than the usual Swedish one

When we were children, Christmas started with carrying home the Christmas Tree. Then, on the day before Christmas even, we would all gather and decorate it. We still do this, since for me, it is not Christmas unless the tree is there in all its glory of red bulbs, golden glitter and golden pearl strands and candles. When it is properly decorated, the gifts go underneath and wait there until after the annual Disney Show on Christmas eve, around four o'clock. When we were kids, of course, we got one of our gifts in the morning to hold us over.

In the morning, my father cooks the Christmas Porridge. When we were kids, we always had a bowl but now it just goes straight out on the balcony to cool down for the special desert later. We mix the porridge with vanilla whipped cream, and chop almonds into it and serve with rum cherry sauce with whole cherries. The thing with the Christmas desert is that there's one whole almond in the bowl, and who ever finds it wins the special gift, usually a box of nice chocolate.

Peeling the almonds is tradition, too. You just boil them in water, until the skin comes loose, then you press the almonds out of the skin with your hands. It's really fun, since it is quite slippery!

Really, the day is centred around cooking. We have plum and apple filled ducks, this special Danish pork roast called "fleskesteg", usually "medister pölse" (a special sausage), carameled potatoes, boiled red cabbage and brown sauce for dinner. To drink, red wine, cola or julmust. This year we are putting emphasis on the duck, however, since my boyfriend who is a Muslim will spend it with me.

We don't really eat that much before the dinner, since everyone is really waiting for it. Though of course, there's bowls of nuts, oranges, clementines and chocolate to nibble on.

After dinner, we usually just hang around, play any new games we have been gifted for Christmas and then it is time for bed.

On Christmas day, we have a traditional Swedish Christmas smörgåsbord with pickled herring, meatballs, cold cut ham and so on.