I have a mixed history with Christmas. Sometimes it has gone well (I had a couple of good ones thanks to Tom) and sometimes it has gone very poorly. Now that I’m the mommy I get to set a lot of the parameters around how Christmas goes so I’m thinking about that a lot. There are a few traditions my mother started which I want to continue:
-You get to open one present on Christmas Eve. It’s jammies. Ha!
-Your stocking is full of a mixture of very useful things and very silly things. Socks and underwear are pretty standard.
-Home made cinnamon rolls for breakfast. 🙂
-Your “Santa” present is unwrapped under the tree so that you can have something to play with before everyone else is ready to open presents.
What kinds of traditions did ya’ll grow up with? What traditions do you still keep?
Before anyone is snarky: yes, I recognize that many of my friends are Jewish. Tell me about your Winter Holiday of Choice traditions. 🙂
We had a similar Christmas Eve tradition only it was a new robe and slippers and not jammies….
We always make cookies on Christmas eve
Always a toothbrush in your stocking and candy (a weird mix I know).
“Children” always sit on the floor Christmas morning (and yes I’m still on the floor, as is my aunt who’s 37).
I could never open anything till my grandparents arrived.
My mom’s side of the family is German, and in Germany, Christmas Eve is the big day (precisely, the evening, after dark). Since we live in the US, Christmas Eve isn’t the time we open presents, but it IS the time we, as a family sit down, light the tree for the first time (yes, we use candles!), chit chat about latest happenings (now that everyone’s moved out), and argue about whether it’s REALLY necessary to read the christmas story in the bible (I say no, my mom says yes- guess who wins). Also, Christmas Eve dinner is traditionally cheese fondue, the one time of the year my family makes it.
Other traditions include stockings for the kids- they’re the ONE thing you’re allowed to open early (as soon as you wake up) provided you’re QUITE so Mom and Dad can sleep in (“sleep in” being 7:30 or so). Then it’s a nice breakfast, and after breakfast is cleared, everyone moves to the living room and starts the unwrapping. Another odd tradition we have is that things are unwrapped one thing at at time. It think this comes from when my dad’s elderly relatives were still alive, so they could see what else was given and received.
I think it’s awesome you’re deliberately working on putting together some positive traditions:)
I still have dreams of some day having a candle-lit Christmas tree. I’m an honorary German, right? 🙂
The rest of those sound very much like what we do with‘s family. 🙂
one dollar the first day
2 dollars the 2nd day
3 the third….
about $36 bucks total
Yours are surprisingly close to mine, actually. We too did jammies (or slippers or a robe) as a Christmas Eve present. Instead of the “Santa present,” we opened our stockings first; there were usually a couple of little toys (often gyroscopes or yo-yos) in there to tide us over while the grownups dawdled… along with the mixture you describe, toothbrushes and socks plus candy and silly little tchotchkes. And I’ve done homemade cinnamon rolls more years than not, thanks to a terrific overnight cinnamon roll recipe. Also, usually, a few outsiders — friends who don’t have anyplace else to go — for Christmas dinner.
During the years I was with TXWSNBN, we usually had a big Open House on Christmas Day — it was a great deal of fun, often with several dozen attendees. But I had to call a halt to it when I hit that big depression toward the end; it was just too much work, and I felt like it was taking energy away from my connection with family.
This year may be the first one that one of the Dudes isn’t here for Christmas — Miles may not be able to get time off work 🙁 I’ve known for years that one of these days they’d have their own Christmas plans (although I sort of thought it would be their own partners or families), so it isn’t too huge a shock, but it’ll still be odd if that’s what happens.
My family doesn’t open anything on Christmas Eve. The only presents under the tree when kids go to bed are ones friends have dropped off before Christmas. Otherwise the tree is empty when the kids go to bed.
Along with putting presents under the bed while the kids are asleep, we decorate the living room (or the room with the tree). Typical decorations are steamers and balloons.
On Christmas morning everything is done as a family. Once everyone is up, stockings are passed out and unstuffed. Once stockings are done, the kids are sent to get out of PJs and into normal cloths. Meanwhile breakfast is cooked. Everyone eat breakfast before opening presents.
Presents are opened one at a time. Daddy acts as ‘Santa Clause’ and hands the presents out. Everyone watches as each present is opened. Santa works hard to make sure presents are opened in an order that keeps the same person from opening two in a row and keeps everyone from going too long without opening anything. I takes a while.
Also, because‘s mom is who she is, there’s a lot of food traditions built up. The traditional Christmas Eve dinner is a seafood soup. Christmas morning, breakfast is Dutch babies (yum!), with fruit and such on top, and some sort of breakfast meat (usually bacon). Christmas dinner varies, though.
I LOVE XMAS!!
Xmas Eve: dinner with the extended family. Before my aunt and uncle moved to Gilroy, their house was close enough to my grandparents’ that we could all go to Gram’s for Mexican food — she always did enchiladas on that night, and other things by request — and then head over the other place for dessert and presents. (Now we all end up in Gilroy for all of it.)
Xmas Eve is as sacred a family tradition as we have. I’ve skipped church, friends’ parties, and each year of the Castro Street Theater choir performance. A couple years I was working retail, and came down late, but I couldn’t NOT go.
We opened extended-family gifts on Xmas Eve. The middle kids were in charge of finding all the tags on the presents and making piles for each person near where they’d be sitting in the living room. We went around the kids first, in order of age, youngest to oldest; they opened one at at time and took turns until they were all done. Everyone gave their hugs and kisses and thank-yous (my mom kept a list of who gave what, for thank-you notes later.) Then they could play with their stuff or go to sleep or go read (guess which one I was). Then the adults: they had a secret name draw at Thanksgiving, and each got their person one present, so this went quicker than the kids’ unwrapping. We started with Gram and went around the room one way or another. Being 18 meant you might still be sitting at the kids’ table (depending on available space — we had 25 adults and 6 kids at Thanksgiving this year), but you finally got to be part of the gift draw!! That also meant giving up your presents you’d’ve gotten if you were in “kid” status.
Xmas morning: stockings first! This was at home with the small family: me, sister, mom, and dad. I don’t remember the earlier years, but my mom always took plenty of pix, so my sis and I would spend some time primping in our pajamas after we got up. She and I would distribute the gifts from under the tree, and we’d open ’em by turns again, all four of us. Once presents were all done, we’d have brunch, which always included fried potatoes and onions, until the year Mom attempted a Scottish Breakfast Casserole that had me in tears at the table (I thiiiink that was the year I’d been bleeding for 12 days straight, and was kind of emotionally unstable). After that, my sister and I took over brunch — carb-happy with home fries and bacon and eggs and baeges and lox and fruit.
My mother’s sister would usually phone around noon; they lived in Germany for awhile and now in Virginia, so we didn’t see them at the Xmas Eve thing. The rest of the day was for visiting with neighbors and playing with toys, and for the past couple years, we’ve been going to a movie in the afternoon. Back down to Gilroy for a smaller Xmas Day dinner, which is not such a big deal (two years ago I skipped this and spent the day after stockings/presents at my girlfriend’s with her hubby and her bff, the chosen family).
We celebrated kwanzaa by… okay that was bad.
Xmas eve was big in my family – we had the big dinner on the 24th and were allowed to open one present each, at midnight. I don’t remember how the presents got picked though.
The 25th was a big open house kind of thing.
Today, we hang on to the Xmas eve dinner (4th annual get together at a friends house); at midnight, I pick Elaine’s to open and she picks mine. Then we put on footie jammies and go to bed.
Xmas day – take turns opening presents
One present Christmas Eve – we got to choose.
Cookies and milk out for santa, carrots for the reindeer.
Nobody could get out of bed before 5am.
Stockings were fair game at that time, presents weren’t touched till after breakfast.
I’m sure there are more that I just don’t think of…
Christmas Eve was spent listening to Christmas songs, probably prepping food for the next day, and wrapping presents until the wee hours because of procrastination. Sometimes this would be done in front of the roaring fireplace.
Kids (well, me, and I would assume my brother and sister even though they were teenagers) (well, and it continued into my teenagedom so there you go) could get their stockings whenever they woke up, and generally were really quiet about it because DUDE IT’S CHRISTMAS SSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHH
Commence with day of food and presents and Christmas songs and when I was little, Grandpa watching golf. Good times. It was fun to be a kid at home. [Elementary school, not so much, because of the jackass jerkoff boys that I will probably hate until my dying day, barring some massive personality relaxation shift, but yeah, I have good memories of those ages nonetheless.]
Now, we’ve been splitting time, one day with Jim’s family and one day with mine, and I can’t remember which way it goes, all I know is there is driving and looking nice and opening gifts and people taking pictures and it is awkward and awesome at the same time.
Best Christmas ever, though, was coming out of my room and seeing a kid-sized table and two chairs “under” the tree. That might’ve been the same year as the giant stuffed dalmatian. DUDE I went crazy when I saw those. Ditto with the unmarked presents near the fireplace one year. I was, and still oddly am, convinced that they were from Santa.
Man, life can be pretty cool sometimes.
We have similiar traditions, PJ Christmas eve, Stocking full of useful stuff and Ken grew up with presents from Santa being unwrapped. My parents always gave us something on Christmas morning and I continued that tradition.
The food is a whole different story, Christmas is the feast of seven fishes (it is a sicilian thing as opposed to an Italian tradition) no meat. After midnight we eat sausage and peppers and rice balls with chopped meat.
Oh yea we sing Happy Birthday to Jesus.
Christmas Day is when we open presents from Santa or the day after depending when we have Lil Mis L. The meal can range from any type of protein (not fish) along with the sides.
You need to deciede what you want out of holidays and how you want to celebrate them with Shanna and then you will have your own traditions.
best wishes through this holiday season
-G
My big Christmas tradition, beyond all others:
No matter where we lived, we had to have a fireplace. Even when I lived in the middle east, we had to have a fireplace. Because how else was Santa going to visit? The first year over there my folks convinced us to put our shoes out “like the little Dutch kids do”. The second year, we demanded a fireplace. So my mom took some large sheets of drawing paper, drew an outline, and during a party my parents threw, all us kids colored in the fireplace. We left it up till early January, with the stockings thumbtacked on. We did this every year we were over there. When we moved back to the US, we moved into a house with two fireplaces and an indoor grill. And all us kids *demanded* a hand-drawn fireplace anyway! I’ve had a crayon & paper fireplace in every place I’ve lived since moving out of my mom’s house. The need for a paper and crayon fireplace at mom’s subsided as long as my mom was in a house with a real one, but when she moved to an apartment, we brought paper to the Christmas gathering and made her one. A handful of years ago, I found a plastic sheet with a fireplace printed on it and gave it to her. I’ll probably use that in my house now.
It never really occurred to me till now that we never bothered with drawing a fireplace for my dad’s apartments & houses after he and my mom split – we only made them for mom. I’m sure because she was more into it than he was, but I’d never really thought about it one way or the other before.
When we were little we would typically attend the early church service on Christmas Eve, then come home and have dinner (menu: crab and ravioli). After dinner, but before bedtime each kid could open one present–generally either pajamas or something from someone out of town. On Christmas morning we woke up very early and opened our Santa presents, immediate family presents, and presents from people who weren’t going to be at Christmas dinner. We weren’t allowed to even go in the living room until everyone was up. Christmas dinner was the big extended family event; we would eat and open presents. Dessert on Christmas is always a platter of the same eight kinds of cookies.
These days we’ve changed a few things although the general gist is about the same. As we’ve all gotten older and moved out and added a few people Christmas Eve has turned into the casual Christmas event. The dinner menu is still crab and ravioli, but the invite list has expanded. We now have everyone staying with my parents (including my brothers and this year two of my out of town cousins), me, my husband, generally the Vissas across the street show up at some point… we still don’t invite the local extended relatives. We have also moved the main present opening to Christmas Eve as no one is interested in getting up early Christmas morning anymore. After eating and opening presents, everyone who is interested goes to Midnight Mass. In the morning we only have stockings and they can be opened whenever. Christmas dinner has all the family from Christmas Eve and all the extended relatives who are local; it hasn’t really changed, nor has the dessert menu.
In other traditions, we do the four Sundays of Advent with an advent wreath at home. We have this reader for it that I think came from some Episcopal Church the year I was born; we’ve used it as long as I can remember. We also leave the tree up until Epiphany on Jan 6.
Childhood traditions I’ve kept:
House decorations do not go up before Dec 1st.
The tree is real, and purchased only 2-7 days before Xmas. It stays up until Jan 6.
Eggnog is an essential part of house decorating, tree decorating, and Xmas Eve.
Stockings should contain at least one food item. Preferably stockings should also include at least one pair of underwear.
Breakfast Xmas day should be something special.
And so, this is Christmas …
From early memories of Christmas at my grandmother’s house: cedar Christmas trees and greenery (loved that smell!) and a fruit-and-nut tray left out for snacking that had tangerines, pecans, and Hershey’s kisses. This was rural South Carolina, and tangerines were a rare and special treat at that time.
From my childhood, growing up in a Southern Baptist household: we put a lot of energy into celebrating the “reason for the season” more than the Hallmark trappings – although we did put a Christmas tree up a week or two after Thanksgiving. Performing in a Christmas pageant. Singing in the choir for the Christmas cantata. Caroling with the Concert Choir in high school, and shocking people who opened their front doors to a full a cappella rendition of any one of several of the Christmas choruses from Handel’s “Messiah.” No opening of anything on Christmas Eve – everything waited for Christmas morning. And we couldn’t touch a thing until the parents got up — but boy, could we go LOOK. Food memories include my mother’s Christmas cookies traditions, such as Russian Tea Balls and Ginger Sugar cookies. In later years, she also baked sausage balls in advance, so we’d have an easy heat-n-eat addition to Christmas brunch. Christmas dinner was turkey.
As an adult, when I converted (yes, voluntarily) to Catholicism, my focus shifted. Celebration of Advent, with the Advent wreath. No tree until Christmas Eve, and it stayed up at least until Epiphany (and all the way to Candlemas one year). Music continued to be a huge part of Christmas for me. For several years, I sang in the choir for Midnight Mass. Then, later, I arranged the music/orchestration and conducted the young people’s choir and mini-orchestra for the Family Mass at 8:00 pm. Started my own tradition of playing the Christmas portions of Handel’s “Messiah” at home on Christmas Eve and/or Christmas Day. I added my own bit to the food traditions by making mini-quiches to go with the sausage balls for Christmas brunch, and switched from turkey to a plump juicy roasted hen for Christmas dinner.
Now, the things that still say “Christmas” to me are hearing/singing Handel’s “Messiah” – especially if I can find a Sing-Along Messiah available. The food traditions I have carried forward include little satsumas and nuts, Russian Tea Balls and Ginger Sugar cookies, mini-quiches and sausage balls for Christmas brunch, and a roasted hen for Christmas dinner later in the early evening.
Re: And so, this is Christmas …
Oh, and I almost forgot the tree ornament tradition for my kids. When they were itty bitty, I started buying them one ornament every year, with the idea that I would give them their ornaments when they grew up and were ready to have trees of their own. That way, they’d start off with a “starter kit” that came with a history of wonderful Christmas memories.
I like those traditions. I don’t really… have any. Except that we open presents one by one, starting with the youngest, or the oldest, depending, and taking turns. And I really don’t like that traditions… Wait, actually, I really do. It just gets kind of boring. We also have had a joke, since I was in, like, 3rd grade, of yelling “Pants!” when someone is about to open something very small that couldn’t possibly be pants.
I’ve been celebrating Jewish holdiays recently, throughout the past year, and I love the traditions.
Oh, and my siblings and I make up names for the the from and sometime the to spot to see if te recipient can figure it out.
mostly
what i recall
was simmering anger between
an angry mom and a hung-over dad.
i’ve abandoned *all* my families traditions.