Your Holiday Traditions

[bookbard]

I love hearing about everyone's different traditions. For example, the whole cookie thread - I don't think baking lots of biscuits and swapping them is a big thing in Australia. The only person I know who does it comes from Germany. Maybe because it's summer over here?

One tradition we always used to do was a small coin would be underneath our 'pudding' plates. This was instead of the coins being hidden inside the Christmas pudding. I haven't passed that one on as we have huge family Christmases with a dessert buffet which heavily features pavlovas - always at least 2.

We do still have Christmas crackers or bon-bons (we use both/either term) just before dinner starts, we always wear the paper hats and read out the silly jokes! Our family Christmas nearly always has a cricket match out the back and the usual big family photo. Basically the famous song about Australian Christmas is bang on for us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnMSQlgNS5g

 

Books are a big part of our tradition, exchanging one on Christmas Eve and then slipping a special one (eg hardback) under the pillow so they wake up to a special book. No Christmas stockings at the end of the bed, but a small stocking under the tree (all of us, not just kids) with 2-3 things like tshirts in it, and then a couple of bigger presents - generally more books! 

 

 

[Spryte]

@bookbard I love all the books!

We usually have an open house on Christmas Eve, with chili and goodies all day. Party games. DD makes reindeer food and sprinkles it in the yard. We have stockings but Santa scatters them around the living room, leaning places, once they are stuffed as they won’t stay on the mantle. We open one gift on Christmas Eve, usually pajamas and maybe a book. Christmas Day we have appetizer for breakfast, and lounge around in pjs a lot. Play. Naps. 

The lead up to Christmas is my favorite time. We make cookies — no swapping due to allergies. The kids go to bed one night and find a golden ticket. We pile in the car in PJs with hot drinks and go look at lights. And my favorite night is when we wait for Santa to come through the neighborhood on a fire truck. Pre-Covid, lots of kids would bundle up and play outside among the Christmas decorations and lights. Now it’s just family but we all jump up and down and wave like mad. And Elf. We have to watch Elf. We used to go to NYC for a show, but not the last few years.

DH and I make kahlua as gifts. And all the usual wrapping and making and fun.

[Tenaj]

I think some years that we have too many traditions but it is what it is! 

Ravioli and Pioneer Woman's Christmas finger jello and egg nog for Christmas Eve supper. 

Stockings first thing on Christmas morning.  Cinnamon Rolls for breakfast and then presents (and we take turns opening the presents one at a time so it is a long event!)

My dh started the tradition of he and the kids sleeping under the Christmas tree one night.  I'm kind of sad this year because none of them have mentioned it - youngest is 12 so I'm guessing that tradition has gone.

 

 

[lmrich]

Lots of traditons here - some will be changing this year. 

Christmas Eve breakfast - French toast Christmas trees (just cut your bread in triangles, stack them, sprinkle with green sugar and put a sausage under it to look like a trunk), grits/potatoes, fruit salad.. 

Christmas Eve the kids get their Christmas collectable (the oldest a Santa, the middle a nutcracker, the younest an angel) but they are hidden and they have to hunt for them. The kids also exchange gifts. Church (not sure this year) and then come home to soups in the crockpot and watch Elf and a Christmas Story. 

Christmas  morning - the kids wait at the top of the stairs to have their picture taken and then we open presents munching on sweet rolls, sausage balls.. and new tradition - toasting with mimosas! Then my family comes over in the afternoon for a large spread of food that I have made and so many cookies (my mom's family is German) and open presents.

 

 

[Eos]

We're at my mother's for the first time in perhaps 30 years.  One of her traditions is mine too - lighting the candles on the tree and singing carols on Christmas Eve - but otherwise we're kind of flying blind without all our usual plans.  She can't walk much so our Christmas Day hike will be around the block instead of through the forest. The kids are being good sports, but I hope I get to have another Christmas at home with them next year before they all decide to do their own.

[Faith-manor]

We have been exploring Mark's Danish/Norse roots, and adding new things. So last year I did a Danish Smorrebrod and that was a huge hit on Christmas Eve. It has been requested that this be our permanent thing. I am gearing up for it again. We also love the idea of Icelandic Elves, and dh built an elf house for the kids, soooo cute, and the grandsons will be leaving cookies, sparkling grape juice, fruit, and trinkets for the elves on Christmas Eve. When they are asleep, dh and son in law will sneak out and confiscate the gifts. Then in the morning the boys will find an elf inside the house with a little gift for each of them. Throughout the year, elf will randomly.show up with treats or impish behavior depending on what dd chooses to have him do. On New Years Eve, the grands will light paper lanterns to light the path of the elves as they change houses. Mark is making little hobbit doors for some of the trees in the yard so the elves have more than one house from which to choose.

I am attaching a photo. Our almost six year old grandson, N, drew a very accurate picture of this design all by himself. Mark taught him to "scale" it using measurements in even inches, so N re-drew it with his ruler on graph paper. He them spent the entire day with his Papa Mark building it as well as a train shelf. So this elf thing will be a tradition while the grandsons are young enough to enjoy it.