Hello EMC! With Christmas just around the corner and many other holidays around this time of year I was just curious to hear people's holiday traditions! I do not use the term Holiday traditions just to be PC to those who don't celebrate Christmas. I truly do like hearing about other religions, cultures & traditions. Feel free to post about any and all holidays you celebrate! For myself & my family, we celebrate Christmas and we have a few special traditions that I'd like to share. These traditions are not ones passed on from either of our families, they are ones we started with our own family: When it comes to our Christmas tree, my wife and I both have some ornaments from our childhood that we put up each year. We also collect Christmas ornaments whenever we travel. When it comes time to decorate our tree we start with the basic ornaments and ones from our childhoods (the kids put most all of these on). Then we pull out the "special ones". These are from our trips & travels. Some from just my wife & I, some as a family. We try to get the kids to recognize them and tell a story about the trip (if they were there) or my wife & I will talk about the trip or tell a story. It takes awhile, and our tree looks a bit like a jumbled mess, but we love to reminisce all the good memories. Hopefully one day, our kids will be able to pass those memories on to their own children. The 2nd tradition we started with our family was a tradition from a friend of our's family. We liked it so much we adopted it as our own when we got married. On Christmas Eve everyone gets to open one present. The catch is, it is always a new pair of pajamas (generally Christmas themed). Everyone then wears their new pajamas to bed. This way we all have nice new pajamas in our pictures on Christmas morning!
This is the last time I will attempt to bump this thread before letting it fade into obscurity. Kinda makes me sad, I was really looking forward to hearing other people's traditions & customs .
That's amazing with the ornaments. Moose and I started collecting them in our travels just by happenstance and I plan to incorporate something similar. I've had a few different traditions over the years, due to coming from a split family and Moose's family has their own too. I'll try to condense as much as possible, because I can get overly sentimental about these things. The List (sorry for rambling, but I'm on a nostalgia trip): Ornaments were always a big thing when growing up. Moose doesn't quite understand how obsessed I am about them, but he will when we have a kid. Growing up,each kid had their own ornament with somethingthey loved to do in sterling silver and our names engraved on the back. My step-mom always had the most gorgeous ornaments on our tree and every year the front of the tree was the 'pretty picture side' and the back was the family memories side. Now about the travel ones with Moose...It all started with a trip to Mexico right after I graduated college. There was this goofy little straw snowman (since we were in Mexico for the holidays) in the airport and we fell in love with it. I just had to get it. Then, the next trip we took, we saw another ornament that was super cute and I got that. Then we realized that the most useful souvenirs we were getting were all ornaments. So we have expanded on that. Every museum we went into and monument we visited in DC recently I got an ornament from. My ideal tree is just covered head to toe in memories. Christmas Eve at Mom's consisted of Midnight Mass (which was actually at about 9 pm) at the church up the street in a new Christmas dress that my Grandma would spend all month making for me, since we sang in the choir (singing a solo in Czech when you are 10 is very confusing lol). Then we we got back, we were allowed to open one present. Usually it was great-grandma's present that I always opened because I knew it was going to be chocolate =P She had this thing about always giving the same present: An apple, an orange, a bag of reese's peanut butter cups, and 1 dollar. I have no idea where that tradition started, but I wish I did. The rest of the presents we'd open when we got back from Christmas mass the next morning. Christmas at Dad's has changed drastically over the years. When we lived in a more urban setting, he and the neighbor would duke it out over the most elaborate Christmas decorations. I'm talking 20 foot tall rebar snowman completely lit up, carousels and ferris wheels that actually moved...it was a little over the top. He would usually start after Halloween making that year's addition to the yard. This was before LED lights really made their debut (people marvelled at our rope lights), so it was always a giant fire hazard of course, but some of my strongest memories come from helping him build them and we were even on the news one year. Then, when we started my snow-cone stand (yes, I started working at about 11 =P), we actually kept it open in the winter and served hot chocolate for free. Dad moved all the Christmas decorations to the land we owned and where we were located. Poeple could come out and enjoy the lights, have a free cup of hot chocolate, and enjoy their family time. We made a TON of money in tips because they refused to accept the free hand-out and said it was worth it. In the Christmas spirit, we then took that money and donated it to the Texas Children's Baptist home in town. We then moved to the lake and it was too rural to have the Christmas decorations up and be viewed. So we stopped and started just doing the typical Christmas exchanging presents, etc... And now...We visit as much of the families as we can during the holidays. Moose comes from a split family as well, so it takes a lot of driving to visit everyone. His dad's side has a tradition of the Christmas game, where you bring a gift of $50 and draw numbers, then people can choose to switch or stay, etc. It always gets a few good laughs. His granny always cooks Christmas Gumbo instead of the traditional Ham or Turkey, so that's always a nice change of pace =) His mom's side we visit normally the same day since they are in the same town, then we have a nice dinner with her when we get back to Austin. It's a lot of driving and advanced planning to try to fit everyone in...This year we haven't done any decorating because we are house hunting. But once I get settled in a house that I know I'm not going to have to move from, I'm getting that giant tree and I'm starting my traditions back up again and maybe I can have them all visit me =) Alright... I'll stop writing out my essay now.
My mom has special ornaments from her grandma from the 80s and 90s that are very special to all of us. She took those with her when she moved out, so we just use some of my sister and I's childhood ornaments and some pretty ones to decorate the tree at my dad's, then we go to mom's and decorate the tree there. My dad has a pretty big house so most of his family come over, lots of fun. We have dinner and sit by the fire and do all of that good stuff. Opening presents happens after dinner, and once everyone is gone, my sister and I open one present each from dad. Then on Christmas Day, the big presents are always left unwrapped. We open our main presents, then work on the little ones. Then grandma and papa come over with a huge box of presents for each of us, and grandma explains every single present but we always enjoy her coming over. Then we go to mom's on Christmas evening to open all of the presents over there. Happens like clockwork every year
One of our biggest traditions beside some of the foods we eat with the ham on Christmas like Pierogi, Peirniki and boiled red cabbage with tomatoes and bacon... Is putting up the manager. This is no ordinary manager. My grandfather was a carpenter. When my grandparent's first got married they did not have a manager for their first Christmas together. After that first Christmas my grandfather went around and collected the base trunks of every Christmas tree he could find and cut the bark off the trees in small planks and built a manager from them. It has been passed down from my grandparent's to my mother and now I have it to continue on the tradition. The manger is now over 100 years old. I'm proud of that tradition. Eventually I will pass it down to my son. Merry Christmas y'all.
My Christmas is probably less exciting than others but here I go: We set up the Christmas tree about a week before Christmas, I dont help set it up and I only put 1 ornament ( the same ornament ) on the tree every year xD The ornament is a cat dressed in spartan warrior armor! On Christmas Eve 2 of my uncles and aunts sleep over at our house for the night. On Christmas a lot of our family comes over to our house and we open presents and eat a few snacks then I go to my room so Idk what they do xD When it comes to dinner we always have my grandma cook delicious food like Chicken, Corn, Mashed Potatoes, Cranberry sauce, etc..! EDIT: We dont spend Christmas with my father or his family because he is in another state 3 hours away and if he came I would not be attending the Christmas Celebration xD
Our Traditions are.... Old one, no longer - Open one gift on Christmas Eve (A Small gift) -Have Christmas Dinner, Christmas Day, and we always drive down to have it with my grandparents or my mom's side. -Get the tree Semi late, and Decorate later in December. hehe -Always obtain egg nog every winter... Used to have many more but kinda fell apart over the years when my parents got divorced, and it got less and less of us....
I'm not 100% where it started (somewhere in my mom's family), but every Christmas Eve all of my family that lives locally gets together and makes homemade pizzas. It's pretty fun because each person chooses what to put on their half of a pizza and you can try out what other people have created, though I'm just a cheese pizza person myself.
I too come from a split family & I used to "make the rounds" going to see all the different ones in my family. That is, until I had children. The first year we had a child, my wife and I decided we would no longer travel. "If you want to see your grandchild, come to our house". Ever since, we have had an open door policy on Christmas Day. Stop by whenever you like, we'll have plenty of food available. It has worked well for 10 years now. This year feels strange, because it will be the first year none of the grandparents are planning to be here in Christmas Day. We will see some before & some after, but it will just be the 4 of us on Christmas Day.
