What are your Christmas and New Years Traditions?

[F Horn of Valere]

I asked about your Thanksgiving Traditions and got some interesting responses. What about Christmas and New Years?

 

I grew up with Christmas Eve being the main attraction. (We usually saw extended family on Christmas Day, so Christmas Eve, sometimes transplanted to another evening due to travel, was the family night.) We would have dinner with cheese fondue, jello with fruit (because as a Kid I didn't like the spicy cheese fondue), spinach balls, and Jalepeno Poppers (my dad and I liked the cream cheese kind, while my sister and mom liked the cheddar kind, so one box of each), along with sparkling cider, which in recent years became sparking PEAR cider. Yum.

 

After the meal, I would impatiently wait by the tree until the family gathered and I, being the youngest, read the Christmas story. After that, being the youngest, I started by selecting the first present. Our rule was whoever opens a present picks the next one to be opened, but it cannot be one for themselves. We opened one at a time. The next morning, we opened stockings.

 

 

For New Years, because of a really stressful year once when my mom was in a high-risk pregnancy, my dad asked if he should just go get a pizza while they do puzzles. It turned into a tradition. We turn on the Rose Parade (followed by football all day, although the Twilight Zone marathon is an acceptable alternative), while there are puzzle tables set up, and board games. We have gourmet pizza for lunch from a local favorite, and have snack food all day, including sausage and spicy mustard, and wheat thins and pineapple cream cheese (which is now semi-homemade since it is hard to find in the store anymore).

 

 

In my family now, we are changing things up a bit as it is the first Christmas in which our son is old enough to understand what is going on (2.5 yrs), as we try to meld our own traditions into something we mutually like. First thing on Christmas morning, I will turn on the tree lights, and then the little guy will be allowed out, where he will see presents under the tree for the first time. We will open stockings, and while he plays with stocking stuffers, we'll make a big breakfast/brunch, and then open presents after. (My wife insisted that presents be opened early enough that the kids can play with them during the day.)

 

We are going to keep my family's New Years Day tradition (actually, we have one more year where we can spend it with them, as we have done the last 5 years, before we move away), but our Christmas Eve meal is now a New Years Eve meal.

 

 

What do you do for the holidays?

[BFG]

The basis of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day have always been the same for our family, although the details have changed as I grew up. Christmas Eve is generally a preparation day, but we always had a buffet in the evening for immediate family and close family friends.

 

Christmas Day is stockings in the morning (on our parents bed when we were children, downstairs by the fire after we grew up), Presents and Christmas lunch (turkey, roast potatoes, gravy, pigs in blankets, stuffing, roast vet, etc). This year my brother in law volunteered to cook so were at their house for lunch, and my niece was given about a million games for Christmas so most of the afternoon was spent playing games, after she went to bed my Dad read out quizzes (the names of which should be 20 more things <<<BFG>>> won't know the answer to ) and then bed. This year I was working up until Christmas Eve, and was working late on crafty gifts until then as well, so basically I've been shattered for the last two days :(

 

New year we don't really have any traditions, this year I'm having friends round for drinks, I might try and dig out some board games or something :)

[Ryrin]

We celebrate Chanukah. Each night we light the candles, say the blessings, and open small gifts. We eat traditional foods such as latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiyot (jelly donuts.) My family attended two parties and it was really enjoyable.

 

For New Year's we like low key, eating, spending time with friends.

[Thane Vakarian]

We had a nice dinner and distribution of presents on christmas eve with my father-in-law. Those evenings usually last untill midnight, with food, drinks, presents

 

on christmas day, we went to my mother-in-law, so we could see all of Chae's siblings and had another distribution of gifts among family. All in all, family is the most important during these days

[Ryrin]

Yes, family is important.

 

BFG, I like board games too.  It's something I'd like to do more often.

[Daruya]

Well, my mother is German so we have always followed the tradition she grew up with. 

 

When I was very young, my parents would send up upstairs (or to our rooms, depending on where we lived but my most memorable was when we lived in Bundenbach and had a 2-story house with the bedrooms upstairs).  We were told NOT to come back downstairs until we heard the jingle bells ring.  We would sit at the window with our noses pressed to the glass looking for the tell-tale red nose of Rudolf.  And we actually saw it that Christmas in Bundenbach!  Well, what we believed to be Rudolf's nose, that is.  Then the bells rang and we ran downstairs and dove into the pile of gifts under the tree.

 

Then again, that isn't really German tradition either.  In German tradition, St. Nick comes early in December and fills your stocking (or shoe) with candy and small gifts.  On Christmas Eve, the Christ child brings presents. 

 

We raised my boys with the same traditions. We go to my parents' house on Christmas Eve for family time and to open gifts. My husband was quite a sport going along with it because he knew how important it was for me!  I did always try to hold back one gift for the boys to open Christmas morning when they were still very young (they are 15 and almost 17 now).  I've only had one Christmas away from my parents and that was in 1991 when I went with my then boyfriend (now husband) to visit his family in Canada.

 

We have Christmas dinner as a family (my parents, my sister, and us) usually at my parents' house. 

 

On New Years Eve, we either have a bonfire or go to someone's house for a get-together. I'm not sure what we're doing this year.
 

[Nikonis]

Christmas traditions include spending christmas eve and christmas day with my family.

No real new years traditions but I usually try to have a few friends over and stay up til midnight.