What are your Christmas Traditions?

[mazil]

We almost need a Christmas board for all these topics!

So, how do you or your family spend Christmas? Do you eat anything in particular, or have any special traditions for Christmas Day? Or do you celebrate a different holiday altogether?

---

Personally, my family have a small celebration on the day. My extended family are all in England, so it's usually been just the four of us - me, my parents and my sister.

We're not allowed to open presents until after breakfast, when me and my sister head to the loungeroom (trying to appear casual, but of course very excited). Later we have a big Christmas lunch with roast turkey, potatoes, pumpkin, parsnip and peas (lots of "P" foods) and then Christmas pudding with white sauce. So much food!

This year, however, I'm going to be with my boyfriend's family on Christmas Day (they live a 3+ hour drive away). Which is fair enough, because he's spent the last two Christmases with mine! It's a bit sad being away from my family, but it'll be fun and interesting to experience his family's traditions

[sily_sicily]

We decorate our house with a Christmas Tree and Lights when it's around Mid-December. Then, we decorate the X-mas tree (hang things on it, put a star on top and fill the empty bottom with cute little X-mas stuff and fake presents). We often buy our (real) presents long before christmas, at around 20th December?
Then, on X-mas eve, we'd go to the church and when we get home (around evening), we'll have a yummy dinner and then we'd watch TV etc (spend time together) while waiting for midnight.
During X-mas eve midnight (oh right that's christmas day already) we'll open our presents and get a surprise...then we'd sort of hug and kiss each other and then keep our presents (in a safe corner?) and then go to bed at around 1am.
During X-mas we'll spend half the day in church and the rest of the day at home chatting together.
But ah well. Christmas is great time to play neopets and collect Advent Calender.

[Tharkun]

Lasagna, cheese puffs and Mexican hot chocolate. Clementines in the stockings. We've never had a dead tree - always struck us as bizarre, and anyway, Christmas tree farms are horrific fires waiting to happen, but we've finally given up on living trees (dwarf spruce or something), because they never last to the next year and have the same evil needle problem. We've gone fake.

Hanukkah is everyone else's Hannukah, only a good deal less religion, just one night of dreidel because it drives Mom up a wall, and some cool Hanukkah-themed cassettes playing in the background.

[Dragonfire]

Well, on Christmas Eve we usually go to a church service, then we come back home and we open up our presents from our godmother who lives in Arizona. We've been opening up her presents on Christmas Eve for so long that it's become an annual tradition.

Then on Christmas morning we wait for everyone to wake up and get coffee/hot chocolate, then we open up the rest of the presents. We spend some time together, then we drive down to my uncle's house and have a Christmas dinner with some extended family on my dad's side (it's convenient because they all live in Texas).

However this year, due to some problems we've had with the extended family (and the fact that my sister and brother-in-law are coming down), we're going to have Christmas dinner with his family.

[benladesh]

I go to Dubai for 3 weeks to visite me dad..Over there I am free to do what I want =P

[charlixsparkles]

Buying presents and putting them in gift bags because it's prettier than wrapping paper

We go down to the south of England to visit family and friends too

And of course, the presents and roast spuds

[hakojo]

We go shopping as a family, and everyone buys one gift for everyone else. We have a real tree every year, and a Christmas village/train set next to it that my brother and I put together. On Christmas Eve, we watch movies until bedtime while keeping up with NORAD's Santa tracker, and then we all get up around 5 AM on Christmas morning to open presents. The rest of my family doesn't talk to us anymore (big, nasty fight) so we don't really have a big dinner. My dad will get a ham or something, and we'll just pick on it, along with loads of cookies.

[Twizzler0171]

Usually, during the Thanksgiving dinner at our Grandmother's (which happens about every couple of years, so I don't have a clue what we do the year in between) we hold a drawing to see which person will get what cousin, uncle, aunt, etc. to get presents for for the Christmas party.

The Christmas party for all the family (extended and such) is usually held at my grandmother's the Saturday before Christmas (I believe this year it's being held at one of my Uncle's places, however). We'll all open presents and have a good dinner and sing Christmas carols and it's all good fun. =)

For just the immediate family, we'll usually open one present each on Christmas Eve just before going to bed. And then, I will see how long I can sleep in before the siblings make me roll out of bed to open presents. I think the longest it's been so far is 6:30 AM? Haha.

We'll also keep an eye on NORAD's Santa Tracker for a bit.

[Kitten Medli]

Gee.. do we have any? XD

Well, the past year we decided we would focus less on prezzies and donate to some places.. thats all I can think of. I don't think I will be starting a tofurkey tradition.

[May]

Well, traditions have changed over the past few years as I no longer live with my parents and my boyfriend's family lives in the same city as my family. Christmas Eve is usually spent at my boyfriend's aunt's house. We have a really good time and eat lots of food. Christmas Day is spent with out own famimlies opening presents and such, and then my boyfriend comes over for Christmas dinner with my family.

[pipsqueeek]

It used to be that my brothers and I would all sleep together for christmas eve and would wake up at like 5:00 or something, without an alarm clock or anything. We'd then spend the next couple of hours playing games while we waited for my parents to wake up. We haven't done that for a while now as my older brother and then I got to be teenagers. Now I usually have to get woken up even.
We unwrap the presents in our stockings right away, but then we can't open the presents under the tree until we've eaten and gotten dressed. Which can sometimes take a while. We're not allowed to even look in the living room(where the tree is) until it's time to open them.
My mom always chooses the first present to open, and after that whoever opened the last one cooses the next. And so on until all the presents are open. We'll spend most of the afternoon playing with our new toys, and have an early dinner of ham and other yummy stuff. And egg nog. In the evening we'll usually play a family game.

[Cerise]

I have three siblings, aged 12, 9, and 6, so Santa is still a really big deal. On Christmas Eve, my mother's side of the family has a party, usually at my mom's cousins house. Around 10pm, the music gets louder, and people get drunker, and its not uncommon to hear a group of 50 year old guys singing out the lyrics to Bob Seger or Meat Loaf at the top of their lungs. Then, the TV is tuned into 24 hours of A Christmas Story on TNT. Everytime the 'Fra-gee-lay' part comes on, everyone stops what they're doing to watch it. For some reason, its just the ultimate pinnacle of humor for the family. Kamikazes, my great aunts pizzelles, and my mothers deviled eggs are probably the traditional food and drink.

After we leave there around 1am, my father takes us around to look for deer in the woods, and check the skies for Santa. Then we go home, set out milk and cookies, and all the kids sleep in my room. Its my job to make sure they go to sleep, and dont catch Santa laying out the presents.

On Christmas, we open presents without any delay. Normally, we'd go to my fathers mother's house for dinner later, but this year the rest of the family has sort of outcasted us. We certainly werent invited to Thanksgiving dinner. Well, I dont like them anyway xP There are just tons of traditions we do. Right down to which kid gets to put the smallest bulb on the tree.

[Christopher]

Have Grandmother come down and eat traditional potatoes and roast dinner.

[Miyu]

When we were all younger it was so much fun. We always faked going to sleep; then we would all sneak into my brother's room and bide our time..then when it got to a "decent" hour... usually around 2 or 3 in the morning we would sneak out of our bedrooms and snatch up our stockings. We'd go back to our brother's room and open them up. My mother still does the stockings and such. My sister and I usually decorate the house inside and out with lights and all sorts of random Holiday decorations. Then we decorate a tree in mid-december. We split up the holidays with my dad's and mom's side of the family. This year was Thanksgiving with my dad's side and Christmas will be with my mom's; next year will be switched. I usually sleep in the latest; so I always get bombarded by siblings pulling me out of bed to exchange gifts. Then we all gather with extended family for lunner and there is always some football game on.

[Mnemosyne]

For me, Christmas Eve is with my boyfriend's family. They make lots of finger food and do their gift exchange in the evening. Christmas morning is spent at my mom's house; no one is allowed up before dawn, so the night before one of my little sisters is sure to have gone online and found the exact minute "dawn" is supposed to arrive in Oklahoma Stockings are fair game, but any presents under the tree must wait until any adults in the house have gotten up, gotten settled, and most importantly, gotten coffee. Breakfast is always kielbasa, along with eggs and toast; I think it's something from my dad's side of the family. Dinner is usually a ham. Also, all day there will be a pot of wassail steaming on the stove, making the whole house smell awesome. Christmas afternoon we usually go to a movie.

Last year I had to work Christmas day from 6 a.m. until about 4 in the afternoon. I was really not happy with that.