Your Family's Christmas Traditions

[*NikkiBell*]

Bouncing off of the conversation at the end of this week's news show, I thought it'd be fun to share our Christmas traditions in this thread.

For my family, we have the Italian Seven Fish Dinner on Christmas Eve and then each get Christmas PJs as a gift. On Christmas, we have a huge all day present and dinner bash with everyone. We also tend to watch A Christmas Story on TBS being that it is on for a full 24 hours.

 

[Kristina4109]

What a lovely idea!

Growing up, we'd go to the late service and get back home at about midnight, and open all the presents under the tree. In the morning, we'd open our stockings and find one special present from Santa.

Now that I have my own family, things are different. I'm a professional classical singer so I have to sing midnight mass with my church choir. In previous years I would sing with a Christmas caroling company all day on December 24th. I took the season off this year so that I can spend the day with my family. I'll have Christmas Eve dinner with my husband, daughter and sister-in-law. Then I'll head to church and sing all night.

I'll get home around 2:00am and I will try to remember where I hid the baby Jesus figurine from our manger scene, and I'll put him in place. On Christmas morning my family will let me sleep until about 9:00am. My husband will make gingerbread pancakes and then I'll get up, mumbling about how tired I am while someone shoves a cup of coffee in my hand. Then we'll open all the presents, occasionally using Skype so our out-of-town relatives can watch my daughter open her presents.

Some years we'll travel on the day after Christmas so we can have a "second Christmas" with our relatives. Other years we'll stick around L.A. and try to find fun holiday stuff to do while it's sunny and in the 70's, if we're lucky!

 

[rteetz]

On Christmas Eve we go to my grandparents house and have dinner and open presents with them.

Christmas Day we wake up open our presents from Santa and then of course watch the Disney parade while we cook for dinner later when the entire family comes over. Our entire family of 25 or so comes to our house we eat and open presents and enjoy ourselves.

My go to Christmas movie is National Lampoons Christmas Vacation.

Other than that I am huge into Christmas lights so I have my display of over 12,000 lights done to music with a Disney theme of course.

 

[SoScary'09]

Cute thread idea

I have a small family of three, all adults. Our usual Christmas tradition is to get up late (as in not at the crack of dawn) usually have breakfast first, and then open presents. We have these small handmade "coal boxes" and each year one of us takes turns filling them with small gifts. It's my turn to fill the coal boxes this year. I got them little tree ornaments

My family is also half GER, so when we were kids hiding the pickle in the tree was a yearly tradition. My little sister and I would look for it on Christmas Eve and get holiday pjs for finding it.

 

[pigletgirl]

- Christmas eve consists of decorating sugar cookies (and sometimes gingerbread houses too) and having a calm and low key day. We'll go to church at 5pm and then come home to soup. After dinner we will gather and open jammies and a few odds and ends and then parade around the house in our new jammies!

- Christmas day, we'll get up and no one is allowed out of their room until the music is playing (O Come All Ye Faithful) and when it is we can come see what Santa brought. After opening stockings, we eat breakfast and once it's cleaned up we'll open gifts. That usually takes until 2-3pm and then we crash! We all get cleaned up and start the Christmas dinner. We have beef tenderloin, Yorkshire pudding, green beans, rolls and salad. Dessert is always Christmas cookies with mint chocolate chip ice cream. It's a full and exhausting day!

 

[SaraMc]

I always work Christmas Eve, I usually leave around 4 and head home for the MC family dance party. We start as soon as I get home. We all get to open 1 present which is always new Christmas pajama's that almost always match.
My BIL stays over every christmas eve and also manages in retail, so he gets there bit later and also is in Christmas pi's too. We listen to songs, dance and play games. Dinner and hot chocolate and then its reading the Night before Christmas with the kids and then off to bed they go. Then we watch White christmas usually and prepare for Santa's arrival.
I make breakfast in the slow cooker and head to bed. Christmas morning its presents and the parade and my mom shows up and we do it all again.
We also do boxing day which is the 26th and we go to my aunts and have a quieter christmas celebration with all the cousins. And a whole bunch of wine.

 

[1Grumpy9]

When I was younger and my grandparents were living, we would go to Christmas Eve Candlelight service and then over to their house for a small dinner. In the morning I would get up and open all my presents and then head back over to my grandparents for opening of more presents. We would then go to my Uncle's house (my mom's oldest brother) and have her family's gathering.

Now we have my mom's family over the Sunday before Christmas to exchange gifts. We still go to Candlelight service on Christmas Eve and come home and watch A Christmas Story a couple of times. We get up in the morning and open up the presents, watch the Disney Christmas Parade and then make dinner. It has gotten a little low key for us as there aren't any little ones running around on Christmas morning.

 

[Quicklabs]

We break the oplatki and share it and our good wishes with each other, followed by a strong spiced vodka drink. Then, there is a meal which should have 12 dishes in it (for the 12 apostles and months of the year). After supper, we play board games. When we were younger, we'd head to midnight Mass, after which we'd open the gifts and have another meal. (I can't stay up that late anymore).