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Holiday Traditions?
I'm headed to my parents' house on Friday afternoon for our annual baking weekend! This is a tradition that my mom and I started in 2003 and it is something that we look forward to every year. I get to their house on Fri evening in time for dinner and then work til 11:00 or midnightish to get all the cookie dough made up. We get up early on Saturday and we work all weekend long to bake the cookies, make the fudge and peanut brittle, my mom makes chex mix, and we package it all into nice containers that can be shared at work or with friends, or that can be given as gifts. HH has gotten in on it, making the fudge recipe that he grew up making with his mom.
And this year, my stepson voiced an interest in participating. It's his second holiday "season" with me and my family, and last year he was very tentative about everything. This year, he's in 3rd grade and absolutely adores his grandma and wants to do anything she wants to do. So we were sure to schedule it on a weekend when he is with us. We are going to be exhausted when it's all over, but it's going to be SO. MUCH. FUN!!
Re: Holiday Traditions?
Aww...I love that tradition and I love that your stepson wants to be a part of it.
We go to my Grandma's (dads side) every Christmas eve. Then after dinner & before opening presents the grandkids had to search for the pickle (yes pickle) ornament and whoever found it got to play Santa and pass out the gifts. Since the youngest grandchild is now a sophmore in college...the pickle isnt as much fun so this year we are all playing games instead of looking for the pickle. But when HH and I have little kids, I definitely plan on continuing the pickle tradition.
Find the pickle! I love it! haha
hrchick: I think its really sweet your stepson wants to get into the tradition this year, I hope you all have a blast!
This post is SO appropriate for right now, you have no idea. We are spending Christmas this year with Dave's family, and I have been kind of emotional about it. You all may remember how his father told me last summer that I "ruined" the last Christmas that I spent with them (two years ago), because I "forced" Dave to leave the Christmas party that they go to every year so that we could go to Church on Christmas Eve? Yeah. I have been having mild panic attacks about this Christmas for about a week or two now, and I am going to be in a perpetual haze of rum and wine while I am there...it's how I'm planning to cope.
Dave has never spent a Christmas with my family yet (because at the beginning of our relationship we each went to our own families, and then two years ago we decided to do the alternating thing and so we both went to his parents house, last year was our first year in our own house and we had to have Christmas here with just the two of us, because he had to fly out to Ontario for work on Boxing day, so I went to my mom's house then) and this year is his fam's turn again. So he doesn't really get the whole "these aren't my traditions, and thus Christmas is just SLIGHTLY suckier because of it"
All of this to say, that Christmas traditions are important to me, and it really sucks because his family doesn't HAVE any. Seriously. We have talked about this at length the last few days because I want to continue my families traditions when we have kids, and he is ok with it, because his family doesn't really have anything to contribute.
So here goes:
- we always get a Christmas ornament that has something to do with a special event that occured in our lives that year
- new pajamas on Christmas Eve that we wear to bed that night
- all of the neighbors on our street get together on Christmas Eve for the evening for a neighborhood Christmas party (used to be at my neighbors house but when she died it moved to my mom's house instead). Neighbor always made Rabbit Pie, but my mom makes a delicious seafood chowder instead. So seafood chowder is THE Christmas Eve meal for me. I realize this tradition will be harder for me to accomplish, but we've already hosted a block party at our house here so we do know our neighbors, and thus it is feasible.
- open one present on Christmas Eve, and the rest on Christmas morning
- midnight mass on Christmas Eve
- every year someone in the family will get a board game, which the whole family will play together on Christmas Day
- Christmas Day is a day for FAMILY, so no taking off to go hang out with friends.
- Santa presents are not wrapped, (they are just on display) but the rest of the presents are wrapped
We have more traditions as well, that have to do with decorating the Christmas tree, picking out our REAL tree, etc etc...but these ones are really important ones to me
My first year teaching, I taught Grade Six. For Christmas that year all my students gave me the standard teacher gifts: coffee mugs, chocolates, and gift cards for coffee. I got a few Christmas tree ornaments as well. Then I opened up an interesting one: a glass pickle. It was clearly a Christmas ornament, but I was all "What the hell?" Obviously I thanked the kid dearly and said something along the lines of "This is so interesting! It's going to look great on my tree!" (Meanwhile I'm all "What in the name of God am I going to do with this??"
His mom came in to the school at lunch time to see me. She says "I wanted to come in and talk to you about R's gift - he REALLY wanted to give you a pickle, but I figured you might not know what it was" and she explained the whole tradition to me. She said the "pickle hunt" was his favourite part of Christmas and he wanted to share that with me. It was the sweetest thing ever, and that damned pickle has been on my tree EVERY year since. I can't wait to have kids of my own so that we can actually hunt for it. Apparently it's a Dutch tradition?
We also hid the pickle.. we would search for it Christmas morning!
Like seriously? Rabbit in a pie? Like a chicken pot pie type thing? I don't think I could eat rabbit. I had a bunny named George for a school project in 9th grade. He was cute. Flop eared and mean as hell. I still have scars from that fvcker.
Oh and J, you should tell your FIL to eff off.
I keep seeing pickle ornaments but I had no idea there was a story behind it - as in you are supposed to hunt for it...hm.
Our traditions - we always do Christmas at my family's farmhouse up in western MA. The aunt & uncle who own it are NYC dwellers and have this country home that we all go to for holidays and gatherings. It's awesome. HUGE property in the back with views of the Berkshire Mtns and it's gorgeous in both winter and in summer.
I always make my cranberry pie every year - now for multiple occasions (friends' parties, work parties - not just family parties).
We have a giant Christmas ham.
My aunt & uncle attend Christmas Mass at the chuch accross the street on Christmas Eve - they sing in the choir as well.
There always a pot of mulled cider going on the wood stove and a bottle of Jamaican rum very close by. (My family likes to drink). I am SO sad I will have to miss the spiked mulled cider this year. If DH doesn't have a heart attack over it, I'll have a 1/2 glass of wine with Christmas dinner. I plan to ask my OBGYN on Friday what her thoughts are about that. She okayed a glass of champagne for a wedding back in Oct so I'm hopeful. ;-)
Yes, I think it is dutch but i'm not 100% sure on that. I'm so glad that you have a pickle too! You would think it'd be easy to find w/ it being a flippin' shiny pickle but it's not. Some years it takes us forever to find it!
Our Christmas eve tradition is going to my dad's house and getting together with his good friend and her daughter and we order massive amounts of Chinese food and eat cookies and drink wine. We've been doing it for many, many years.
Christmas day is always out of control.. I used to see my mom in early part of the day and then would go to my dad's brother's house for dinner and Christmas with that side of the family. The past three years have been difficult since I have a new family now. Last year we invited everyone over for brunch and opened presents (my mom and dad - who have been divorced for 27 years, my brother, his FI, my sister, MIL, her FI, BIL, his GF and her daughter, and DH's grandma). It was hectic but the food was great and everyone enjoyed themselves. After that we still went to MIL's house for a while and then to my uncle's in the evening. We need to get it figured out.. I don't like to be that crammed in and busy!
I have no idea what will happen this year since the day after Christmas is my brother's wedding!!
Our traditions are easier to keep because our familes live so close together.
Christmas Eve- Get together with HH's extended family (at MIL's this year) around 11am. Later that day around 5pm we'll go to my maternal grandparents house for a few hours and open gifts with that side of the family. We'll then head back to my in-laws to open gifts with them and celebrate BIL's birthday.
Christmas Day- HH and I will get up early to exchange gifts with eachother before heading to my parents house for Christmas breakfast. After breakfast we'll go home and get ready to go to my paternal grandparents house for Christmas dinner and open gifts there.
Its going to be a crazy 2 days but I'm really excited about it!
When I lived with my parents we were always allowed to open one gift on Christmas Eve. I'm going to ask HH if he would like to continue this tradition and exchange one gift that night.
HR - your cookie baking sounds like so much fun!
We used to have a lot of Christmas traditions in my family, but unfortunately the only one we have left is getting up on Christmas morning, having my Grandpa come over, and opening gifts and eating breakfast. It's the only day of the year that the dining room actually gets used.
One of my favorites from when I was little was the code on our Christmas presents. Instead of putting gift tags on the gifts for the grandchildren, my Grandma would make up a code to put on the gifts. It was usually just a letter or a number and we had to figure out what the code stood for to know who got which gifts. We would spend weeks trying to figure it out and we got it all but one year.
Its funny how similar we are HR! HAHA! Next weekend is baking weekend. I have taken the 17th off and we will be baking away. It is tradition with my kiddos as it is for my mother. My mom lives to far away. But all I had to do is tell my kids and they have it in the calendar that they will be at my house for that weekend. We will bake 5 to 7 different kind of cookies!
Another tradition we have is a polish tradition and we do this on christmas eve. The Breaking of the Oplatek which is a thin wafer. My grandfather always did this and now we do it in our home. Well actually my friends home. Each person gets a piece of the Oplatek which is a thin wafer which is kinda like the wafers at church for communion. You go to each person and you break of a little piece of each others wafer and hug the other person and tell them what they appreciate about them. Then you move on to the next person until your wafer is gone. It is beautiful and I think it brings out more of the christmas spirit and less about the gift giving.
When my kiddos were little I had a nativity set that the baby Jesus could be removed and every year he doesn't come out till christmas eve. The kids knew that they needed to make a soft bed for baby Jesus every year and how they would do this is everytime they did something nice for someone else in the house they would get a bit of hay to put in the manger to make a comfy place for the baby to go. Like making their sisters bed when she wasn't looking. sweeping the floor for me when I didn't ask. Little things it was a lot of fun and made it so the girls were agian thinking of others during a season where kids start thinking about what am I gonna get!?
I think that is enough tradition from me hugs ladies hope you have a great day!!!
- A few years ago I went with DH (then he was just my fiance or boyfriend or something) to visit his dad for Christmas. We ended up going to a little family gathering at his stepmom's daughter's house. Anyway, they did the pickle thing and I thought it was so freaking weirdo. But secretly throughout the night, I would kind of scope out the tree to see if I could spot it (very nonchalant, though). AND THEN I FOUND IT! I WAS THE WINNER! Hahaha! At their house, you won a prize and it was a chocolate bar.
- My family used to open all of our gifts on Christmas Eve. We would have a big dinner (very similar to Thanksgiving - turkey, sides, etc) and then open everything. On Christmas we would relax and play with our new stuff. I have no idea why we did it like that. Now, we usually go to Tennessee to visit my grandpa (because he moved there) but this year we're going to Myrtle Beach just to mix it up. We usually shop at the outlets, do gifts at the hotel, see a "show", etc.
- I totally want to do the "new PJs for Christmas" when I have kids of my own. We never did that in my family but I think it's so cute. I also want my kids to leave carrots for the reindeer and cookies/milk for Santa (aka for me & DH to scarf down secretly!)
- In my family, stockings were always the favorite for me & my sis. Also, me & my sis always opened our gifts first before the adults. We still do sometimes.
I think I'll blog about my traditions! I love hearing all of yours!
I have heard of this before, and I think it's German, or what we around here call "Pennsylvania Dutch" (German in German = Deutsch = "Dutch"). If you live here and say that your family is Dutch, what you actually mean is that you're German and that your family came across the pond in the 1700's or early 1800's. If your family was from the Netherlands, you would have to say that they were from the Netherlands.
I can only think of one Christmas tradition (other than church on Christmas Eve, which I don't think counts because we go to church all the time). When I was growing up, my brother and I each had a "candy ribbon" Advent calendar to help us count down to Christmas. They were long strips of felt with yarn ties holding a candy for each day in December leading up to Christmas. They had this poem at the top:
"December 1st 'til Christmas is the longest time of the year.
Seems as though old Santa never will appear.
How many more days 'til Christmas? It's mighty hard to count,
But this little candy ribbon will tell the exact amount.
Untie a candy every night when the Sandman casts his spell
And Christmas Eve will be here by the time you reach the bell."
Except that the lady who made them for us put 25 ties on them and we therefore always had one left over. It bugged me when I got old enough to have OCD.
I think my folks still do the candy ribbons, but now Dad eats the candy on mine.
WIth my girls haha they get new pjs from my mom that they get to open. That way they look good in christmas pictures in the morning.
We used to leave carrots for the reindeer but they were always organic and still had the green stems on them as those are the reindeers favorites! Not a joke it is really what the kiddos believed. Thanks for helping me remember all of that sigh they are so big now....
Christmas morning they have hot cocoa they stir with a candy cane and a chocolate covered cherry on the side. And they have glass bottled coke with their dinner at christmas eve brunch before they go to their dads.