Traditions?

[Lola]

With Thanksgiving one week away and the Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa season fast approaching I have been starting to think about family get togethers, and holiday memories.

Do you or your family have any traditions that have been pasted down and celebrated over the holidays?

I am always interested to hear the way other families and even cultures celebrate in America and beyond.
Plus, i am always on the look out for new and unique traditions to start as well!

Got any you would like to share with me?!

 

[Alex]

my family is pretty unorthodox i guess.... we're a german family that's lived in brazil all our lives and don't have any relatives in the country so its just the 5 of us, which is kinda nice!

for xmas we all just dress nice drink champagne and hang out and my mom cooks something awesome that we wouldn't normally eat like lobster, lamb chops or some other fancy meat... after eating we open presents and hang out until the late hours of the morning together... its pretty fun!

i think its been almost 10 years since we stopped opening presents on the 25th....

edit: brazil doesn't celebrate thanksgiving... which is ok because i don't care much for turkey and pecan pie!

 

[Lola]

Originally posted by: franguinho
my family is pretty unorthodox i guess.... we're a german family that's lived in brazil all our lives and don't have any relatives in the country so its just the 5 of us, which is kinda nice!

for xmas we all just dress nice drink champagne and hang out and my mom cooks something awesome that we wouldn't normally eat like lobster, lamb chops or some other fancy meat... after eating we open presents and hang out until the late hours of the morning together... its pretty fun!

i think its been almost 10 years since we stopped opening presents on the 25th....

edit: brazil doesn't celebrate thanksgiving... which is ok because i don't care much for turkey and pecan pie!

Sounds great! I admire you because i would most certainly rather eat lobster or Lamb than a Ham on christmas.
Thanks for sharing!

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: LolaWiz

Originally posted by: franguinho
my family is pretty unorthodox i guess.... we're a german family that's lived in brazil all our lives and don't have any relatives in the country so its just the 5 of us, which is kinda nice!

for xmas we all just dress nice drink champagne and hang out and my mom cooks something awesome that we wouldn't normally eat like lobster, lamb chops or some other fancy meat... after eating we open presents and hang out until the late hours of the morning together... its pretty fun!

i think its been almost 10 years since we stopped opening presents on the 25th....

edit: brazil doesn't celebrate thanksgiving... which is ok because i don't care much for turkey and pecan pie!

Sounds great! I admire you because i would most certainly rather eat lobster or Lamb than a Ham on christmas.
Thanks for sharing!

hahahaha is Ham tradition somewhere??? i eat ham mostly with cheese... on a sandwich!


edit: spelling

 

[Linflas]

Originally posted by: franguinho

Originally posted by: LolaWiz

Originally posted by: franguinho
my family is pretty unorthodox i guess.... we're a german family that's lived in brazil all our lives and don't have any relatives in the country so its just the 5 of us, which is kinda nice!

for xmas we all just dress nice drink champagne and hang out and my mom cooks something awesome that we wouldn't normally eat like lobster, lamb chops or some other fancy meat... after eating we open presents and hang out until the late hours of the morning together... its pretty fun!

i think its been almost 10 years since we stopped opening presents on the 25th....

edit: brazil doesn't celebrate thanksgiving... which is ok because i don't care much for turkey and pecan pie!

Sounds great! I admire you because i would most certainly rather eat lobster or Lamb than a Ham on christmas.
Thanks for sharing!

hahahaha is Ham tradition somewhere??? i eat ham mostly with cheese... on a sandwich!


edit: spelling

We have ham along with the turkey at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

 

[meltdown75]

Well, we aren't too original but... I'll tell you anyway

We always get together on Christmas eve at my Dad's place. At Thanksgiving (Canadian Thanksgiving being early October) we put our names into a hat and pull names to see who we'll be buying for. Christmas eve is when we exchange and open the gifts up, one at a time

Attending midnight mass is optional, depending how drunk / tired I am. We always play a few games of euchre though, no matter what. The following 2-3 days is always very busy for my wife and I, having several places to visit. That's about it... nothing too our of the ordinary but lots of family, food and catching up with everyone.

I just put up my mini Christmas tree in my cubicle, right on top of my ancient CRT monitor

 

[lokiju]

Have to watch National Lampoons: Christmas Vacation every Christmas season.

It won't be a true Christmas unless I do.

Well typically we'd always go over to my Uncles house for Thanksgiving day and Christmas dinner, would be me, my Mom & Dad, my brother and his wife along with my Aunt, Uncle and two cousins.

But that won't be happening anymore for me at least (the rest of them will I'm sure) but I'm living in a different state now and this will be my first year being married also so we'll be making our own new traditions starting this year I'm sure.

 

[astrosfan90]

It's become something of a tradition for my Dad and I to go fishing once a year in Argentina. When we lived down there when I was a kid, we used to go once or twice a year, down in the south, usually Thanksgiving week and Easter week. After we moved away from Argentina, we kept going for Christmas instead, and have been trying to make it every year, including this year. We've been doing it every year but two for the last 16 years, so it's pretty much a tradition now.

For Christmas day, when we were in Argentina, we had a few other expatriate families we were very close with, and we spent Christmas with them. My dad would generally grill a lamb and there would be lots of red wine and all sorts of stuff. Again, since we've left we haven't made it every year, but one of the families is still down there and we're staying with them for Christmas day before going fishing until New Years.

 

[jonessoda]

I make Bananas Foster every year within a couple days of thanksgiving, and chocolate mousse on the Fourth of July. This is the third year of both traditions.

 

[Lola]

Originally posted by: lokiju
Have to watch National Lampoons: Christmas Vacation every Christmas season.

It won't be a true Christmas unless I do.

LOL! i watched it last night. I love it and no matter how many times i watch it, i still laugh at the whole movie!

Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fvcking Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of a$sholes this side of the nuthouse.

 

[Spydermag68]

I make fudge every year. Last year I smoked the Turkey an got a 1/2 inch smoke ring with out drying it out. Low and slow wins! THis year I will be smoking again.

 

[j00fek]

thanksgiving at moms, dads, aunts every year

xmas eve at grandmas every year

xmas at moms, dads and aunts evey year

 

[lokiju]

Originally posted by: LolaWiz

Originally posted by: lokiju
Have to watch National Lampoons: Christmas Vacation every Christmas season.

It won't be a true Christmas unless I do.

LOL! i watched it last night. I love it and no matter how many times i watch it, i still laugh at the whole movie!

Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fvcking Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of a$sholes this side of the nuthouse.

That movie is just classic.

It never gets old!

Every time Catherine would turn on the microwave, I'd piss my pants and forget who I was for about half an hour.

So many good quotes from that movie! Heres a ton of them.

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: Linflas

Originally posted by: franguinho

Originally posted by: LolaWiz

Originally posted by: franguinho
my family is pretty unorthodox i guess.... we're a german family that's lived in brazil all our lives and don't have any relatives in the country so its just the 5 of us, which is kinda nice!

for xmas we all just dress nice drink champagne and hang out and my mom cooks something awesome that we wouldn't normally eat like lobster, lamb chops or some other fancy meat... after eating we open presents and hang out until the late hours of the morning together... its pretty fun!

i think its been almost 10 years since we stopped opening presents on the 25th....

edit: brazil doesn't celebrate thanksgiving... which is ok because i don't care much for turkey and pecan pie!

Sounds great! I admire you because i would most certainly rather eat lobster or Lamb than a Ham on christmas.
Thanks for sharing!

hahahaha is Ham tradition somewhere??? i eat ham mostly with cheese... on a sandwich!


edit: spelling

We have ham along with the turkey at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

strange...

i lived 2 years in canada and the coolest thing about thanksgiving was time off school... that and going to people's cottages and meeting their families and stuff...

 

[Bryophyte]

The Easter Bunny always brings garden stuff for the kids, not toys, because it's a celebration of Spring (we're not Christians). They get garden seeds, flowers and pots to pot up for the porch, gloves, gardening tools, etc. And the Easter Bunny always steals our eggs that we dyed and hides them, but always leaves one next to the kids' heads in their beds. When my son was about 5, he wanted to sleep with us the night before Easter. Turned out, he was scared because he'd figured out that it wasn't a real rabbit, so he reasoned that a creepy guy wearing a bunny suit must break into our house and take the eggs, and he didn't want him to go into his bedroom.

I get the kids matching jammies to wear to bed the night before Christmas. :heart: Too cute, but my son is 10 now so he might not find it so cute this year, hehe. I'd better make sure it's not jammies with feet in them.

The kids get to open one gift on Christmas Eve before bed, then everything else on Christmas morning. We did this when we were kids, and we always chose a gift from a grandma because she didn't get to our house early enough in the morning to watch us open the rest so she could watch us open that one at least.

Christmas Eve, Santa comes. The kids go to bed and after a few minutes, my husband will go outside and stomp around on the porch and shake this big wreath made of nothing but bells. My parents did that with us when we were little and we loved it.

You have to watch Christmas Story.

For some reason, my mother-in-law makes fondue for Christmas Eve (they celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve and open gifts then, not on Christmas morning). Nobody likes it but they usually put up with it without too many complaints. She doesn't even know how to make it so it ends up being Swiss cheese snot in chicken stock. Nasty. I got fed up and smuggled some wine or beer in (don't remember which it was, and she's VERY anti-alcohol so I had to make it while she was out of the room so she wouldn't know) and made it myself one year and it turned out pretty good. We don't plan on passing this tradition down.

 

[dawnbug]

Originally posted by: Bryophyte
The Easter Bunny always brings garden stuff for the kids, not toys, because it's a celebration of Spring (we're not Christians). They get garden seeds, flowers and pots to pot up for the porch, gloves, gardening tools, etc. And the Easter Bunny always steals our eggs that we dyed and hides them, but always leaves one next to the kids' heads in their beds. When my son was about 5, he wanted to sleep with us the night before Easter. Turned out, he was scared because he'd figured out that it wasn't a real rabbit, so he reasoned that a creepy guy wearing a bunny suit must break into our house and take the eggs, and he didn't want him to go into his bedroom.

I get the kids matching jammies to wear to bed the night before Christmas. :heart: Too cute, but my son is 10 now so he might not find it so cute this year, hehe. I'd better make sure it's not jammies with feet in them.

The kids get to open one gift on Christmas Eve before bed, then everything else on Christmas morning. We did this when we were kids, and we always chose a gift from a grandma because she didn't get to our house early enough in the morning to watch us open the rest so she could watch us open that one at least.

Christmas Eve, Santa comes. The kids go to bed and after a few minutes, my husband will go outside and stomp around on the porch and shake this big wreath made of nothing but bells. My parents did that with us when we were little and we loved it.

You have to watch Christmas Story.

For some reason, my mother-in-law makes fondue for Christmas Eve (they celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve and open gifts then, not on Christmas morning). Nobody likes it but they usually put up with it without too many complaints. She doesn't even know how to make it so it ends up being Swiss cheese snot in chicken stock. Nasty. I got fed up and smuggled some wine or beer in (don't remember which it was, and she's VERY anti-alcohol so I had to make it while she was out of the room so she wouldn't know) and made it myself one year and it turned out pretty good. We don't plan on passing this tradition down.

I really like the gardening idea for Easter!

My family doesn't do too much that's special for Thanksgiving, except spending several hours to cook a meal that we finish eating in under half an hour.

I love Christmas at my house, though, because even though I'm 22, I have siblings who are as young as 6 which keeps Christmas fun. After the kids go to bed, I help my mom bring all of the gifts into the room where we keep the tree. It's a really neat transformation-- when the kids go to bed on Christmas Eve, there's nothing under the tree, but when they wake up, the room is full of gifts.

Oh, on Christmas morning, we also always eat this breakfast dish called Monkey Bread, that's kind of cinnamon roll-esque and we always have the same foods when my dad's family comes over to visit on that afternoon.

 

[Al Neri]

i have a tradition...

not to have traditions

that is outside of an italian christmas eve (which means, seafood on christmas eve, none of that you need to have X number of fish etc. just lobster, seafood salad, mussels, clams, most of which i don't really like, but i ended up cooking it after my grandfather passed away)

 

[OpenThirdEye]

Festivus

 

[sash1]

not a family tradition. a friend tradition. we play football every turkey day. just kids from the football/lacrosse team. my team usually wins 'cause i'm QB. it's very painful because we play contact, and the ground is hard this time of year in Maine.

just kicks off the snow football season!

 

[anxi80]

Originally posted by: OpenThirdEye
Festivus

yep. cant wait to air out my grievances. "i've got a lot of problems with you people, and now you're going to hear about it!"


seriously, me and my family meet around noon on thanksgiving and x-mas. we eat, share gifts, small talk for a bit then everyone is out the door by 3. then usually all the family members go visit their girlfriends/boyfriends/etc. families for a more traditional dinner. the one i attend always follows up with a viewing of christmas vacation. good times.....

good times.