Be it Christmas, Hanukkah, Festivus, or Other, tell us about your holiday tradition that you learned as a kid, started on your own, or married into. Whatever has lasted - or will last - for generations.
I’ll start.
Christmas stockings: ever since I can remember, it included a Lifesavers Storybook, chocolate covered cherries, and an orange.
There was also an assortment of candies from Europe or Africa, since my mom traveled so extensively throughout the year.
My folks died in '99, but that Christmas when I opened my stocking, there they were.
My wife and her mom got together and sourced some European candies, plus the Main 3 items. I cried all day I think! My mom had only died a couple of months before, so it was an open wound to start with!
We always get the same things for our kids as well.
One year when our daughter was about 8 or 9, I made the mistake of letting our son put the star on top of the Christmas tree without some democratic process involving my daughter. Feeling very put out, she went and got some paper and wrote a note:
“In 2008 Katie will put the star on the Christmas tree” and stuck it on the fridge.
I saw it, scratched out “Katie” and put “Dad” instead. She put a new note over that one: "No, Katie will put the star… blah, blah, blah. I retaliated, and the note fight went to about 8 pages before she wrote her thing again, adding
“and if anyone changes this note or adds a note they get in trouble”.
I gave up, and the stack of notes got taped to the box that holds the star, and someone has to “claim” next year with a new note on top of the stack. I always pull it out, and read aloud “this year Dad gets to put the star on the tree”, and they both jump up protesting and demanding to see the note. It’s dumb I know, but it’s our thing.
All presents from Santa are wrapped in tissue.
One present is opened on Christmas Eve.
It used to be that our daughter would find the filled stocking on her bed to keep her occupied until we woke up, but now she sleeps later than we do.
We go to a movie. When I first did this, 45 years ago or so, we went Christmas night when the theater opened and it was pretty crowded. As the years went on, we would go in the afternoon, because the theaters started opening at 2 or 3, and it wasn’t really crowded that early. This year we went at 11AM and it was packed.
My wife, who hates christmas anyway, has now ruined it for me as well. She insists that we open presents on christmas eve night, and the morning of christmas, are welcomed by the “Santa Gifts” (unwrapped). This was fun for about a year. :rolleyes:
So, it turns out now that the kid rips thru the “real gifts”, then is impossible to put to sleep, then is totally unimpressed with the offering on the next morning. A huge let-down all around. What-fucking-ever.
My partner lives next door to me, and we both have a fireplace in our living rooms. So I hang 3 stockings on his fireplace for him and his 2 dogs, and he he hangs 3 on my fireplace for me and my 2 cats. I have a beautiful “atheist tree” in my dining room, and he has a menorah. (I was raised Jewish and he was raised Muslim, but we’re both atheists; somehow it all evens out.) On Christmas morning, he comes over with the dogs, and the cats sit on the stairs and hiss at them for a while. Then we open all the gifts under the tree.
We always celebrated Christmas Eve with my father’s side of the family. There were six kids in his family so they would draw names to see who would hold the party each year. After the family got a little bigger we started drawing names for the gift exchange. No excuses were accepted, you HAD to show up.
Now with over half my aunts and uncles gone, and all of us who have to work holidays, and the gift giving becoming nothing more than a gift card exchange, it’s not the same.
We used to have brunch at my mother’s, but now we have lunch at my niece’s. Her house is bigger.
My son still opens one gift on Christmas Eve.
Every year we would pull out the* I Spy Christmas Book*, but now that he’s older he lost interest and we stopped.
I think I’ll make him pull it out today. Just for today we will talk about something other than Smite.
My daughters are both adults now, but for a long time we HAD to go out for Japanese food on Christmas Eve. This started one year when I knew I was too tired after work to make dinner (and then complete the baking and wrapping for Christmas) and suggested we just get a pizza. Everyone thought this was a great idea except someone was not in the mood for pizza, so let’s just go to the Japanese restaurant, which we did. The following year it was suggested that we do so again. The year after that, it was “But we ALWAYS go out for Japanese food on Christmas Eve!” Thus was a tradition started.
We also used to have a rule that they could get up whenever they wanted on Christmas morning, and get stuff out of their stockings, but they had to be quiet until a pre-arranged time. Usually 7 or 8 AM was the latest we could get away with.
Every New Year’s my family has to have–um, I’m not sure what. We always called them burmelos, but they looked nothing like this. What they are are flour tortillas sliced up, cooked in oil until the pieces start to bubble up, and then sprinkled in cinammon as they cool.
Yuletide mustache and cocktails from November 1 through the end of the year for me.
Gifts exchanged between my wife, kids and me on Christmas Eve after church and pizza. Christmas morning we open gifts from her family and Santa. The adults drink mimosas, and everyone eats a brunch of potato pancakes, bacon and applesauce. We’ve done it this way since we’ve been married, about six years now.
Our Christmas dinner is Tex-Mex food: fajitas, tacos, tamales. None of us are even remotely Hispanic so I am not sure why this happened but it sure tastes wonderful!
since my divorce, the EvilEx gets breakfast shift with the kids and grandkids, and I get the main event with friends and oher family members.
As a boy, I always had an orange in the toe of my stocking, even though I really am not very fond of oranges. I also got one of those lifesavers books every year as well.
As an adult, my mother’s side of the family gets together in Houston every year on Xmas Eve to eat Mexican food, because most of them are going to go off to their spouses’ families for Xmas. It’s actually a pretty fun tradition- we get to see everyone (assuming we’re not in Austin with the in-laws), even if it’s not necessarily on Xmas Day.
I don’t know if you can call it a tradition, but my wife’s family has the same sub-standard, bland Xmas(and Thanksgiving) meal, and all rave about how wonderful it is, even though it’s dull as hell and I’d rather have a hamburger from Whataburger as far as the food goes.
When my son was about 5 or 6, Santa left a remote-control car under the tree.
Now he’s 24, but Santa still leaves one every year. Some things you never grow out of. (Plus, we get to have the annual “terrorize the chihuahua” race. Mitzi hates RC cars with a passion).
The “eat 12 grapes as the New Year’s bells toll” tradition is relatively new, but it soon became important enough for green grapes to get absurdly expensive on the previous days. Nowadays you can even buy cans of 12 grapes at prices which would make you think they’re made from angel shit (wait, do angels shit?).
My family eats 12 tangerine segments instead and, one year that tangerines were very bad (they were extremely dry for some reason), 12 gummy bears. Because maybe Catalans aren’t as tightfisted with money as their reputation says but lemme tell you, wire? It was invented when Mom and her sister saw a 10 cent coin at the same time…
Early Christmas with my dad’s family was a must when I was growing up, and now my family makes the effort to go to it still. It’s gotten bigger and bigger as my aunt’s kids reproduced prolifically; this year there were 22 stockings on the mantel.
Lindor truffles in the stockings are a must also. This year we didn’t open stockings until December 29 because my parents got snowed in and couldn’t be here on the 25th. It just wasn’t Christmas without the Lindor truffles.
In about an hour, I’m going out to pick up our Chinese food. It’s the only thing left over from my Jewish upbringing . . . and my partner’s a very happy convert.
On the dinner before Christmas Eve (Christmas eve eve we call it) we have pizza. This also started, like MLS’s family, when parents were too tired to do dinner that night, but everyone was happy with the pizza suggestion. Now the young ones talk about it as a family Christmas tradition.
The cat get her own stocking - with cat treats and a can of tuna.
When I was a child my father had a Santa that would be the first thing on the tree – before even the tree skirt.
