Well, it’ll sound a little strange, but I always get a smack on the head from my dad every year as we are getting ready to decorate the tree. Ya see, several years ago when I was a teenager, we were putting up the tree. Dad and my brother were at the bottom trying to screw in the base, and I was holding the tree upright. Now we have a cathedral ceiling in the family room, so the tree is always pretty big. I’m also very much a wimp. So, I try to hold it up, I’m thinking I’m doing a good job. They finish screwing in the bottom, my dad gets out from under the tree, comes, and smacks me on the head. I hadn’t done a very good job of holding the tree up, and I guess I had dropped it on his back.
Anyway, since then, every year dad gives me a smack on the head. It’s just a funny tradition now.
My mom is also Icelandic. We were spared the hangikjot ( :eek: ) and we only opened a few gifts Christmas Eve. And the Vinar Terta. I have some now and let me tell you, it’s not Christmas without the weener-teeter (as my step-dad calls it).
A new tradition for my family is spending Christmas Eve with my husband and son’s martial arts sensei and his wife and their extended family - all of his students are invited. This is our second year with them. We will open a gift on Christmas Eve, and then Christmas morning we eat Christmas Breakfast casserole (which I’ll make later today. It’s potatoes, smoked sausage, cheese, in a sort of eggy custardy medium). We will then go to my husband’s parents home and open gifts with them, and my sister- and brother-in-law and their kids. Dinner there, then home for vegging. My family is in Canada and we have only seen them on Christmas once since I moved here - it was three years ago, the baby had been born in November and they couldn’t pass up the chance to visit
I would like to state for the record that I believe all of this should be done in my pajamas, but it is not to be.
Since I’ve been married we have an Anglo-Saxon- Christian-Canadan Christmas but when I lived with my Dutch parents in Canada, we each got chocolate letters representing the first letter of our first names, and snacked on smoked eel. Yummy.
But, I LOVE the hangikjot! I have no clue what Vinar Terta is, though. We did occasionally make a metric assload of Kleinur, though, and Píparkókur and Laufabrauð also go well with Christmas food.
We had a family friend who used to refer to it as “hunky gut” when he’d come over for some Icelandic style smorgasbord parties. Let’s see if I can approximate the noises I make when I say hángikjöt: **how-n-gee-ky-utt **(the last bit sort of rhymes with “foot”). Put the emphasis on the underlined syllable and run all the sounds together a bit, and you should get the idea. I’m sure your father-in-law will be happy enough that you’re trying to pronounce it correctly.
On this day, the 24th, all the members of my family compete to see who can be the first to say “Merry Christmas Eve” to one another. Supposedly, if you say it to someone before they say it to you, they have to get you another gift. We don’t actually follow through with that, but we have fun “getting” each other. Today, even though I’m at work, I’ll be answering the phone “Merry Christmas Eve” instead of hello.
Christmas Eve, just before bed, the kids get to open one gift, which turns out to be pajamas. I’m embarrassed to admit how many years it took for me to realize it would always be pajamas!
My childhood spent in village : We used to give christmas cakes to our neighbour ( they too were christians, but accepted cakes from us). We used to invite our non-christain neigbours for breakfast ( lot of them were labourers who worked in our farm).
When I was a kid, we’d get started early in the day on Christmas Eve visiting elderly relatives that couldn’t get out. On we’d go one after the other until we wound up at my grandmother’s house on Christmas eve for a gift exchange with the family and plenty of junk food.
On Christmas morning we’d get up and do Santa Claus stuff until it was time to go back to my grandmother’s for Christmas dinner. As time passed and relatives passed away, it’s dwindled down to just the events at my grandmother’s house on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I always volunteer to work on Christmas Eve since there’s not much going on for me.
I’ve decided that now that I’m married with my own house, it’s time to start my own traditions. I think I made this decision too late to do much about it this year, but next year I will have something at my house for my friends and close family.
My grandmother gives everyone in the family a Christmas ornament. This year I got a soldier in that wooden “nutcracker” style. He’s not a tiny nutcracker, but I don’t know how best to describe him.
I don’t have all the ornaments she’s ever given me. Some have broken, some got lost in various moves and some got mixed in with the family ornaments and will never be known as any one person’s in particular. But I definitely have some, and I really enjoy all the ones I have.
Well we didn’t play golf yesterday after lunch. It was too cold. Would you believe it? It was one of the coldest Christmas Days that we could remember.
My dad’s family always gets together on Christmas Eve and does a big thing. People bring appetizers, desserts, soups, and so forth. My dad’s family is big. He had eight brothers and sisters (down to six now,) and I have 18 cousins (as well as a brother and sister.) When us cousins were all younger, we each got a gift for another one. Now that we’re all adults (the youngest is 20, oldest is 35) everyone (cousins and our parents) do an ornament exchange. Everyone gets an ornament, wraps it and puts it under the tree. Then we pick our ornaments based on a number we draw. You either pick a wrapped one from under the tree, or you steal someone else’s (they then have to take one from under the tree.)
It gets crazy, considering if the whole family is there (my aunts, uncles, cousins, they’re spouses and kids) we’re talking almost 60 poeple.
When I was little, it was getting up in the wee hours of the morning, opening the xmas gifts (one person at a time so we all see what each other opened) then afterwards me and my sisters would make breakfast for all of us, since my parents (of course) would make the turkey and what not.
Since it has been a long time since then, our new traditions have changed into going to my parents house around noontime. Having a small lunch, then a large dinner around 6ish. The older sister has started giving the same xmas ornament to each of us, this way as we grow into our own families we share something.
This year I am on my own, so the only real celebrating I do is once I get to my parents house… (I am actually typing this from there house).
When my brother and I were young, my dad would take us out on Christmas Eve morning to Warren’s Sporting Goods Store in Downtown Kalamazoo, MI. He would do this because he needed to get us out of the house so mom could wrap our presents. We would hang out there in the AM with my dad’s friend who worked there and they would have donuts and hot chocolate for the patrons. Afterwards we would go have lunch at the Coney Island Hotdog restaurant.
Today, the sporting goods store is closed and my brother and I are grown up, but we still meet my dad at Cony Island Hotdog on Christmas Eve for lunch. I take my kids with me now too and they are enjoying the tradition as well.
This is by far my favorite family tradition of them all that we do.
This year my brother had to skip out on meeting us there because his wife is just about full term and ready to have their first baby. My wife suggested that instead of going to lunch at Cony Island, we go and visit my brother and have lunch at his place. I told her, “I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.” She said that she thought it was a great idea, so I told her she can suggest it to dad if she wants. She did… and he didn’t go for it one bit!
Christmas Eve, after I and my coworkers at our various stores get off, we go to one of their houses and do our gift exchange and hang out and watch the Yule log on TV for a while.
Christmas for the family is really small and uninvolved. Get up in the morning and watch the Disney Christmas parade on TV then hang out and nibble for a while, then go to dinner at whatever restaurant we want to. We always leave a huge ($50 - 70) tip for the server for having to work on Christmas.
Then we come home, exchange our gifts for each other and spend a little more time together. Then I go out to a bar with my friends and get wrecked – by the time Christmas is here, we are all ready to get a little crazy.
It was one of the coldest Christmas Days that we could remember.