You’re not even the only (other) one in this thread! 
I mean, what would Christmas be without Beethoven’s Ninth, “Now I have a machine gun. Ho. Ho. Ho.” and “Thanks for the advice!”?
I could be up for that!
In spite of being a Jewish agnostic, I go caroling every year with my high school choir buddies, because the choir geek trumps the Jewish agnostic bit. Now the ones with spouses and kids bring them, and I make wassail (usually spiced cider, to which people can add the booze of their choice if so desired). Depending on how many people we get this year, I may add homemade eggnog and hot chocolate, to which people can also add the booze of their choice if so desired (I have a bottle of green creme de menthe that needs to be used up).
Then we will go tromping around town, singing, and stopping by various people’s parents’ houses, and possibly downtown. Then we will probably head back to my place and hang out for a bit and generally act silly. I usually bake some cookies or brownies or something for before caroling, and I plan to throw some kind of veggie chili or chickpea curry or something into the crockpot for afterwards.
On Christmas Eve, we generally go work in a soup kitchen with an old friend of my mom’s, and then go back to her place for dinner. On Christmas Day, I feel badly that my boyfriend will be so far from all his family (they usually get together at Christmas, but he just started a new job and has no vacation time). So I thought we’d do an “orphan Christmas” with everyone who either isn’t going to see family, or celebrates Orthodox Christmas a bit later, or doesn’t celebrate Christmas but just wants to hang out, or will be done with their family by evening and/or sick of their family. I’ve been wanting to try out a fabulously complicated Greek turkey stufing involving rice, ouzo, dried apricots, and chestnuts.
This. I’ve already started bitching about the traffic and the decorations and the crappy music.
But this is my wife’s favorite time of the year, so I am going to shut my mouth and smile, because it makes her happy and I love her.
Between working retail (and experiencing anger/madness from many customers a day during the whole season) for 15 years and being single and alone for every Christmas for 10 years, most of my old traditions have fallen by the wayside. No more decorating, no more gift-buying/giving/getting. But, there are a few things I still do:
I watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, Suzy Snowflake (folks who grew up in Chicao or Pittsburgh will probably know this creepy cartoon well), and A Christmas Story. I’ve been disturbed over the last few years to find out how many people hate A Christmas Story, specifically because of the TBS 24-hour marathon. It was a treat to catch it when it first came out…
Late Christmas Eve (10 or 11 pm) is the Bachelor’s Dinner at Waffle House. This started in 2000; my divorce was made official earlier that December, and my friend’s wife had left him a week or so before. We were by ourselves, and our other friends were avoiding us (lest we infect the healthy couples with some kind of break-up cooties), so we went to Waffle House on Christmas Eve to drown our sorrows in syrup and coffee, and ended up actually having fun. It’s grown over the years to include all of our single and divorced friends who are otherwise alone over the holiday; we all meet up at the same Waffle House each time, stay past midnight, tip the waitress 100%+, and remind each other that we’re not completely alone.
It starts Thanksgiving weekend. DoctorJ and I spend Turkey day here in the mountains with his family, then go spend the weekend with mine. Mom’s siblings mostly live out of state, so we’ve always done dinner on Saturday so we could all be there. After dinner, I (usually, I forgot to bring it this year) give my little niece her new Christmas ornament. Grandma always got all us kids one every year, right up till the youngest got out of high school, and I do the same thing for Sam. I also get one for DoctorJ, and usually some sort of couple one for the two of us.
Sunday, we put up Mom and Dad’s tree before we come back home. We have hot chocolate, and play Christmas music, and I wear my antlers. We have, however, dispensed with the traditional squabbling over which ornament belongs to whom and the slapfights that always marked the tree decorating when my brother and I were children.
Sometime in the week afterward, I get our lights up and we go pick up our real tree. This is a new one for us, and I really like it. I never had a real tree before we moved out here; I’d always heard they were a huge pain in the ass, but that turns out not to be true at all. There’s usually some cussing involved at some point when I realize I haven’t trimmed enough of the trunk to get the tree solidly into the stand and we have to take it out and start over, but I even kind of enjoy that part. And the smell of the thing is divine.
I’ll spend a few evenings wrapping Christmas presents while watching animated specials and drinking hot chocolate in my antlers. Depending on how much the Beast Patrol is attempting to help, there may be a snort or three in the chocolate.
At some point, I’ll spend a day baking stuff for him to take in for the people at work, and for gift baskets for various friends. If I don’t make my triple chocolate espresso brownies, a crew of nurses come to house and tell me, “It makes the brownies, or else it gets the hose again.”
Usually the night before Christmas Eve, we spend the night having a nice quiet evening at home. We have a nice candlelight dinner (often Chinese takeout we’ve scraped out of the paper box onto our good dishes), and then curl up in front of the fireplace to give the critters their stockings and open our gifts to each other. It’s a little oasis of relaxation before we start the crazy week coming up. In one week’s time, we have his family near here, my family on the other end of the state, our anniversary, and New Year’s. And one or both of us is usually on call somewhere in there.
Our traditions are pretty simple -
- We attend Christmas Eve family service as one of the kids is usually in the pageant.
- Kids can open one present on Christmas Eve (usually from their Aunt & Uncle). The rest wait for morning.
- I make eggnog on Christmas Eve, usually using a snowbank to cool the cooked part.
- I used to watch “Its a Wonderful Life” while making eggnog, but that seems to not be on at the appropriate time any more.
- My wife makes pies, cinnamon rolls, and sticky buns while I am making eggnog
- We enlist the older kids to haul out gifts and put them under the tree before bed
- Christmas morning, everyone gets something to eat before we unwrap gifts
- After gifts, my wife & I start making dinner
One of our uncommon traditions is simple and goofy but the kids wouldn’t hear of dropping it. On the last day of school I make pizza and bake up a batch of brownies, and we eat in the living room watching Christmas videos. Charlie Brown, then the Grinch, then a Disney video with some really old shorts on it. By now we all know them by heart, but it doesn’t matter because it’s TRADITION!
This.
But I’m very thankful I have the Dope as an outlet for my rage. 
Lots of things, but one I really hope my kids do if they have kids someday:
On Christmas Eve, after the kids went to bed and the presents were in place, I got a box of baking soda and a boot. I put the boot on the floor in front of the fireplace, sprinkled baking soda around it to make a bootprint, then repeated to make Santa’s tracks all the way to the tree.
When they got older, they asked why we had to vacuum up the ‘magic snow’ instead of it just disappearing - we knew that questions about Santa were coming shortly thereafter.
Forgot one of mine: listening to [del]Jean Lu[/del] Patrick Stewart’s version of A Christmas Carol.
When my ex split and took my son, I was broke. For Xmas that year, I could only afford a Charlie Brown tree. it was about 3 feet high, crooked, had bald/bare spots, halitosis, the works. It looked even more pathetic inside of the giant tree stand that holds 2 gallons of water.
Every year since then, my son and I still get a Charlie Brown tree. The shorter and rattier looking, the better. We put up our crummy ornaments, and hang the light string that has half of the bulbs burnt out. I have to drink a Heineken in the bottle, then upend the beer bottle and place it on the very top. We use Heineken because the label has a small red star on it.
It’s fun to go to a tree place, and watch everyone load up their huge, flocked Douglas Fir/Pine/Spruce tree on a cart to tie on the roof of their vehicles. It’s even funner to politely ask “Where do you keep the shitty ones?”. But the best part is out in the parking lot, seeing the look on everyone’s face as we not only forego the
Marlinspike Seamanship routine of tying the tree on the roof, but just fling it into the back of the truck from 15 feet away.
Traditions start on Thanksgiving, when we set the date & time for cutting down the tree (usually the following Sunday). Check.
The following weekend (which will be next weekend…) is Decoration Day, which usually takes 2 days. All the holiday knicknacks come out of the garage and up on every possible horizontal surface, and several vertical ones. And the tree goes up.
Then it’s pretty mellow (other than shopping)…now that the kids are grown, the list of mandatory videos to watch has shrunk considerably – but Muppet Christmas Carol will definitely be seen.
Bud’s Egg Nog in the fridge for the next month. Christmas carols on Itunes, on occasion. I’ll have Messiah in my car’s CD player.
Christmas Eve, my wife prepares a trimmed-down version of a traditional Italian xmas eve all-seafood dinner: linguini & clam sauce, and scampi, for a small family gathering. Then we open one present, then drag out the booty to put under the tree for opening on Christmas morning.
These are great!
Quasi - don’t worry, the previous generation had succumbed to terminal nostalgia that year.
Grinching is as fine a tradition as any other and I’m glad to see that our agnostic caroling isn’t completely unheard of - my lapsed protestant mother loves nothing more than attending midnight mass!
Love the Charlie Brown Christmas tree with the beer star, every year I proudly put up the heart decoration my kid made, from a pipe cleaner and the toilet roll Santa!
Ours are in flux right now. It used to be that we’d go to my mom’s house for the whole week of Christmas. On Christmas Eve, we’d go out to a very early dinner, then to Christmas service. At 12:01 a.m., we’d open presents and stay up talking and watching bad Christmas movies until 3 or 4 a.m., then collapse into bed, get up late and have a leisurely brunch together, then a very fancy home-cooked Christmas dinner of beef tenderloin, popovers, mushroom bread pudding and vegetables.
But, last year my husband, son and I were in India. The year before that my son caught RSV and had to be rushed to the ER. I think (knocks on wood) that this year will be much better and more festive. Christmas just wasn’t the same in India (it was the first time any of us ever had jet lag for Christmas, for one thing) and the year before that was very hard and very scary.
I’m not as into Christmas gifts as I used to be. I don’t need more stuff cluttering up my house, so gifts between the adults will be very limited. But I’m looking forward to Christmas more than I have in a long time. My son is finally old enough to enjoy it, he’s hopefully past the point where he can get so violently, frighteningly sick so easily and seeing him excited is just fantastic. Plus, I’ve already put my foot down that he not be overwhelmed with too many gifts - I don’t want to create a green-eyed monster; plus I’d rather he enjoy the family time rather than the stuff. Oh, and did I mention I’m cheap?
I’m looking forward to creating some new traditions within the little circle of me, my son and my husband and my larger family.
Had to guess on RSV from the 20 or so Wikipedia matches.
Respiratory syncytial virus?
I guess I could have said that. Yes, it was respiratory syncytial virus. His lungs filled with fluid and at one point, he had his mouth open in these horrible, silent screams because he simply couldn’t breathe. We had no idea what we were doing, so my husband tilted him slightly so his head was lower than the rest of his body and apparently it was exactly the right thing to do - the mucous cleared enough that he started breathing again and immediately passed out from exhaustion. I have never had a more horrific Christmas. The ER near my mom’s house actually wasn’t much help at all - they told us to give him cough syrup. When we got him home to his regular pediatrician, they gave us some albuterol to clear his lungs and some antibiotics - apparently he also had an ear infection in each ear. Ever since (okay, so he’s not even 3), whenever Christmas comes around, I get this uneasy feeling in my stomach like I need to steel myself for something horrible to happen. I’m hoping that does not become a Christmas tradition.
My husband and I will buy our annual tree ornament. Mr.stretch will put up the fake tree and other decorations whenever he gets around to it.
Stockings will be filled for each of the kids and the grandson. I tried to end stockings this year for the kids (the youngest is 21), but was vetoed by mr.stretch. All of the stocking presents have to be wrapped; since there are so many little things it that takes forever (mr.stretch gives me much shit about this, but it’s a holdover from when the kids were little and they still love it). Stockings are the first thing opened in the morning.
The day itself will be spent in pajamas …this is a new tradition I added last year. We go to see my mom and stepdad (its only 10 miles away), eat a little something, and bullshit for a while. Maybe we’ll see Grandma–she’s 87 and has a very busy schedule and lots of people to see; she hasn’t decided where she’s spending the holiday yet.
Our traditional meal at home is pizza. After reading previous replies, I think I’m adding margaritas–now that the kids are all over 21, I think they will get behind it.
Used to be on Christmas Eve, we’d let the kids open the one present that was the same for them all (robes, sheets, pjs, what have you). Now they are grownups and don’t get to open anything early. Sucks to get old!
This year I finally talked mr.stretch out of sending holiday cards. Woohoo…new tradition is that we won’t waste paper and stamps on sending out cards! This has been a 10-year battle and I finally won. Go, me!
A couple years ago we started going to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. They’ve come to town earlier every year, so it’s one of those between-Thanksgiving-and-Xmas traditions. TSO songs are the holiday music of choice in our house.
Last year I bought an Xmas-themed Lego train set. It is the newest tradition - the boys and I will put it together and lay the track under the tree. I want to get a little more track for it each year.
Extended family traditions include going to my mom’s on Xmas Eve. We collect multiple branches of our exploded/expanded family there for a little food and gift-giving. The only semblence of order maintained here is a long-held tradition from my mom’s family: gifts are opened singly, starting with the youngest and going up and around until it’s done. Xmas Day is held with my wife’s family. The biggest tradition there is ordering pizza as soon as the local pizza place opens.
We put the tree up a week or so after Thanksgiving. DH designs our cards each year. My parents start Christmas Eve at our place, and we do our presents with them then. They stay overnight with my brother and his family, and they do their presents with them at whatever ungodly hour the spawn surface.
I suck at wrapping, so DH is in charge of that. I wrap his, and part of his present is being allowed to mock my crappy wrapping skills.
The big thing I HAVE to do is make fudge. I don’t know why. I’m mostly a wretched cook, but I’m not a bad baker. All I want to do this time of year is make sweets, and fudge is my particular favorite.
And I must watch “A Christmas Story.”