Two Christmases ago I got a temporary part time job as a store cashier. One of the things the store sold was animal hats that had long sleeves with pockets in them. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, but I didn’t have the cash. Finally, I bought one with my holiday bonus.
In February I got hired on a part-time permanent basis. In April I went to full time.
Fast forward seven months. A child buys a frog hat. I think it is the most bizarre thin ever. I go to the aisle worker and say “Hey, if you get a long frog hat, I want it.” With impeccable timing, on Thanksgiving morning she drops one frog hat on my counter. “For you.”
I think back to last year, when I had to wait and wonder if I should buy one. Now I just ask and receive it, without worrying about spending the money.
Thus was a new holiday tradition born.
This year I bought a ladybug hat. The cutest thing ever.
There’s TubaChristmas performances all over the country and in a few other places around the globe, check out http://www.tubachristmas.com/ to see if there’s one near you. And go!
I’ll be playing at Akron’s TubaChristmas this weekend I think it’s coming up on 20 years for me!
A little longer than 20 years, my friends and I have been making gingerbread houses together every December. But not out of gingerbread, just graham crackers. They don’t look awesome like something you’d see on tv but they look decent. Like something competent adults would make Really tho it’s about spending the day together!
We decorate our tree with odd-ball shit. Stuff that has meaning only to us. You’ll find weiner dogs, sheep, wallabies, motorcycles and crap. The wooden chicken in the window has a santa hat. The horse skull outside has a red light where the nose would have been.
Also, I do my best to out-do everyone around with lights. Not too hard. Bunch of deadbeats around here. I put up about 30 strings a year. Pretty amature by some standards, but enough to kick ass in my part of the world.
SoupFest. Every xmas-eve we have my family over for soup. We make five or six different soups, odd ones like chestnut soup, and serve them up in crockpots arranged in the kitchen. Everyone gets a soup mug (theirs to keep) and eats soup at their leisure. Kudos to Pier-1 for the mugs.
We have beer on ice, assorted breads and appetizers, and eventually desserts.
My gf thought of doing this as a one-off ten years ago. My family loved the idea so much it became an insta-tradition.
We have extended family to visit on Christmas Day, so we celebrate our own family Christmas on Christmas Eve or Boxing Day. Chinese food for dinner.
I also make it a point to visit one of the chain diners before the holiday (Perkins, IHOP, etc) and leave a honking fat tip for the server. Last year the server chased us out in the parking lot, thinking we had forgotten our change, then cried and hugged us when we told her it was hers.
This isn’t my tradition but it’s my friend’s and I think it’s lovely: Every year her family (parents, aunts, uncles, cousins) celebrate their Christmas with a theme of a different country. Germany, Uganda, Russia, Bolivia, Portugal. They will try to find Christmas customs for that country and if there are none, use some other festival customs and foods.
They’ve been doing this for a long time. Sounds fun to me!
We eat shrimp cocktail for Christmas breakfast and wash it down with champagne.
The genesis of this strange breakfast was an ill-fated Christmas Eve open house that my parents had planned one year. We had a monumental blizzard (not uncommon along the Great Lakes) and had no guests arrive. Since we had an enormous amount of cocktail shrimp and champagne, we ate as much as we could on Christmas morning. After that, it became a yearly (intentional) thing.
I did this for years but it’s stopped since I’ve got small kids - once the boys are older we’ll do it again.
Sometime between Xmas and New Years I would leave my place early in the morning, take the south road through edge of the High Country down to the coast, stopping at a few of the small tows and browsing through their brick-a-brack and second-hand shops, have a coffee or Devonshire Tea on the way.
I’d get to Bermagui around midday, buy some fresh fish and chips then sit on a cliff overlooking the ocean for a few hours, have lunch, watch the fishing boats come & go and spot the cargo ships on the horizon.
Sure, but at the moment they are 7 & 5 and rather than having them in a car all day in summer we’d rather have fun times at home or with family or go to the local water-park and revive the coast trip when they are a little older and the trip won’t be a long day of “are we there yet?”
I participate in my church’s Chancel Choir. Every year for (at minimum) the last six years, I’ve requested to do a solo during Advent season.
Yesterday, I sang at both the 8:45 (the “early service”, rather sparsely attended) and the 11:00 (the “main service”). I sang “The Angel Gabriel”. At the 8:45, I sang it right after the Scripture reading, which, through no deliberate synchronization on the part of myself or the pastor, happened to coincide exactly with the Scripture reading. It was as if I sang what he had just said.
At the 11:00, I sang it during the communion, and it can be heard at the 51:05 mark of the accompanying audio file.
It’s one of those traditions that’s always given me the warm fuzzies inside. I occasionally do solos outside of Advent, as well. But it’s particularly meaningful to me in this season of peace and joy.
I attended our local TubaChristmas tonight. They had 58 tubas, euphonium, Sousaphones, and French horns. But it was mostly tubas.
It was a lovely outdoor amphitheater and a pretty sunset. The music was great and the audience of 400 or so really enjoyed it. The only sadness was there was barely an hours’ worth of performance. Folks were really getting into it just as it was winding down.
The homebrew decorations & costumes were fun too.
I can heartily reccommend this as a fun Christmas tradition to start or continue. I’ll be back next year for sure.
Not Xmas but MLK day. I go to Boston for the day with my father. We walk around some museums, then have Dim Sum for lunch in Chinatown. We have been doing this since I was a little kid. We do not have family there, but I did live there for a couple years, and during that time he would meet me on MLK day.
Back in my much younger days, the neighborhood dads had a xmas tradition. We lived in a row house in Philly. One of the neighbor dads was a firefighter and on xmas eve he’d rig out a ladder and the neighbor dads would join him on the roof top. They’d partake of some xmas spirits, shoot the breeze, probably complain some about the wife and kids, and then have some more xmas spirits. When the time was right, they’d loudly stomp around on the rooftops ringing those jingle bells. Then one dad would shout “I don’t care what your name is, Fatso, get those goddamn reindeer offa my roof!” and another dad would fire off a couple rounds from his old M-1 Garand.
Oh, the neighborhood moms had their own tradition. They’d roll their eyes, comfort their distressed children, and give their husbands the silent treatment until the kids were back asleep and they were putting presents under the tree.
I think it’s coming up on 20 years for me!