What a great thread to start!

The tradition of baking cookies and giving them away at Christmas time started in my family when my mother and father moved to their first home. My mother made friends with the neighbors who lived kiddy corner to us. I believe my sister was a baby at this point in time. I dont believe I was in the picture yet. These neighbors had 8 children. Even if they liked to bake, the neighbor wouldnÂt have had the time for it. My Mom enjoyed baking and so she offered to make some Christmas cookies for the neighbors. Thus, a tradition was born. Each year my Mom would fill up a huge picnic basket full of cookies. WeÂd go to deliver the cookies on Christmas Eve singing Christmas carols. So long as my mother got the picnic basket back, she would continue to make Christmas cookies for the neighbors. We still have the Christmas basket. To this day my mother and/or I make the neighbors cookies for Christmas.

Fun thread!

On Christmas Eve, we have our main dinner. This is because my father was an entertainer & always worked on Christmas Day. After dinner, we go to midnight church services to hear the Christmas Story & sing carols in the candlelight. Then, when we get home...it's time to open packages! We were always told as kids that Santa had arrived while we were at church. In reality, my uncle who was Serbian Orthodox & celebrated on a different day had gone to the house & delivered all of the presents. My aunt loved it because she always had two Christmases. lol

Christmas Day was always quiet with a midday buffet, some touch football (weather permitting), kids playing with new toys, and adults gathering to visit. Our children have followed our tradition of their main celebration being on Christmas Eve. We go to our DS & DDIL's, attend church with them, & return home after breakfast Christmas morning. Now, on Christmas Day we serve the homeless dinner.

/tricia

We also celebrate on Christmas Eve because my ex-MIL always insisted that we be there for dinner on Christmas Day, no alternate years or other dates, we WOULD be there on Christmas.

My family is much more flexible and so they all come to my house on Christmas Eve. Numbers are anywhere from a low of 22 to a high of 40+, depending on who is sick, who has to work, how bad the roads are. I always cook dinner and it's always the same menu. We open gifts before dinner or no one gets to eat in peace and the kids mostly eat cookies and fudge and play with their gifts while the adults eat. Everyone comes, my Dad, stepmom, my Mom and stepdad, my brother, his ex wife, all the kids and their kids. We have 4 generations of family that come to my house for Christmas and no in-fighting is allowed or they pull kitchen duty. My house is neutral territory for that one day.

This year we will have our newest addition, Logan. My brother's daughter, Tracy, just had a little boy, he'll be a few weeks old by the time we have Christmas Eve dinner, another 4th generation attendee. I think he'll probably have formula instead of the turkey and ham, LOL.

We always attended Christmas Eve's candlelight service, but after Amanda drowned and then started having seizures, the flickering candles would cause her to seize and we stopped doing that. Now that she's on her own, I attend Christmas Eve service with Ashley or alone.

Before Christmas we always bake cookies. It was always my girls and me, now it's my girls, Makayla, Bud and me. Sadie helps by eating all the things that get dropped, LOL.

Now, with Elery in my life, traditions will change again, as they have with family changes through the years. That's a good thing, life changes and we have to bend with it.

Annie

Annie, I'm excited for you and the upcoming changes :-)

I love the stories - they're very touching. Can't wait to read more.

We always open one gift on Christmas Eve. It's always our pajamas - so we can put them on to be sleeping in nice new jammies when Santa visits! I even get my mom jammies to open Christmas eve as she has been with us for the past several years.

My dad died on Christmas AM when I was 21, so for a long while (and still for my mom - and kind of for me too) the season had hints of sadness - even decorations did.So Even though it's been since 1985, it's still very much a holiday of the "here and now" for all of us. There's no way to make it the way it was.

It's definitely still a wonderful celebration - just different, so some traditions have been kind of tucked away, I guess.

We started playing Dirty Bingo - where you steal gifts from the others. That's fun!

/and I never had a birthday cake for Christmas until I started making one a few years ago.

Stacy

Great idea for a thread.

As a kid we lived about 2 1/2 hours drive from my grandparents. We always drove over the pass either Christmas Eve or morning. Had dinner with one side and dessert with the other. We kids, liked mom's side better because they were fun! We played cards (everyone learned pinochle), played football, whatever....
Dad's side was serious (but grandma made THE best pies), adults talked politics and religion and children were to play quietly......yeah, right.

We were always allowed to open our stockings first thing....even if no one else was up yet. Then a light breakfast and gifts.

We still maintain the stocking thing and breakfast. We open gifts one at a time (then you have to get one for somebody else) so it lasts more than 5 minutes.

Beginning this year, DH and I have decided to "nail down" Christmas Eve as our time slot. So that WHEN we have grandkids, they'll always know that there's dinner and gifts on Christmas Eve. Everyone is welcome to stop in Christmas Day as well.

We now take turns for Thanksgiving and Christmas inviting his family and mine.

Deanna

We had family dinner on Christamas Eve. My grandmother usually cooked, and it was similar to the menu for Thanksgiving (although unlike Thanksgiving SOME changes were allowed.) Either before dinner or just after, the "kids" (the youngest ones who could reliably read and be trusted to not drop things) would sort the gifts next to chairs in the living room. Most of the time we behaved and each person opened their gifts in turn, starting with the oldest. That didn't work so well when the nieces and nephews came along. My mother would run around trying to "salvage" wrapping paper and ribbons for "next year" (that always ended up getting thrown out around July) and then general myhem would resume.

Christmas Day was for "Santa" gifts and watching parades. Then everyone would call whoever had kids to ask about what they got. We'd usually end up going to one of the siblings houses who had kids so my parents could make much noise over how spoiled rotten kids were.

That is the cleaned up version. Before that and behind the scenes we have the annual traditions of insisting that NO decorations would get put up, arguing about decorations, fighting about who was going to be where when, angsty tirades about finally agreeing to decorate followed by criticizing everyone's inability to decorate "properly", loud repudiations that someone "wasn't going to do any of this again" and some big dramatic scene involving either tears or an emergency room. The most notable two of those were the year mother decided NOT to re-use the wrappign paper and ran around grabbing it before it hit the floor and flinging it into the roaring fireplace and my future BIL's near heart failure when he realized my sister had NOT discovered the engagment ring tied to the ribbon of her gift. (Good thing there was a fireman in the family), and the year my mother broke her own arm on purpose because we wouldn't do what she wanted us to do.

Now, that all sounds awful, but I look back on it and chuckle because it was just all so ridiculous. But it's no wonder we don't celebrate Christmas anymore. LOL!

Now we have a nice dinner, play some music and take a walk around the neighborhood to admire the decorations. I do a bit of baking and that's about it. Nice and peaceful. :)
Then for New Year's we send the siblings a gift basket with breakfast goodies. Last years was pancake miz, blackberry and maple syrups, bacon, coffee, a French press pot, and funny shaped pancake shapers for the kids.

Christmas Eve, we have dinner (the menu varies every year) and go to Christmas Eve service at church. My parents are usually with us. When we get home from church service and driving through neighborhoods looking at house Christmas lights, the adults all sit down with a glass of wine - apple cider for the kids. Now that they're both adults (or nearly so), they can have real wine or opt for the apple cider.

On Christmas morning, there are cinnamon rolls baking while we start to open presents. We take a break to eat them and have morning coffee and juice. We have Christmas Dinner late in the day - usually turkey or ham.

This year WE will have a new member joining us - oldest DD's fiance attends grad school about 300 miles from here and can't get home in the short time that they're off for Christmas break. So he's going to come here for 5 days. With my parents also coming, it will be a full house but will be fun. Since we have a new kitchen and new family room, there's space!

DonnaR/CA

thanx for posting, diane--i'm really enjoying reading about what people do with their families! stacy--i'm very sorry to hear you lost your dad so young and on christmas day, too.

as annie said, traditions have changed over time. as a kid, all of us would head out to midnight mass, except for dad. but we'd come home and the closet in the foyer would all of a sudden, be holding a bunch of "krinkly brown bags" from k-mart and we'd know that dad had done his holiday shopping. we never knew what was to be found in them, except for sophie mae peanut brittle and cans of cashew pieces. beyond that it could be a deck of playing cards, bubble bath and MY favorite once, a box of very tall, skinny tapers, even though we didn't own a candholder to fit them, lol, LOL!

we kids would get up way too early and open our stockings and once we made enough noise, my parents would turn on the coffee pot and we'd meet in the living room to unwrap presents one by one, and dad would periodically take something from the brown bags and toss it across the room to one of us. those gifts were usually pretty funny but i just loved that tradition and ted and i carry on with it today. anyway. i'm looking forward to seeing who else posts and the stories they will tell...

Since my dad passed away 3 years ago, we made a few changes. But we used to always open presents on Christmas Eve at my parent's house. We didn't have a sit down dinner, but had tons of appetizers and shrimp pasta salad was a must. We began opening presents on Christmas Eve when I was about 7 years old. I was just beginning to wonder if there was really a Santa Claus. We went to visit relatives, and when we returned all the presents were under the tree and my brother's new train and track was set up and running under the lit tree! We were so excited! Later I found out that my mom gave my uncle the key to our house so that he could put everything out. After that, our presents always came early on Christmas Eve and we opened them before going to church. Our church had mass at about 10:00 p.m. instead of midnight.

Now we open presents on Christmas morning at my house and I serve a big brunch. Later in the day we have a simple dinner of a baked Smithfield ham (it just has to be a Smithfield!)and rolls along with that traditional shrimp pasta salad.

STacy, I'm sorry you lost your Dad so early and on Christmas. It must have been hard to even think about celebrating Christmas again.

It's amazing how many traditions are the same. Like Stacy, we always opened a gift on Christmas Eve and it was always new pajamas. LOL It didn't take too many years for us kids to catch on to that, or for my girls either.

My girls always got to open stocking presents before anyone else woke up, they'd eat candy and open presents and compare, giving me an extra half hour or so of sleep before I had to haul out of bed at O-dark-thirty.

And, like san, we always had a box or two of that Sophie Mae peanut brittle. I just loved the stuff. Still do.

Happy Holidays to everyone, no matter the traditions. I'm just grinning, thinking of the adapting Elery is going to have to do to spend holidays with MY tribe....

Annie

Both my husband's family and mine had very traditional holiday celebrations, with everything from the menus to the present-opening rituals pretty much 'set in stone'. As newlyweds, we raced madly from one house to another, trying not to miss anything. Despite the crowded holiday schedule, once we had children, I just suddenly felt this *need* to start a tradition that was uniquely our own. After considering dozens of ideas, I finally settled on a Red and Green Dinner, to be served on Dec. 23.

Somewhat to my surprise, it was a huge hit right from the start! That first year, I think it was just us and our next-door neighbors with their two kids. Then it started growing like Topsy. The fun part was coming up with a menu, because I put my children in charge of that (reserving the right to veto, of course. lol) Things like potato dishes and sour cream dips and cheeses were considered 'neutral' and were allowed, although they had to be garnished with parsley or cherry tomatoes or something. But most everything had to be either red or green. It never failed to amaze me how adventurous the kids were willing to get with their food choices in order to satisfy the color scheme! I mean, how often do you stand in the produce section with a 3-year-old demanding to have broccoli because "it's the most greenest"? :)

Broccoli, spinach, asparagus, prosciutto, beets, shrimp, crab, radishes, cucumbers, ruby red grapefruit.....all these and more were 'introduced' to my guys at our Red and Green dinners. Maybe they would have learned to like all those things eventually. But I have to think the reason it was so painless to get them to try new things was that they participated in choosing and they were having a blast at the party, so that made it all seem good.

It's been years since I hosted a Red and Green Dinner. They got older and started dating. There was always some huge party scheduled for Dec. 23. When they get to be teenagers, you have to 'let go' at some point, right? With all but one of them married now, though, it's time to start thinking about reviving this old family tradition. Maybe next year...

My parents both grew up in German/Luxbenborgean families so we opened gifts on Xmas Eve. When we were very little we took naps after dinner and then santa came. But later we went to pick up Grandma and look at Xmas lights. My Mom never came because she had too much baking to do!

The 25th was for a big dinner of prime rib. And we always played games. I did the same Christmas Eve tradition with my son; at my parents when he was young. And he always went on the ride to get great-grandma! Later when we were out here and & Matt was too old for Santa he would usually get on a plane Xmas morning to visit his Dad, who was usually visiting in AZ where his brother lived.

I used to do elaborate Xmas Eve dinners, with prime rib. Then stockings and presents. But my sister has little girls so we've done cocktail buffet dinners at her house on Xmas Eve. Santa seeems to fill the stockings and leave them in the guest room while we eat! This year the girls are old enough for a sit down dinner so we are back to prime rib, but at my sister's. Nice to have one aging in my frig again.

And now I'm the one who flies on Xmas morning to spend the week with my grandkids. They do Xmas Eve with their maternal grandparents and Xmas morning at home and then I come with presents in the afternoon. And then we play games.

I bake hundreds of cookies, so did my mother. Some get mailed early to grandkids and the rest travel with me. I now mail to my mother and 2 bachelor brothers as well. And my employees get cookies several times a week all Dec. as well as at the Xmas party. I do a party for them and an Open House for friends back to back. I also usually do a Hanukkah party as well for Norm's family and my nieces.

And I don't give the nieces a gift. I take them to tea at the Palace, to a performance of the Nutcracker, and spend an afternoon making and decorating sugar cookies. They'll remember our rituals more than any thing I could put in a box under the tree.

Our old traditions have been laid to rest and new ones taking their place as the "kids' have kids of their own and live wherever the wind blows them. So far they are all managing to make it here for Christmas Day and the Feast.

The Feast must have: caught-on-fire grilled Standing Rib Roast, Smashed Potatoes, and Jello Cranberry Apple Salad.... everything else is inconsequential.

Santa fills stockings overnight and the contents get looked at whenever the next family rolls in the door. This year we will probably open gifts on Boxing Day because the last group will arrive about 6 pm Christmas night... just in time for the feast, with little time left for sleepy little children to open gifts.

I've made a new tradition: roll with the punches.

What lovely traditions and so nice for everyone to share, even the sad stories.

My tradition is light and airy. My parents never made fusses over holidays so my grandparents made all the fuss. Funny thing is, my boyfriend's family never made a fuss either, so neither of us has any solid traditions for the holidays.

My brother and I would stay with our grandparents from Christmas through the new year, every year, and it was the most fun. We would sneak holiday ribbon candy when our grands thought we were asleep and tell silly stories until we really did fall asleep.

We would drive down Christmas tree lane several times, ohhing and ahhing, and grampa would put lights up along the front of the house. All our gifts from our grandparents were signed from Santa and Mrs Claus.

Each Christmas eve, my family would have dinner (turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, yams, green beans and plum pudding) at gram and gramp's and we would all get to open one gift. My gram had a way of picking two pounds of See's candy for my dad and then none for my mom...she didn't really like my mom :( So, my dad would open the See's first so they could take it home and he could share with my mom. Christmas day we would all drive back to their house and have a big holiday lunch (leftover turkey and all the fixings and another plum pudding) and then our parents would drive home "before the drinkers get on the road".

Before the new year, we would go check out the floats for the rose parade to see how they were made. Come the new year, we all watched the rose parade, like, at least three times! My parents met at the rose parade and my grands lived in Pasadena, so it was a big deal. Then, we'd all eat turkey sandwiches and take turns looking through the Pasadena Star News to see all the photos of the floats...oh, they were so colourful and pretty.
Now, after the deaths of my grandparents and us all moving out of state and my divorce, I am trying something new. I haven't owned or watched TV in nearly ten years, so the parade is out, but I have started other colourful traditions...

I paint botanical or animal gifts for my family and they really like that. My mom buys me a new stocking EVERY darn year...silly, but I like it just the same! My dad calls and we talk about water colours and scenery and he tells me the new photos he took of things to paint. My brother gets a Polo or Lacoste shirt, mainly because he likes them but also because I am a creature of habit. With the addition of my sister in law, I am enjoying the stories of all her cooking--she is a great cook and has a very similar style as my gram! She even fries chicken and puts magic shell on ice cream!

This year, my boyfriend and I are thinking of having ANOTHER turkey!! We really enjoyed the Thanksgiving one so we are going to order our free range organic beast from the market tomorrow.

We don't have any long-standing traditions, unless you count the huge bowl of fruit salad that is essential to every Christmas feast. These days, with a family of only 3 people, the bowl has shrunk, but the fruit salad is still a Must. I suppose you could also count the LACK of Christmas cake and Christmas pudding. We all hate them.

So how about a New Tradition, started a few years ago with my son's in-laws. They do a Secret Santa. The name of each person is written on a piece of paper, and each person picks a name 'out of the hat'. That person is the one for whom you buy a gift. So each person gets a gift, and each person has only one other person to buy for. The sensible ones amongst them are prepared with a Wish List, which makes like much easier for the giver. Much more sensible when you've only got adults to deal with. I don't participate in it. I would get something for my son and DIL regardless, and they still only have to buy for one - ME! I prefer to be 'kept separate' at Christmas and have my kids to myself. I had enough of large family gatherings in my youth, thank you!

We have a number of family traditions.

As no close family members live near us (the closest is now 3 1/2 hours away - it was 6-7 hours over bad roads when I was a child), we have always had a quiet Christmas by ourselves.

As we start celebrating on Christmas Eve, the day before is a preparation day for us, besides being dedicated to Iceland's patron Saint, Þorlákur. That is when we decorate the tree, and also when we put the filling in the gingersnap sandwich cookies my mother makes every year, and my mother cooks the smoked lamb that we eat cold for Xmas dinner. My parents, and occasionally myself, go to lunch in the community center where the local trawler crews cook cured skate for all-comers. Fish on St. Þorlak's day is an ancient tradition that goes back to Catholic times when the Christmas fast ended on that day, and cured skate (which is a definite acquired taste) has in recent times become de rigeur. In years when the skate is particularly pungent, we have to leave our overclothes hanging on the clothesline in the garden for several hours to get the smell out, and the other clothes we wore to the lunch go straight in the laundry basket.

On Christmas Eve we start dinner punctually at six o'clock and listen to the radio Christmas service on the radio while we eat. Afterwards we open the presents. My parents then attend a Christmas church service at 11 p.m.

Christmas day is a day for being lazy, reading in bed and eating cookies and leftovers from the day before. On Boxing day we have a festive meal together. For the last 10 years it has been pork rib roast, but as we are changing the tradition and having ham for our Christmas dinner this year, we will probably have smoked lamb.

This year there will be six of us, as my brother now has a girlfriend and she and her daughter will be spending Xmas with us (thus the ham - we decided that since she will be joining us, we would blend traditions and let her decide what we would have for Christmas dinner).

We have some family traditions that came from my family when I was a child, and new ones that we created.
We opened one present on Christmas eve, and it was usually the kids "care package" of smoked oysters, smokehouse almonds, and dried apricots (This was always one of their favorite presents)
Christmas presents were opened on Christmas morning, but could NOT be opened until Mom (me) had her coffee, so the kids always got up early and made a pot of coffee, and delivered a cup to me in bed. Then we opened presents. Since when I was a kid my mother always passed out the presents, I now always pass out the presents, although in the last few years, I have given relinquished that job to oldest daughter, and then oldest granddaughter.
My kids do not come on Christmas day, because that want to stay home and create their own traditions. I think this is wonderful, cause I hated having to get up early, open presents, then go to two sets of parents. The kids never had time to play with their stuff, and we were just rushing around all day. Now we decide at Thanksgiving when we will celebrate Christmas together. This year it is Saturday, Dec. 22.
Because the kids get sick of all the turkey type dinners at the holidays, we would have a fancy Christmas evening dinner of standing rib roast, with fresh seafood flown from the coast, or Crown roast pork and fancy canapes. The kids and grandkids always liked getting dressed up in fancy-pants clothes for this. Bear in mind that the "Christmas evening" was actually our designated Christmas evening, not the real one. We would not open presents until after the fancy dinner.
When presents are opened, it is one at a time from youngest to oldest (I always made sure everybody got the same number of presents). Noboby can open theirs until we all see what the opener before us got. In my husbands family, people just went in and started ripping things open, and we never knew who got who what, or instructions would have been ripped away and discarded, and I found the entire thing to be a disorganized disaster that stressed me out. My kids do the same things now with their kids: one at a time and the proper thank yous passed on.
Now, with all the kids grown up, and nobody coming here for the real Christmas day, we stay up late watching movies on Christmas eve then sleep in on Christmas day, open our gifts to each other, and then go visit his family for a traditional Christmas dinner.
For the past several years, however, we have decided to set a new tradition: a little trip at Christmas. Two years ago: New Orleans, last year, a Caribbean cruise, and this year, San Antonio, Texas. We have found it kind of fun to start new traditions and watch our kids start their own.
One other thing, whatever day we all decide to be our Christmas together, the following morning we always have a sausage and cheese and egg casserole for breakfast. My kids all do the same thing: they serve this casserole every Christmas morning at their own homes.

It has been fun reading everybody's traditions!
Sherry

In French Canadian tradition my side of the family celebrates Reveillon, though we no longer have it Christmas Eve before Midnight Mass. As my extended family spread far and wide, we moved the celebration to the Sunday before Christmas. The menu includes many traditional recipes: Cretons, Buche de Noel, tourtieres, sucre crème fudge, apple dumplings, numerous homemade relishes and pickles, ragout, turducken, maple glazed ham, cabbage or pea soup. We never go hungry!

Now we have a quiet Christmas Eve at home with just the children, ages 31, 20 & 17. We read "Twas The Night Before Christmas" as we have done every year since the kids were born. We eat traditional food like tourtieres & apple dumplings plus whatever appetizers strike our fancy.

Christmas morning we sleep in, have a brunch of French toast then later in the day head to my in laws for dinner. My mom & dad have been gone for many years but on Christmas Day we take a moment to reminisce. After all my dad was born on Christmas Day; his name was Noel.

What a great thread. I am sitting here with tears in my eyes, crying and laughing at the same time. Such wonderful memories. Thanks to all for sharing.

Last year was the first year without my mom and it was very hard. I had no interest in Christmas at all. That is until I went to my niece/nephew Christmas pagaent. The sight of those little kids ringing bells and singing as loud as they could (5 year olds are soooo cute!) brought me to tears. Okay, I am an emotional guy and not ashamed of it. I cry all the time, sometimes it is pretty ridiculous actually.

Anyway, Christmas will never be the same, but I have a lot of memories to think back on. The best are when my sister and I were little. We always went to my grandma and grandpa's house for Christmas eve. My grandpa was a great man. I adored him. He was a truck driver and every year he would stop off at the bar after work, get a little pie-eyed and then hit the drugstore for his 'shopping'. My grandma usually got perfume most of the time. I remember waiting for all the relatives to get to the house and it took forever to be able to open the gifts because my uncle/aunt and their kids had to drive a few hours after work. We had a lot of finger food and snacks and got to open some presents. The grownups would dance and sing and everyone had so much fun. Then, when it got late my mom and dad would point up in the sky and it would be Rudolphs nose blinking! (It was a radio tower with a red light) We had to get home so Santa could come! Why we never noticed that light any other time of the year is still a mystery. The power of belief and magic :-)

Christmas day we would wake early (sometimes 5am!) which I guess wasn't too great for my parents after being up late wrapping! and we would slowly make our way down the stairs...and WOW! what a sight! My folks always gave us a great Christmas. One lean year my dad took out a loan so we could have a nice holiday.

After opening presents we would either go to my other grandma's house or she would come over with gifts. Wow, more presents...sometimes it seemed she dragged bag after bag into the house!

Nope, nothing will be the same..and not having kids to pass on the tradition to is kind of sad. Christmas is the ONLY time of the year I miss having kids though, so we get through it LOL.

Thanks for sharing everyone!

Happy holidays to all!

Duane

Please share...don't make my memories the reason this thread sinks to obscurity...

hee hee Duane - I liked reading your post - don't worry!

holy moly when I was a kid - we'd start "trying" to get up about 2 or so - lol.