Inspired by the recent viral video "25 years of Christmas Mornings", what traditions does your family have? It can be from the favorite food(s) on the Christmas dinner table you look forward to every year....or don't, to something your family does every year.
My family kicks off the holiday season by watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation the day after Thanksgiving. It doesn't officially start for me until I hear the magic words... Shitter's full!
I don't really have any Christmas traditions but more for Boxing day. In Aus there is the Boxing Day Cricket test and for as long as I can remember I've spent the majority of the day watching it. The last five or have been spent watching it with a carton of rum close by.
We go to the movies. Even before I married the Bear Jew, I would go to the movies on Christmas, and if I was visiting my family we would all go. Gotta get out of the house for a minute or three.
My daughter has Elf On The Shelf which makes her rocket out of bed every morning to find. To me the expensive, Orwellian thing is a great way to keep her in line for four weeks. We spend Christmas morning at my folks (largely due to my day's kick ass breakfast ability) and the evening at my wife's parents. My parents buy a ridiculous amount of gifts for the three of us every year, but then again they were always that way. The year I was into Transformers, they first one they buy me Omega Supreme- the largest and most expensive Transformer ever built, it was the size of a toddler. After Christmas my wife and I go shopping in Michigan where you can not only buy items with quality, but cheap. Can you believe lawn chairs cost less than a hundred bucks apiece in The States? Two days over course because CHEAP MOTHAFUCKIN BOOZE PLAYA
My family always manages to catch "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" on TV. After that, we can start putting up the trillions of decorations. We cannot ever buy a tree, we have to drag my ass out of bed before dawn, no time for a shower/coffee/changing out of basketball shorts, give me a chainsaw and drive me to the woods to find the perfect tree. My mom stays back to prepare the site for the tree, which changes every year (the year it was in my bedroom was a Goddamned nightmare), my sister and father remain dressed in the warm truck and give helpful advice to me as I'm stumbling around a briar patch in shorts and flip-flops cursing at a chainsaw. Also, my family always has a Christmas prank. Sometimes it's mild, like "giving" my Grandmother lingerie and then attaching it to the flag pole in our yard, and sometimes it's brutal, like putting the tree and decorations in the center of the yard on Christmas Eve, so when we woke up we had to sprint outside to grab presents and then sprint back inside before freezing to death.
Every year I watch Christmas Vacation while putting up the tree, followed by at least 3 more viewings before Christmas. My wife and I also watch Love, Actually that night, and it is a night I am guaranteed to get some. We spend Christmas Eve at my parents house, and Christmas Day with the wife's family. You can guess which I enjoy more and which involves me drinking until the Elf on the Shelf starts talking to me. We also wrap presents whike watching either Miracle on 34th Street or Scrooged. I prefer the latter.
I haven't been home for Christmas in seven years. I've always had a hospitality or retail job, and I've always had to work on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. My current job at least is closed on Christmas Day, but a trip from TN to PA isn't ever in the cards just for a single day. So all the traditions that we used to have are gone for me, except one that I keep alive. Every Christmas Eve, my mom and dad used to play the recording of Dylan Thomas reading his story "A Child's Christmas in Wales." And I can't go to bed on Christmas Eve without listening to it.
We have several longstanding traditions. Every year we watch Emmett Otter's Jugband Christmas. We go to the "Snow Caverns', an animated Christmas display in a simulated snow cave that my family and I have been going to since about 1976, and we go for dinner at a dive bar and grill, Rutt's Hut, that has been around since 1923. My grandfather, father, and I all went there, and now I take my kid there. It's old and greasy, and specializes in deep fried hot dogs and cheap beer and we all love it. Unfortunately, the longest tradition ended last year. Every Christmas Eve for about 50 years, my Dad's side of the family gathered in the same house. It was my grandparent's home, then my Aunt bought it when they moved to Florida. For the first 45 years of my life, I knew exactly where I would be on December 24, and who I would be with. The illness and death of my Uncle ended it, at least temporarily. Christmas really doesn't feel the same.
God, my family has so many Christmas traditions, I can almost time them down to the minute. Spoiler Christmas Eve On Christmas Eve, mom bakes a ham, makes scalloped potatoes and green beans. Every year. And every year I miss it because church service starts about fifteen minutes after she takes the ham out of the oven (my family does not attend church), so every year for the last 17 years, Christmas Eve dinner for me is a few slices of molten ham in a bun as I race out the door. Upon my return, we watch A Christmas Carol (original Alistair Sims, black and white) with White Grandma and my aunt. The same jokes get told at every single part of the movie and my sister covers her eyes for the Ghost of Christmas Future. Once Grandma and Aunt M leave, Mom and I do the dishes and she bitches about how racist White Grandma is and how irritating my aunt is and how, if any of us kids turn out like my aunt, she'd drown us in the river rather than live with the shame. We split a pot of green tea and some biscotti and call it a night. Christmas Day When we were growing up, my sister would have insomnia and be up all night with anticipation. Around 4 in the morning, she'd wake my brother and I up and we'd go play with whatever was left in our stockings - under strict guidelines that we not wake my parents until 8. Over the years, my sister has mellowed a bit, but still gets to the house before 8 on Christmas morning, sneaking in the back door like a vagrant. At 8, we find whatever noisemakers we can and create the biggest baddest amount of noise possible to alert the old folks that it's Christmas morning, and while they're waking up, I go downstairs to make what my mother just last year finally told me is "the absolute worst coffee on the planet. Seriously, it's bad. It's the most awful part of Christmas." Then, once everyone is caffeinated, we open presents - individually, in order of age. Dad, Mom, Me, Sister, Brother. We've tacked on the significant others and my sister's kid (slotted in according to age) in recent years. While opening presents, we listen to whatever holiday CD happens to be readily available and watch The Yule Log on TV. Then I pack off to church for Salvation v.2 while everyone else cleans up the holiday debris and makes cinnamon buns. When I get home, we pack everyone together and traverse an hour into the northern end of Toronto for Christmas dinner with the Asians where my aunts talk shit about each other in different rooms of the house while the white in-laws hunker down in the living room and talk about books and politics. The cousins pile downstairs with plates of stirfry and turkey and glasses of spiked cider and play Settlers of Catan and other such competitive board games until the wee hours of the morning. Last year we added a feature to the Cousin's Christmas, called Asian Aunt Bingo with favourite phrases from the elder generation. We all put in $20 and to the winner go the spoils. While some of these little traditions have morphed over time, they stay pretty much consistent year to year. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
We give all our Christmas food away to a poor German family in the neighborhood. Because our men are suffering so in the army.
My wife and I, at some point, watch Love, Actually every year around this time. Christmas Eve we spend with her family. Christmas morning we go have breakfast with my folks (spending no more than 90 minutes there). After that we invite friends to join us in seeing a movie, eating Chinese food, and evening hanging out.
My family and I have settled on a nice Christmas tradition. We don't talk, or contact each other. It works for me. I hang out with my in-laws, whom are pretty fucking great to me. I'll take it.
The only traditions I recall having when my mom was still alive involve food. Christmas Eve she would make Mexican, usually enchiladas. Christmas morning would be caramel rolls. I've made the caramel rolls since, but not on a consistent basis. The only other thing that was consistent but not really a tradition was where we all sat when opening presents. It changed slightly as siblings moved away but we were pretty much in the same spots with presents opened in a counter clockwise rotation.
I have a really lame tradition. It's more of a first snowfall of the year tradition, but I equate it to Christmas. The first significant snowfall of the year, I make homemade hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps and I watch....Season 4 of Mad About You. I started this almost 10 years ago. Make of that what you will. (In my defense, I think that was one of the best seasons of any comedy/drama I've ever seen. The slow smolder that is present throughout the season leading up to the boil over in the finale was in my opinion one of the greatest examples of quality television writing. Plus I forever will want to bang Helen Hunt like a drum.)