On Christmas Eve, my dad and I go to my best friend's house for their annual party, which is amusing because the majority of the guests are Jewish. We all get really drunk and dance and we all know when the party's really starting when her dad starts doing his Michael Jackson impression. The next morning, my dad and I exchange presents. (Even though he's the Jewish side of the family. We try and see each other during Hannukah, but it's just easier since I haven't been home for it the past couple of years.) Then we make a huge breakfast, and then I go back down to my best friend's house like I've been doing since we were 9 and I was adopted into their family. I get presents from them, swipe one of her aunt's cinnamon rolls, and then we hang out in front of the fire, usually watching a movie. Then I go back home to help cook dinner, which is almost always a ham, and we stuff ourselves and watch a movie we were given. Then we make chocolate mousse for dessert. The day after, my dad and I usually go shopping during the day time to get calendars for the next year and any gifts where it would just be better for the other to pick it out themselves. At night, my friends (two sisters) throw a party and since the older sister was friends with basically everyone I had a crush on in high school, I sometimes end up making out with one of them and it's awesome. Other traditions include: walking around to see the Midtown department store holiday windows and the tree in Rockefeller Center, getting a hot chocolate from City Bakery, baking sugar cookies with my best friend and her mom, getting my (preferably) one Starbucks drink of the year - the peppermint mocha, and my dad coming down one weekend near it so we can get dim sum and give a nod to the Jews-eating-Chinese-food-on-Christmas tradition.
On Christmas Eve my family and I go to church early in the evening. Afterward we go to my aunt's house and exchange a few gifts and eat fondue. We then exchange white elephant gifts. For those of you who don't know, white elephant gifts are shitty gifts that no one wants (gag gifts). Everyone tries to out do each other by finding the best worst gift possible. After that my mom, brother, and I accompany my grandmother to midnight mass. On Christmas Day my mom makes cinnamon rolls and Quiche. We then open presents and hang out and relax until my cousins, aunts, aunt uncles come over to eat. We usually have a turducken (a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken) and an array of pies and other desserts.
Aww. Look at y'all with your wholesome traditions and mostly functioning families. Pshaw. Our traditional Christmas: for the months leading up to Christmas, my Aunts on Dad's side of the family will fight over who hosts Christmas. The winner will then refuse to invite the loser, or the loser will refuse to attend, ensuring a continuation of the last 4 decades of boring drama. Whoever wins will be living at least 40 minutes drive away and refuse to turn the airconditioning on, despite the fact that it will be 39-42 degrees (135F, or legitimate oven baking temperature for our metrically-challenged cousins). My cousin will arrive between 3 and 4 hours late with his 6 young children, pissing off his mother and starting a domestic. The other cousin will arrive on time, on his Harley coked out of his mind (he is actually the normal one, I quite like him) prompting many suspicious questions about why he isn't eating. Around this point pre-bought salads and cold cuts, wilted from the heat, will be laden onto dirty plates and handed around with many excuses as to why the host was too busy to cook this year. Eventually presents will be exchanged and people will drive 40 minutes home, cursing the holiday season. Fuuuuck that. Ever since I moved out of home, my Xmas looks like this: get up at 9am and head to my parents with my brother and his family. Spend an hour or two in the company of my immediate family whom I love and like. Head to the nursing home to visit Grandma and chat to her for a while. Then, while the rest of the family head off to the aforementioned hellish afternoon, I head back to mine and have people round. 5 or 6 of my friends with similar family issues come round, swim in the pool, play table tennis, chuck some steaks on the bbq and get seriously drunk. As friends finish with their family responsibilities, more and more people drop in until we usually end up with a fair sized crew around 9 - 10pm. We finish the night with some Hold Em tournaments and then pass out ready for the annual breaks gig on the 26th. Ever since I've adopted this strategy, Xmas has gone from being an endless trial to one of my favourite holidays of the year. Good times.
Just a few random things, because I just tried to type out the whole story and it was ridiculous and none of you care. 1) There must be a gingerbread house. It is made with paper squares my dad measured and traced in approximately 1981 and a Wilton cake decorating kit of the same vintage. Joy of Cooking gingerbread recipe. Glued together with hot glue (because who is going eat a fucking gingerbread house after it's been sitting out for 2 weeks?). Decorated with white royal icing in exactly the same pattern every year. Further decorated with Brach's hard candies and gumdrops, also in the same pattern every year. 2) Christmas morning breakfast is pumpkin ring with cream cheese glaze. This became the sainted Christmas morning meal after the first year my mom made it (around 1992 I believe) and our dog bit a giant chunk out of the side before breakfast. We cut the bite out of the cake and deposited said slice in the dog's bowl, and I have never seen a funnier face than an animal who wanted the whole cake and realized she was full after the stolen bite and a couple more. That dog passed away in 2004 and I think we will always have that cake. 3) We drink a lot. This tradition was inaugurated sometime while I was in college, and I adore it. Particularly while opening presents, there is always eggnog with bourbon or champagne or both, if you're me. 4) You have to put all your loot away in your room before company comes for dinner because my dad is OCD. Also, he spends the entire morning picking up every piece of ribbon and wrapping paper as soon as it's opened and breaking it down into a giant perfectly organized trash pile. 5) My husband and I exchange "naughty" presents in private sometime after the familial present opening. 6) Day after Christmas the entire family goes shopping. There are some killer sales to be had if the economy is doing anything less than gangbusters.
I have spent many many years hating Christmas with all the misery and stress and varied anxieties. So, eventually I got fed up and now, after a lot of effort, I have a set of traditions that I actually enjoy. The fundamental thing is that I will not, no matter what anyone says, allow anything even remotely obnoxious into my day. Everything not fun or relaxing has been culled and is not welcome back. To that end, this is what we do. Christmas Eve we visit my wife's parents and hang out for a few hours and do some presents and eat and relax. I like her folks, it's a fun relaxing time. Christmas Morning we get up and go visit my folks for breakfast. This is brutally regimented, I will not allow us to spend more than 90 minutes there at the most. Visit, say hello, exchange some presents (though this year I will be lobbying to skip presents) and then get out. Mission accomplished of not completely neglecting my family on Christmas. Then we go home. At noon starts the fun part. My wife and I plan a day of seeing a movie, then chinese food, and then back at our place to hang out. We issue an open invite to our friends to come join us if they want. But, there is zero effort on our part to coordinate with anyone. My wife picks the movie, it's not a discussion of 14 people's preferences, and if no one shows up that's fine because the plans are ones we would enjoy as a couple. By 9 pm or so people are shooed out and we have a relaxed evening together. Thus ends Christmas with little stress or worry.
The only real Christmas tradition my family has is Mexican food on Christmas Eve. I have no idea when it got started, but we always make enchiladas, tamales, sopapillas etc etc and feast on the 24th. Other than that, it's generally pretty low key. Which is awesome.
Don't so much have many alctual Christmas traditions except for getting blasted on Christmas Eve but every year the day after in Australia is generally spent watching the Boxing day Cricket test with a carton of rum stubbies in the pool. Unfortunately I won't have access to the pool this year but I'm sure something can be sorted out.
Both sides of my family are in the SE Wisconsin area, so like Thanksgiving, I do a double Christmas of sorts. My dad's side of the family does Christmas Eve and it was always awesome. I have a set of cousins that live on the East Coast that I really only saw on Christmas when they came in, and you added them to around 15 other cousins, and it was an overflow at my grandparents spacious, but not mammoth, condo. We went to church in the late afternoon, then did secret santa after that. During the majority of the evening there was a revolving cast of appetizers and whatnot, and most of the adults got fairly sauced while us idiot kids didn't know any better. Most everyone stayed overnight and did presents from my grandparents in the morning, but my family would always drive home late cause my Mom's side of the family does Christmas Day. Recently, my grandparents moved out into a retirement community so now the tradition has shifted to a lunch at a "supper club" which is usually mediocre cause its terrible small town Wisconsin food which means the quality is poor and its terrible for you (they melt butter on top of their fucking steaks) and the waitstaff is usually cranky cause nobody wants to work on Christmas Eve. Afterwards we go to the "party room" in the retirement complex where we hang out, do gifts, etc... Its not terrible cause there is a Wii (how sad is it that a Wii becomes the highlight) and its still nice to chill and BS. Christmas morning, my family does gifts and breakfast at our place which is fun and relaxing. All my cousins that slept over at Grandpa's had to have some BS where Santa came a day earlier or later cause they were at Grandpa's house (but my naive ass never put 2 and 2 together there...) Christmas is usually at our house as my Grandma and two uncles on my Mom's side unfortunately have rather small homes, so space is an issue. There are no real traditions, food varies, and we exchange gifts whenever. That being said, its fun to be on my own turf and do what I please. I'm pushing for Mexican food for Christmas this year cause I don't feel like anymore fucking ham and disgusting mayo-infused 7 layer salad my uncle's other mother in law makes.
Christmas eve: Spent with the housemate's family. This usually involves a BBQ or Roast, multiple children screaming over who gets to use the quad-bike first, arguments between my sisters(his sisters. Complicated.) Housemate and I head desking and hoping like buggery it'll be over soon. Then come the presents, which Santa dropped off a day early for them at our house, 'cause he was passing through and thought he'd stop by for a cuppa and a chat. Then desert. This is normally cheesecake, pudding and a chocolate bavarian. By about 8PM, we're all rolling around and groaning with the amount of food we over-stuffed into our stomachs. Then the kids put cookies and milk out for Santa and are herded home by their respective parents. Housemate and I have a few hours of peace, in which we sit around and try and digest the ridiculous amount of food eaten, then haul-ass out to the families places to start putting together the Christmas presents for when the kids wake up in the morning. All this usually ends at about 2AM with a slightly tipsy me and him, giggling and trying to work out why the bike/dolls house/trampoline wont start together and declaring they need to be tested for construction purposes before we go home and pass out. Christmas day: Wake up at about 8AM, make a massive breakfast to pile on top of the still digesting dinner/booze from the night before, once again eat WAY too much, unwrap presents we've got for each other. Usually has a babomb in it somewhere, eat candy out of our stockings, head to my mothers for another enormous food/alcohol orgy with my side of the family, open multiple presents, wonder why my Uncle thinks red wine tastes good, pile back into the car, giggling and tipsy, to rock up at my brothers parents place for Christmas dinner, trying very hard to act sober for his extremely religious parentals, go home, get our booze on a bit more, fall asleep at roughly 5AM after doing obscene things with Christmas trees/lights. Boxing day: Wake up, think to self "Why!?", get up, get ready and go out to my Uncle's boxing day BBQ with both sides of the family. Yet more children shrieking, more alcohol consumed, Boxing Day cricket match watched with my Uncles, unwrap more presents, listen to the slight disagreement between two of my four Uncles(I think they're on a rotating roster), then finally get home, plonk down, and drink ourselves senseless til New Years. New Years Day: Wake up with sisters, hearing small children scream, make vow to NEVER do this again, get up, make breakfast, and realize I've put on a good ten kilos in the last few days. Make new years resolution to never drink, eat, or smoke that much ever again upon the realization my lungs feel like it's been attacked by a cheese grater, get fit, etc etc. Get home, stare at huge pile of presents/left overs, wonder wtf my housemate and I are gonna do with all this shit, and how the hell did we accumulate so much of it anyway?
Mine actually starts the weekend after Thanksgiving: Sunday after Thanksgiving: Eat a big turkey dinner at my parents' house with the immediate family (brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews), then go home, and put up the Christmas Decorations, and decorate the tree while watching "Love, Actually" with the wife (Screw you, its funny). Every Saturday Night thereafter: We watch another Christmas movie. Movies include Christmas Vacation, Scrooged, Elf, and Charlie Brown Christmas. Maybe Home Alone if we're bored, or Die Hard if I can convince the wife it is a "Christmas" movie. Christmas Eve: We spend the night at my parents' house. First we get there around 5, and it is just my immediate family. Extended family starts to show up around 7, and by 10 I'm drunk and ready to go home. Overall, this is my favorite night. Christmas Day: Wife and I exchange presents at home (between each other). Then, we drive to my in-laws, where more gifts are exchanged (us to wife's parents, wife's parents to us). Next, we head to my brother's house for more gift exchanges (parents to us and us to parents, plus us to the kids) and for breakfast. Then, we head back to my wife's family for a Christmas day gathering, which usually involves way more alcohol than is necessary, and where the drama gets kicked up to 11 (one year, jail-bird cousin and coked-up uncle got into a fist fight on the lawn, Fa-la-la-la-la La-la-la-la). Finally, we head BACK to my brother's house to play games and get drunk. This final gathering is just my brothers and our wives (no kids). This is my second favorite Holiday tradition. Lots of driving on Christmas Day, which kind of sucks, but once the baby comes along, a lot of these traditions are going out the window.