What are your Christmas traditions?

[Patchouli]

Loving all the traditions. Things sure have changed for me in the past five years. The youngest got married and two are far away. Looking like they both might be home for Christmas.
On Christmas Eve I used to make either shrimp scampi or quiche. Both very easy. Just the kids, whoever lived here.
We’d either have turkey, ham, or my lasagna next day.
Now having in-laws and their family peculiarities has changed things a lot, sometimes it’s at my one son’s and his family’s. Or here. Nothing is like it used to be and in the last three years I almost wish I was on a cruise or some place where it wasn’t all…Christmassy.
In Maryland…Sometimes we’d look at old slides from my LH’s family. Sometimes we’d go to our church visitor center in Kensington, Maryland. It was beautiful!
Caroling to people we know to drop off a plate of cookies.
When the kids were little I was usually up until 2 AM, wrapping and putting things together and had the Pope on for background noise.

 

[Patchouli]

Oh yeah, the tree. LH and I always went out together to pick out our real tree. That’s a trigger for an emotional day so I bought a fake one that first year. Or second.

 

[UserNameTaken]

 

[Shawn Burkett]

Leading up to Christmas we watched Christmas movies together as a family. Christmas Eve we opened one gift, which was always pj's. When we were kids we also opened a joint gift - some sort of game we could play together. Christmas Day was gift opening and ham dinner with all the trimmings. When we were adults we played Uno until it was time for lights out.

 

[AMC]

Making homemade chocolate. My process gets more and more complicated all the time. First year I made it in tiny molds. Second year in proper chocolate bar molds. This year I bought a dehydrator and will be adding dried strawberries to some, mangos to others, orange slices to more and m&ms to yet more.

 

[AMC]

Next year I'm buying a refining machine

 

[RJ2019]

The kids' favorite Christmas tradition is decorating gingerbread houses. I picked up a couple of kits this week and am going to surprise them with it tomorrow after school. They have their friends coming over for the night too, so they can all have fun decorating and eating the candy off them and getting icing all over my house.

 

[OldSchool]

As a youngster… the family tradition was Christmas Eve at my Grandparents with dinner, good conversation and then gifts. Christmas Morning was at home with gifts and seeing what Santa brought.

Great memories. Of course it’s all changed since then. My hopes are that the children in today’s family will have such fond memories as they age and times and traditions change.

 

[Pearl]

As a youngster… the family tradition was Christmas Eve at my Grandparents with dinner, good conversation and then gifts. Christmas Morning was at home with gifts and seeing what Santa brought.

Great memories. Of course it’s all changed since then. My hopes are that the children in today’s family will have such fond memories as they age and times and traditions change.

That is so true, kid's lives are different these days! I know a young couple who have 8 and 10 year old boys. They are always finding activities for the boys and are constantly on the go! Holidays, spring break, etc., are a constant go go go! They bought a new house this year. When they were planning their Christmas activities (Thanksgiving weekend), the kids asked if they could just stay home and have Christmas in the new house!! THEY ARE, just the four of them. Then just visiting grandparents on the weekend after!