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holiday traditions thread
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holiday traditions thread
holiday traditions thread~
what holidays do you celebrate in December-ish? (Christmas is the large obvious Western/Christian one, but of course there's also Santa Lucia & New Year's, & Hanukkah I think?) and how do you celebrate them? any particular foods, family traditions, etc?
we always celebrate St. Nicholas Day in the traditional chocolate-in-shoes fashion. & we've never done this, but my dad's family did Santa Lucia Day, where the eldest daughter dresses in white and a wreath of candles and brings coffee & buns to everyone in the early morning. this is far more prominent in Scandinavian countries, I believe, particularly Sweden, but I like the idea of it.
and then there's Christmas! we always have a dinner on the Eve, and on Christmas Day we go to church in the morning & come home for festivities & presents in the early afternoon-ish. also around Christmastime there's a plethora of movies we traditionally watch -- A Christmas Memory, The Snowman, A Matter of Principle, the old b&w Christmas Carol, It's A Wonderful Life, probably others that I'm forgetting. I like Christmas music too, although generally I prefer more traditional songs to the cheery festive pop you hear on the radio.
Christmas always feels nostalgic to me, perhaps because it's particularly exciting when you're a small child, and therefore memorable. Easter is my favorite holiday, but Christmas is the coziest.
submitted by Artemis
(December 2, 2022 - 7:42 pm)
(December 2, 2022 - 7:42 pm)
Great idea!
So, my family celebrates Hanukkah AND Christmas. But what we celebrate about Christmas is more if like being together, giving, eating good food, and seeing family. This year Hanukkah runs through Christmas, and not my birthday, which usually happens.
(December 3, 2022 - 7:30 am)
cool beans! yeah, Christmas is celebrated fairly secular-ly by lots of people nowadays, I think.
so does Hanukkah take place over several days? I don't know anything about it, I'm afraid, but I'd like to learn more if you want to share :)
(December 3, 2022 - 2:36 pm)
Yeah, sure!
So Hanukkah takes place over eight days, from sundown to sundown. Every night we light one candle more than the last night. It represents a light miracle.
That's just the quick version. There's a whole history part.
(December 4, 2022 - 8:12 am)
ok! that does sound familiar. what's the history?
@Phoenix, that sounds cool! paper chains are easy & decorative at once.
(December 4, 2022 - 1:06 pm)
OMG same. My dad, my sister, and I are Jewish, but my mom is Christian. My sis and I have a unique holiday tradition of making a really long paper chain. So far it goes from the back of our house to the end of the sidewalk.
(December 4, 2022 - 9:25 am)
i have a tradition that,for advent,as well as doing choclate i also gat mini presents every day,like tiny things and candy
(December 4, 2022 - 2:38 pm)
My family celebrates Christmas, and every year we make chocolate cookies with andes mints melted on top. It's a old family recipe from my mom's grandma.
(December 5, 2022 - 10:56 am)
both of those things sound delicious! :]
(December 5, 2022 - 5:51 pm)
We always try to get a real Christmas tree (they really are different from fake Christmas trees - for one thing, they have such a wonderful smell). We have some Christmas tree ornaments that were my great-grandmother's (wow. She was my great-grandmother?? I never got to meet her :( but my mom has told me a lot about her so it's amazing to reflect that she was actually my great-grandmother.)
We also put up a Nacimiento, which is a Mexican tradition where you have little carved figures of Mary, Joseph, a stable, the Three Kings, etc., which you set up to represent the Nativity Scene. We also put colored lights around it, and it looks very pretty.
And, that's about all we have for Christmas traditions... not much, because we really just take Christmas as a time to be together and be happy.
(December 5, 2022 - 12:12 pm)
us too! (is that grammatical? do i care?) we're all fairly stubborn on the point of real Christmas trees; this year we cut our own from a tree farm. and we also have ornaments from my own great-grandmother! --crocheted snowflakes. i think we have a wooden Nativity scene somewhere that we generally put up, as well.
also, this is unrelated but i'm curious: are you and Poinsettia sisters?
(December 5, 2022 - 5:57 pm)
Yes, you're right, we are sisters! How did you guess?
(December 7, 2022 - 8:58 pm)
well, it seems you're both Mexican; and there's something vaguely similar about your writing styles, although I couldn't tell you exactly what.
that's cool, tho! i'd bring my own siblings on, if they weren't all younger than me/probably entirely uninterested :]
(December 8, 2022 - 3:11 pm)
My family and I celebrate Christmas, and we have several special traditions to go with the holiday.
1. We don't begin the season until the day after Thanksgiving (an old tradition that's passed down from my dad's mom). Then on that day, Black Friday, we listen to two CDs — specfically, a Christmas Festival and John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together. Then we decorate our home.
2. On Christmas Eve, we listen to several songs before bed: A Christmas Wish, One More Sleep 'Til Christmas, Noel 1913 (I think that's the title-), Baby Just Like You, and Sleep Well Little Children.
3. On Christmas morning we open our stockings before breakfast. Then we eat a traditional breakfast (also from my dad's childhood) of Mushroom Soup with crispy croutons. After that, we open the tree presents.
4. We also have a tradition that stretches from Christmas Eve to I think January 6th. This is reading a book called The Thirteen Days of Christmas. It's based on the song The Twelve Days of Christmas and follows each day, from Christmas Eve to Jan. 6, the Feast of the Three Kings. It's hilarious and poignant, and we read one chapter for each day, matching the day. We alternate who reads it every year.
And that, folks, is all I've got. Admins, do you have any December Traditions? (If someone already asked you this, you don't have to reply-I haven't read the whole thread.
Sunny saysd tyrwu. Bye!
Well, when I was growing up, we really kept Advent and didn't celebrate Christmas until the 25th. We decorated our Christmas tree on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Now we may start decorating on the Sunday before Christmas or so, to not leave everything until Christmas Eve and get too tired. But the world certainly decorates and celebrates before the 25th. We do bake cookies, including old family recipes, in the days before Christmas, then packs plates of cookies to deliver to neighbors and friends on Christmas Eve. But we don't eat any ourselves until after church on Christmas Eve. (Well, maybe just one warm out of the oven to be sure that it's edible!) And we always listen to the Alfred Burt Christmas Carols. His family was best friends with my family years ago (1940s) when they were written.
Admin
(December 6, 2022 - 6:28 pm)
those're some cool traditions! --when to start celebrating the winter holidays is quite a disputed point; i understand the commercial practicality of stores starting early, at least, but i still feel a bit exasperated when there's Christmas paraphernalia around even before Halloween.
on this point my family's more like the Admin's. we're Eastern Christians, so we don't have Advent, but we have a roughly analogous season called the Philip's Fast or the Nativity Fast, with the same purpose of preparing for Christmas. we haven't held off decorations until the Eve in the past, but i think that might be what we're doing this year. our church decorates in that fashion every year, of course.
(December 8, 2022 - 3:26 pm)
Wow! Admins, that's an amazing response! Thanks so much for sharing. I will look up the Alfred Burt Christmas carols!
(December 8, 2022 - 3:53 pm)