What Christmas traditions do you practice and enjoy (Page 2)

No freaky, lime-green, smiling with sharp teeth, bounding Alpaca in tow? 

I dig that tradition, though.  It's always eerily quite on Christmas morning.  I love to go for walks with a cup of coffee. 

Stockings, breakfast, presents (one at a time, from youngest to oldest), nap.  In that order.  Bing Crosby's Christmas album plays on Christmas morning first, then it's onto the randomness that is my father's playlist. 

1) My dad and I always go shopping for his Xmas present to Mom. He will not go without me even if it means going Xmas eve.

2) The entire family including spouses, significant others, and ffspring go to the childern's mass on Xmas eve and return to the farm for a dinner of lasgana.

Every year without fail I watch the same batch of movies, usually with my kids, though now I have to bribe them to come visit with a free meal or some such. These movies all have at least a minimal (to me) Christmas theme in them;

1. A Christmas Carol starring George C. Scott. The best version IMHO.
2. The French Connection with Gene Hackman dressed briefly as Santa chasing a crook in NYC.
3. The Odessa File starring Jon Voight. Takes place around Christmas time in Germany.
4. Christmas Vacation starring Chevy Chase. Self explanatory.

There may be no logic to some of this, so I offer no concrete reasons why I always watch these 4 films, and have been for years!

crummy DSL from work.....grrr......



Edited by max 2005-11-29 9:04 PM

Christmas eve: We usually make homemade pizza for the kids before the evening service. We'd come home, put the kids to bed, and have a nice dinner (shrimp scampi, cornish hen, or filets).

In our house, Santa fills the stockings (usually little things) while others (real people) give the presents under the tree. Presents go under the tree as soon as it is up. As more get wrapped, they get put under the tree too. The kids get excited when "new" presents show up.

This is the part I like most. I bought the VHS 2 yrs ago and its my 3yr old daughter's favorite video. I must have seen it at least 50 times over the last 2 years.

My tradition is actually before Xmas day. For as long as I remember, I have always watched:

Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer
The grinch
Charlie Browns XMas
Frosty the snowman

I only caught The Grinch this year.

OK, when you were a kid, who would cry when Frosty would melt!!

Christmas eve is with my boyfriend's family, and they open gifts that night. but before that, they have this HUGE feast with pierogies and fish and hulushki and all these other delicious polish foods (no red meat though, very catholic). Then they open gifts, and then we all go to midnight mass (which is actually at 11) and then I go home and play board games with my family (monopoly when we were little, balderdash now that we're older).

Everyone in my family has "their spot" for gifts. Everyone always knew where to put someone's gift because our piles never moved. Now that we've moved into a new house (after living in the same one for 25 years!!) I have no idea where our piles are going to go.

Mom always gets a pound of Eat 'n Park coffee in her stocking, and we make the christmas coffee with it.

Favorite traditions:

1 - The airing of grievances

2 - Feats of strength.

What? Christmas? OOOOOHHHH! I thought we were talking about Festivus.

OK, my favorite is probably the tree. Going to the lot, picking up a nice Fraser Fir, setting it up and decorating it, trying to clean the sap off my hands... The ultimate, though, is the smell. Man, do I love the smell of fresh pine in the house. We go to the MN State Fair every August and the horticulture building has the winners of the best christmas tree contest in one smallish room. The smell is absolutely DIVINE!

Another favorite is sitting by the tree at my Dad's with a nice fire burning and a big stack of old Christmas records on the record player. A hot Tom & Jerry in hand makes it perfect. I can't wait for Christmas...

Machiavelo, you should start celebrating Christmakuh. The Cohens of The OC do it. :-)

Edited by Matchman 2005-11-30 10:32 AM

my favorite tradition would be the stockings. its the same thing every year. they get stuffed with fruit, nuts, a tiny gift and candy. well everyone but me gets candy. i hate the stuff personally.

but anyways its so simple a tradition, nothing big about it, but we all just go through our stockings and pick out the lil gift inside whilst putting our various munchables aside for later devouring. i think i take solice in the fact that it is our ONLY Christmas tradition, and thus defaults to being my favorite. it seriously took me like 5 minutes of thinking to figure out what, if any, was my favorite.

Frank: Welcome, new comers. The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you're gonna hear about it! You, Kruger. My son tells me your company stinks!

George: Oh, God.

Frank: (To George) Quiet, you'll get yours in a minute. Kruger, you couldn't smooth a silk sheet if you had a hot date with a babe.. I lost my train of thought....And now as Festivus rolls on, we come to the feats of strength.

George: Not the feats of strength..

Frank offers Kramer the honor of participating in the Feats of Strength ceremony, but Kramer has to leave.

George: Kramer! You can't go! Who's gonna do the feats of strength?

Kruger: (Sipping liquor from a flask) How about George?

Frank: Good thinking, Kruger. Until you pin me, George, Festivus is not over!

George: Oh, please, somebody, stop this!

Frank: (Taking off his sweater) Let's rumble!

George: Ow! .. Ow! I give, I give! Uncle!

Frank: This is the best Festivus ever!








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