What is christmas like in your family?

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What do you people do at this time? Sure, there is the typical stereotype of a warm, jolly family sitting under the damn christmas tree. In my opinion, i think the truth is much less romanic. In my family, we never celebrited christmas. If there was any celebrition, it is more out of finding an excuse to feast, and socialized with relatives, and business partners.
 
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I just got off the phone with one of my friends. I'm spending Christmas Eve with her family, then just going to see my family for Christmas day, and back home again. :biggrin: It's going to be a wonderful Christmas this year! Of course, it occurred to me that I now need to obtain a few more presents. :eek: I don't have time to shop this week! Dangit, I should have thought of this sooner. I guess I know what I'm doing tomorrow. :cry:
 
I think my family (brother, sisters, mom) still communicate for the holidays, we're spread all over the country. I lost touch with them, I'm not really good at keeping in contact. :redface:

If it wasn't for the occasional attempt by my mom to say hi, I'd have no idea if anyone was still alive.
 
I'll be sitting here all alone. all day long. humming christmas songs. playing with my chestnuts.
 
Generally, we sacrifice a goat and sing hymns to the Prince of Darkness. But other than that, we're the stereotypical warm, jolly family sitting under the Christmas tree. Which is, as you say, damned.
 
Archon said:
Generally, we sacrifice a goat and sing hymns to the Prince of Darkness. But other than that, we're the stereotypical warm, jolly family sitting under the Christmas tree. Which is, as you say, damned.
So, just the typical All-American family. :biggrin:
 
every year i try to make as many holiday traditions as possible. i love christmas! I've made almost everyone in my family personalized stocking, (though i still use the free one the handed out at the grocery store a few years back...) all through the season i bake cookies and pies so that our house always smells good, (but i wasn't home this year...) my sister and i would spend at least one full day in december making homemade christmas decorations. we make paper chains, snow flakes, candy cane reindeer, and usually i find some interesting way of using ribbon every where.

Every year for the past 4 years or so, i make a gingerbread village. two years ago it was a massacre (people started eating it, so i just sprinkled red sprinkles everywhere heh, kinda morbid...) and after a failed attempt of a 2 foot 2 story gingerbread house, (which had a sunroof after i attempted to add a chimney...) i made santas village.

Also, we cut down our own tree every year. Last year us kids went by ourselves for the first time since i had my own car. we'd never done it before... and so we rolled down the windows, pullled the string through the car and tied the tree down. though, in the process, we tied the doors shut... and my siblings, boyfriend, and i, all crawled through the windows to get back in... and then had to crawl out again...

i almost always string popcorn, even though everyone hates it... just because its fun to string popcorn. and then we decorate the tree all together, usually while my older sister yells at us for making it too tacky... then, almost every christmas eve since I've learned to play guitar/piano, i sit and sing christmas carols to my family and they'll sometimes sing along, though usually just drink a lot of eggnog and tell me to play jingle bell rock over and over...

we open one present every christmas eve, and its always one that we can use right away. usually we open a game that a relative sent to the whole family, and then we'll play that night. (my teams ALWAYS wins...)

when we were kids, my sister and i shared a bedroom, and christmas eve, she couldn't sleep, so i'd recite to her "twas the night before christmas" (which i relearned, just for her, every year.) and then i'd sing her carols until she fell asleep. that's my favorite tradition, but we've much grown out of it.

at any rate, this year I'm missing out on a lot cause i don't get home till the 23rd.. I'm bummed :sad. i did make my friend dan some snow flakes though, and when i was home after thanksgiving, i insisted that we put up lights while i was home so i could see them. and i even cleared out space for the christmas tree so i could imagine it there.
 
tribdog said:
playing with my chestnuts.
Why don't cha' roast tem for me will ya? Over an open fire preferably.
 
Xmas is normally a fairly quiet affair here. Present opening in the morning, then I help my mum with christmas dinner. My big brother and grandad come round for dinner, and stay the afternoon. Then my grandad gets drunk and generally makes an idiot out of himself. Luckily, it's a friend's birthday on the 25th and she's throwing a party, so I should be able to escape before grandad finds the brandy.
 
On Christmas eve, I have a big dinner and invite family and friends over. My house this year is so small, that a few might actually be sitting under the tree. I serve the Glog, then we munch on piles of goodies while singing songs.
Around 9 gifts are open.
Christmas day is spent going to other peoples homes.
 
I just bought a christmas tree yesterday and while I was buying it, big balls of hail started coming down, decorating the christmas tree and myself with a lovely layer of white :biggrin: I'll be inviting my family over for christmas diner, for presents I'll buy some jummy food items, the next day will be christmas diner with my bf's parents, some days to look forward to!
 
Port wine and vodka..mixed with orange zest, cloves,cinnamon sticks and raisins. Its good for what ails ya!
 
As a kid, our Christmas always consisted of our church's Christmas Eve service with the Christmas play. I wound up narrating it for a couple of years because I tended to be so loud - something that would probably surprise folks that know me now. We always had Christmas cookies, but the best was the homemade oatmeal cookies (no raisins) in those tupperware containers (I don't know why I had a thing for those).

Still the most important thing was having everyone home for Christmas. When I was ten and living in Wichita, my mom wound up being hospitalized just before Christmas. That was a pretty stressful Christmas as we got closer and closer to Christmas wondering if she'd get out in time. My sister's birthday on the 19th came and went with her still in the hospital and I really began to worry.

She finally came home a couple of days before Christmas. I made a Christmas card for her at school on Christmas Eve - the outside was blue construction paper and the inside was white copier paper that was cut and folded to make a snowflake that would pop up when the card was opened. I can't believe I lost it on the way home! I wanted to search for it and my dad surprised me - he went with me to look for it. He was always one to do the 'smart' thing - he never wasted time on hopeless causes and everyone knows you're never going to find a dark blue Christmas card in the dark somewhere between the school and our house. We never did find it, but I still remember us trying to find it together. We gave up more because we were running out of time before the church service than impatience.

We did the church service and I was narrator again (actually, I wish I could have been Joseph or a shepherd or one of the characters at least once). We got home and, sure enough, my mom had the oatmeal cookies in the little tupperware containers. It was a pretty special night.

Until my mom collapsed on the floor. I remember looking at the ambulance lights in the front yard and the blinking Christmas lights on the house as us kids were hurried over to the next door neighbor's house. We wound up waiting over there for a couple of hours before my dad came home. My mom would be in the hospital again for a while and he was taking us kids to my aunt's house in Missouri in the morning.

He stopped by the neighbors before opening up the house, which was a mistake. When we went in the house, we discovered that our kitten had learned how to fish - the fish tank was overturned onto the floor and the three goldfish were half eaten. It seemed like anything that could go wrong had to go wrong.

Christmas morning was pretty depressing, to say the least. We opened our presents, picked out a couple to take with us, then spent Christmas morning on the road to Missouri.

A Christmas like that and you really feel like the next ought to be extra special to make up for it, but sometimes that just doesn't happen. She had a couple more extended stays in the hospital and died later that Spring.

So, for me, just having family is the most important part of Christmas, especially if someone you don't get to see very often is visiting (like my daughter and our grandson last year) or if you're visiting family you don't usually get to see. This year, it's just the kids in town visiting. All big kids and not quite as special as when you have some little kids around, but it's still a pretty special day.
 
xmas whine, don't read unless u want to

For Christmas every year the family and I pretty much go to my Grandfathers. He gives everyone one hundred bucks, gets grumpy, makes a bunch of bigoted wisecracks, and opens his presents without any appreciation or enthusiasm. (Usually he is the only one to get presents from the relatives, except for the money he gives out) We eat glorified rice and other concotions, listen to my Dad repeat the same stories, sit in silence with Dad after he is done talking and our butts hurt so bad we can hardly stand up, listen to other relatives repeat the same stories, tell somebody something about yourself and they forget in 5 min and ask you the same question yet are offended when you don't remember something they told you 5 years ago, then you say, bye see you next year and you drive home in the blizzard.
This ritual pilgrimage takes place every year and you must show up, regardless of blizzard, icestorm, volcanic erruption, or alien invasion unless you are on your deathbed---even then...my family never breaks tradition.
before Grandma died Xmas rocked. I loved her Molasses cookies.

God bless Molasses cookies. (if he exists)
 
that's such a sad story bobg! I'm so sorry. we never get to see our family much on the holidays, cause my family moved away from most of them. but this year my mum's whole side of the family is visiting. I'm excited for that, except that they don't always like us so much, and they're not staying very long anyway. but ehh. hopefully it'll be really nice having everyone together. i hope my cousins actually talk to me... when we were kids we got along so well, but now... eh. we're all older kids here too. i kinda wish we had some young'uns around as well. i'll probably see if i can get the neighbor kids to come over when i make gingerbread houses this year... that's what i did last year. its so much better that way.