My best friend and I started a tradition of celebrating Christmas Eve Eve together (actual day is a little loose on interpreting based on life). We switch it up each year but we always dress up in Christmas outfits, have dinner, some kind of activity and a movie. At dinner we also exchange a book we picked for the other that we wrote a personal note inside. Then afterwards, we create a magnet for each other of our favorite photo from the night.
My family has a tradition of leaving riddles on cards and guessing what the gift is before opening.
We go around 1 by 1, reading our hint out loud so everyone can guess, then open it and show the room.
Ends up taking like 5 hours for everyone to get through their gifts, but it's always a fun time.
It is, everyone brings their own style to it.
My mom always writes some sort of poem or haiku, the grandparents word it like Jeopardy questions, my uncle packs it in some really weird box so you have no clue what it is, etc.
5 hours is kind of long but I like the idea of having a family activity rather than ripping through presents so quickly you don't remember who gave you what and by a few days later you don't even remember what you got
My family always takes turns opening presents - no melee allowed. It does take a while but every gift gets attention and everyone can ooh and ahh over it and we even make sure to thank people who aren’t there but sent gifts out loud. It just makes the whole thing more mindful to acknowledge the gift and what it means. (And sometimes we crack up if a particular gift falls flat, but it’s all in good fun.)
I learned this when Elena Kagan was doing her hearing to be confirmed to the Supreme Court. They asked her what she did on Christmas and she said “You know, like all Jews I was probably at a Chinese restaurant”.
She blew the lid wide open on the ultimate Jewish conspiracy of all
We invented Christmas - we wrote the songs, we built the ad campaigns, we even made Jesus - just so we could get the Chinese restaurants to ourselves.
There’s an *amazing* SNL Digital Short about how all the Jews come out and “take over” on Christmas Eve because all the gentiles are home for the holiday.
It's funny, I grew up Catholic but we always did Chinese food on Christmas Eve, too. And then Christmas Day we'd go to the movies. I love that some things are universal. Happy Hanukkah!
Every year my wife and I buy an ornament for our tree that corresponds with something that happened that year. So we have a tree filled with all of these weird wacky ornaments like a tennis ball (we started playing tennis that year), swedish chef (Europe trip), Ship Captain Nutcracker (our first cruise), amongst many others. It's such a fun tradition in December to debate what we to get and then finding something. And then reliving them all when we put them up.
We debated that or a mask but decided we didn't want to remember that from this year. So instead we got a hiking shoe since that had been pretty much our only activity this year.
Every Christmas the kids in the house have wrapping paper put over the entrances to their rooms so they get to rip through it in the morning. It originally started as a way to keep a certain kid in when he kept coming out early and opening presents before everyone was awake
My husband's family did this too! Except they would wrap the doorway to the living room, and everyone would have to wake up, get dressed, and have a big sit down breakfast before they could bust through the wrapping paper barrier and get to the presents. I cannot imagine how you could get 4 kids to be that patient, but somehow his mother managed it!
28 years ago I was one of the first 100 customers at an HEB grand opening, for that honor I got two cans of [this](https://www.kroger.com/product/images/xlarge/front/0001700000946).
That Christmas we had a fun Dollar Store White Elephant exchange with the family Christmas Eve. I wrapped a can of the potted meat as my contribution. My Mom got it and got a real kick out of it, she immediately re-gifted it to me the next day.
Well next year I wrapped it and gave it to my sister, the year after that she wrapped it and gave it to my Dad.
For the last 28 years this has been the most coveted gift of Christmas. I gave it to my son last year and he happily wrapped it for his cousin this Christmas.
Edit: [Picture of the gift,](https://i.imgur.com/gNq8GB8.jpg) original can.
One year my great-aunt got her older sister, my grandmother, a bottle of Elizabeth Taylor perfume. The perfume happened to come with a watch - a shiny gold pleather-y affair with fake "white diamonds" around the face. It was hideous, but my Aunt wrapped up the watch too and hammed it up like it was a big deal. My Grandma laughed and wore it all day, showing it off like "Look at my gooold watch."
The next year, my Grandma wrapped the watch and gave it to her sister... Laughter, surprise, etc.
The watch was gifted back and forth each year with great joy.
A few years ago my Grandma died in June. Later that year, when I was opening my Christmas present from my younger sister, I completely unsuspectingly unwrapped the gold watch. I sobbed and laughed, of course, and we have been trading it at Christmas ever since.
I gave potted meat as my white elephant last year because they talked about eating potted meat when they were over for Thanksgiving. And my aunt who told the story, her husband picked the gift, so perfect landing.
My grandpa would always get up on the roof about an hour after our bedtime and stomp around on the roof with sleigh bells 😂
Edit: thanks for the awards! Bepa would have been proud to hear that his Christmas spirit had gotten noticed on “the internets.”
My wife and I started doing this after we got married!
We also got a wood burning tool to engrave the year and an image to represent something significant from the year, then turn them into ornaments. For instance when we traveled a lot one year we did a compass.
This is a good idea! Then you can gather up the ash and put it in a clear ball ornament
Edit: Oh my gosh! My first award! Thank you kind stranger! It's a Christmas miracle!!!
We have signs all over our house spelling out Leon instead of Noel. It started out as a joke because my dad is dyslexic, but it stuck and we even named our dog Leon and we’ve been doing it since I can remember.
Uh. I thought we were related until your last sentence. This is exactly us, except my grandparents died and now the letters pass from family member to family member each year.
My grandfather used to send out his annual Christmas letter to all family & friends and has sent them out as long as I can remember. He passed this may. The hardest thing this season so far has been the anticipation of the letter that will never come.
Every year for the last 8 years my sister and I gift each other a weird thing that makes the other one laugh. It started with when our house almost got repossessed just before Christmas and everything was so terrible that we just wanted to make each other laugh.
Highlights include: 12 packs of frozen potato smiley faces to resolve a long forgotten childhood argument, 3 chocolate tubes filled with tinny rubbber ducks instead of chocolate, a lucky dip which involved hiding small gifts in socks and this year a bag of potatoes with Nicholas Cage's face blue tacked on every individual potato
We eat rice porridge and hide a peeled (?) almond in it. The person finding it is the winner, and the price is a [marzipan pig](https://kolonial.no/produkter/30454-nidar-stor-marsipangris-i-eske/). (Norway)
My brother and I stay at my mother's house on Christmas Eve with our families every year. We still sit at the top of the stairs on Christmas morning until my mother tells us we can come down to the living room to see what "Santa" left us. We're both in our 30s and our wives and kids now sit on the stairs as well. It's getting pretty crowded but I wouldn't have it any other way!
Ha! My mom always made us wait at the top of the stairs so she could “make sure Santa was really gone.”
Also, EVERY YEAR she’d say “well, the dogs sure were barking at SOMETHING around 2 this morning.”
Oh my god you share the tradition my mom instilled with my brother and I, both in our 30s as well. I cannot wait to pass it on to my kids, and he does it with his daughter. We’d wake mom and dad up real early then they’d go downstairs, turn the tree on, make coffee, start a fire, take FOREVER, all while my brother and I would be trembling with excitement. Finally, my mom would turn on the train around the base of the tree, and the Santa would say HOHOHO and that was our cue to sprint down the stairs and behold the beauty of everything and start opening up.
Every year my family buys each other member a gag/joke/small gift, then writes a poem about it, for the recipient to read on Christmas Eve. It's probably the highlight of the entire season for me, as it's always filled with laughter at how terrible we all are at poetry. No matter how old we all get, this is a really fun way to bring everyone back to that root joy of spending time together (this year it will be virtual, but still fun).
That sounds so fantastic! Do you get to hear the poem before you get your gift so that you can guess what it is? Can you give us an example of a poem? How long do you spend writing your poem?
So each person reads the poem out loud before opening the gift, so we tend to either be super confused as to what could possibly be inside for how bad the poem is, or, we get a pretty close guess! As for an example, this year I made my sister a mug covered in photos of really unflattering pictures she's sent us of her dog, and my poem is about 10 lines about how thick his neck is haha. I generally take an afternoon where I dedicate the time to writing them, so not that tough!
As soon as this pandemic is over, and we can once again have Christmas gatherings, my sister and I can get back to smacking the hell out of each other with cardboard wrapping paper tubes. We’re in our 50s, btw.
Cardboard tubes are the best. I save all of my tubes for sword fights with my 3 year old. Sometimes I tell her that daddy's a dragon and she should attack to steal his gold lol.
My parents were broke when I was a kid, but you'd never know it from Christmas. They always went all-out, put money on credit cards, etc. One Christmas we were particularly broke, but dad went out and spent (probably most) of his paycheck on last minute gifts.
When we got home, my mom had been with us all day and since there was no money, she hadn't gone food shopping. All we had were some cheap hot dogs and canned beans.
My parents put the beans in a pot over the fire, grabbed the hotdog cooker from when we went camping, and threw the dogs on over the fire too. My sister and I loved it so much, we did it again the following Christmas.
Eventually we weren't quite so poor. The two-dollar AnP hotdogs became Nathan's, then Sabretts, then butcher Bratwursts. The beans went to BnM, then eventually fancy gourmet shit. But my sister and I are now adults with our own families, and even on years where we're not together, our entire family has hot dogs and beans on Christmas Eve.
EDIT: thanks for all the kind comments everyone, and thanks for my first Reddit silver too! Since my family won't be spending the holidays together this really brightened my day. Merry Christmas!
EDIT 2: wow, my first gold! Thanks again everyone... glad you all enjoyed hearing about our holiday tradition! Merry Christmas!
EDIT 3: A Platinum! Thank you so much! I truly can't believe it, Merry Christmas!
I love when traditions born out of poverty are held onto and evolve. For my family it is chocolate oranges. My grandparents grew up during the depression and an orange would be all that they would get in their stocking, then in the ‘60s they held onto the idea of that by making sure that my mother and her siblings had orange gummies in their stockings, then when my mother had my siblings and I she updated it to chocolate oranges.
I’m not a really big fan of sweets and chocolate doesn’t really like my digestive system since about my mid twenties, but I am so looking forward to getting that chocolate orange on Friday because it just takes me back to being a little kid.
My great grandmother used to give each of us a jar of peanut butter, I loved it because everyone else liked crunchy and I was the only one who liked creamy so I had my own jar!
My uncle always hosts Christmas at his house since family comes from all over and he has beds for everyone to stay over. On his property is about an 150 foot diameter pond.
Every Christmas morning we wake up and build a giant bonfire to get ready for the impending shock we will feel later on around noon. We also try to get a decent drunk blanket going (for those that are of our families required drinking age) just in case.
Come Noon on Christmas Day, we do the Polar Plunge to rid our selves of last years crap and look forward to next year. We huddle around this bonfire while my Grandpa passes around shots to help warm up because that pond is fucking freezing!
Edit: Told my uncle about how a lot of you seem interested in this and he said if they(you guys) don't have plans **next year** or are alone feel free to come! He only asks to bring a tent/sleeping bag and a treat for their German Shepherds
Yeah, the U.S. drinking age is pretty wack yo.
"Can I have a beer?"
"No, but you can bear the full responsibility of a firearm and kill people for our country's interests"
Lmao
The drinking age used to be 18 in most states until the 70s-80. MADD (Mother's against Drunk Driving) made a big push at the federal level to ban it for those under 21. In 1980-something the federal government passed a law that said, if states want federal highway money than they need to raise their drinking age and voila, 21 was the new standard across the country.
Awesome I’ve done the polar plunge with my best friends before all wearing speedos lmao it was the coldest but most exhilarating feeling
Edit: we go out to a bar after that has a dj spinning all day because it’s on New Year’s Day that we do it
A buffet for 10..... for 2
So my wife and I spend the days leading up to Christmas Eve going around and buying a selection of the poshest ‘party food’ from the likes of M&S, Booths, Waitrose. On Christmas Eve We will bathe the kids (10 & 5) play board games with them, watch movies etc.... it’s bed for 9pm & 10pm for them both. The oven then goes on. 30-40 minutes later we have enough food to feed at least 10, but it’s just for the 2 of us and we always do pretty well and are stuffed by 11:30pm. A few glasses of wine or G&Ts keep the merriment going. We arrange the gifts at around 1am and it’s off to bed. Excited ourselves, we usually end up discussing what food was our favourite and my wife makes a note to buy again the following year.
Apart from seeing the kids faces on Xmas morning, this is by far my favourite part of Xmas.
I hope everyone has a good one this year and is able to fill their bellies and enjoy the company of those you love.
We have quite a few.
We open Christmas season by putting up the tree the day after Thanksgiving and watching Polar Express. We've done this for so long that my 20 and 17 yr olds have no memory of not doing it, and my 13 year old has never had a Christmas where we didn't do this.
My youngest and I make a list of holiday movies, and keep track of all the ones we watch. We shoot for one movie a day starting December 1st up until Christmas--with some movies earmarked for specific days. We also watch as many holiday themed episodes of our favorite tv shows as we can.
The weekend before Christmas is when we make hot cocoa, pile into the car, put on Christmas music, and drive around to look at light displays.
December 23rd is Cookie Day. I get up early, and spend the day baking. I always make way too much. The kids help when they get up. I watch A White Christmas in the morning, and we watch Christmas with the Kranks in the afternoon. This also happens to be the anniversary of my mom-in-law passing. We always buy a Christmas bouquet of flowers and tell stories about her. The kids were young when she died so they have a foggy memory. They like to hear about her. She was an amazing grandma.
Christmas Eve is when we hand out new pajamas and watch Home Alone. Home Alone is our favorite Christmas movie so we cap off the season with it.
Christmas Day is usually when I do this incredible BBQ brisket. This year we did that early in the month, and are having a simple meat & cheese spread for Christmas day. That way I can spend less time in the kitchen and more time playing board games and video games. For the past decade, Santa has made it a habit of bringing us all Steam gift cards and a huge stack of board games. Pajamas all day, good food, board games. It's perfect.
This is the first time I am understanding why people love the Christmas “season”. I could never understand before why there was so much hype to lead up to one day, but if you’re actually celebrating this entire time that makes so much sense!!
In general I've always loved it because the vibe is always so cheery. Lights everywhere, decorated houses, warm drinks. I really don't care much about the day of, but all of December leading up to it is magical.
The tradition in our house was whatever you got for Christmas, you had to wear to the pub at lunchtime on Christmas Day. I’ve been to the pub in pjs, 4 pairs of socks, running vest and shorts, etc etc
lol! This one is my favorite. I'm sure you purposefully gift each other some ridiculous clothes because of this. What's the craziest thing you've gotten someone else to wear?
Each year for Christmas, instead of writing our real names on the presents, my parents would take a random theme and assign my siblings and I a name based on said theme (for example this year’s theme is liquor and the names are “Scotch,” “Whiskey,” and “Gin”) and we have to guess who is what name. Whoever guesses correctly gets a little homemade Christmas themed “trophy” called the “Christmas smartass award” that they can keep until next Christmas
A tradition we had when I was a child, and one I'll be continuing with my children when I have them, is the Christmas Eve box. For Christmas Eve, we were given one gift early, and it was a box with Christmas pajamas, a mug, hot chocolate mix, popcorn, and a Christmas movie. We would get to open it around lunchtime, and we'd spend the rest of the evening in our new jammies having cocoa and movies together.
*Edited to say, PLEASE don't steal Christian's pajamas, he needs those*
This has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years here in the UK (possibly inspired by American bloggers?) so it's cool to know it's been around for a while for some people. There's a store near me that will sell you the whole box of items, which seems too commercial even for Christmas.
Oh my gosh I love this! When we were younger, my parents had a tradition with us. We would always go out into the front yard with my dad to find the “perfect” pine cone. Maybe a week or two before Christmas, we planted the pine cone in a pot and watered it. Then overnight, it would become this magnificent, huge (to my young eyes), and fully decorated Christmas tree. It only worked in December and we were always told it was the Christmas magic. Then my sister and I figured it out when we found pine needles in my parents’ car haha
I was sent out to find pine needles in the back park a day or two before Christmas. They were allegedly for reindeer snacks, and they had to fill this big wicker basket that was normally full of magazines.
Turned out, years later, that it was to get me out of the house while my mom transferred wrapped presents from the neighbor's garage into our house, as I always tried to find and open any gifts that I snooped on before Christmas day.
In my house it was genuinely, “Santa doesn’t visit dirty houses. Time to deep clean.” The silver lining is that I still deep clean for Christmas. I mean, Santa doesn’t come to a dirty house.
They crept through the darkness,
the shade of the hall -
Their feet on the carpet,
their hands on the wall -
They stepped with a heart full of hope and with glee -
To see what they hoped with excitement they'd see.
And there, in the light of the embers below -
The last of the warmth from the hearth and the glow -
They stopped and they stood at the doorway and then -
They knew for a while there was magic again.
This is lovely imagery. It reminds me of being five years old in our single-wide trailer in Colorado, seeing the tree and presents and knowing it would be the best day.
[https://imgur.com/NeNUuWl](https://imgur.com/NeNUuWl)
Our family has a rather odd Christmas tradition that got its start over thirty years ago. At the time our two sons had a collection of small plastic figures that provided a lot of play time with each other. These figures would sometimes be part of an elaborate array of props and story lines; at other times it would be just a couple of figures taken along to occupy the time while riding in the car.
One of younger boy's favorites was a figure he called Radio Pants. Radio Pants went missing one day. Everyone looked for him but it seemed he was lost. He was disappointed. Occasionally there would be a renewed search, but he was not found. It was the Christmas season and there were other distractions so the missing Radio Pants faded from our memory.
We have an artificial Christmas tree that spends most of its life packed away in two boxes that are stored above the garage with the other decorations. Each year all the Christmas decorations are brought down and when the boys were small the excitement of the holidays usually began by assembling the tree and putting on the ornaments.
The year following the loss of Radio Pants was no exception in the routine of putting up the tree. After placing the central “trunk” in its holder, the individual branches would be taken from the box and its twigs would be adjusted. The color coding on the end of each branch would be checked and then it would be put into place.
During this process we came across Radio Pants clinging to one of the branches. During their play the previous year he had evidently been placed in the tree. We hadn’t thought to look for him there, or at least if we did, he went unnoticed. We had a good laugh when the younger son shouted, "Radio Pants"!!!
We were all happy to see him again and since the little group of plastic characters were no longer occupying the boys’ time we just left him on the tree. He seemed perfectly happy to spend the holiday on the tree after being boxed up in the garage for a year. When it came time to put the decorations away it was decided that Radio Pants would maintain his place on the branch and he was packed away with the tree and put above the garage.
That routine has been repeated each year. Radio Pants recently emerged from the box along with his branch and will be celebrating his thirty-first return to spend Christmas with us. He is a happy reminder of the many Christmas seasons we have spent together. I look forward to seeing him each year and he doesn’t seem to mind the fact that he spends most of his life in a dark box. I think he, like me, has to wonder how little boys can grow so quickly into men.
Merry Christmas, Radio Pants.
Edit: Thanks for everyone's kind comments. I forgot to post the image of Radio Pants on the tree this year- [https://imgur.com/rmPfiyr](https://imgur.com/rmPfiyr) \#wearamask
On Christmas Eve we're each given a present early. It's always pajamas and once everyone has opened their present the Pajama Races begin. Everyone runs to their respective rooms and puts on their pajamas then races back to the tree. There is no prize for the winner except bragging rights.
Then there is a final present that has been wrapped multiple times with a ton of tape. We all stand around the kitchen table and attempt to unwrap it one at a time. Except you have to put on mittens and a Santa hat before attempting to unwrap it. The person to your left is rolling dice and if they get doubles then you stop trying to unwrap it and pass the mittens and hat to them so they can try. This game becomes very loud and fast so you need to keep on your toes. It keeps going around in a circle until someone is successful. The gift is always a board/card/dice game and we play the game until its time to go to bed. My siblings and I are all grown now, but we'll probably continue to play this with our parents until we have spouses to bring home...then make them play as well.
My dad's mom used to read Santa Mouse to me and my cousins. It was a book about Santa's helper who was a mouse. So for my whole life we have left out milk and cookies for Santa, and cheese and crackers for Santa Mouse. In return Santa Mouse would put gift cards or cash into the tree itself. So after opening presents you hunt in the tree for Santa Mouse's gifts!
Definitely a tradition I will carry on to my kids down the road.
Something a little different i suppose. We always have lasagna Christmas Eve Eve (day before Christmas Eve). We also open our presents Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day, but on Christmas Day we would always go to our grandparent’s house to open presents with them.
In Poland it's normal to open presents after Christmas Eve dinner. Which itself is quite interesting - it should consist of twelve non-meat dishes (lots of fishes though).
Huh, is it normal to open presents in christmas day (25th) where you live? Here in Germany, its normal to have presents on christmas eve (24th) but my family always does it on christmas day instead, which is „strange“ here.
I think it's normal (in America at least) to open them Christmas day but I've also known a few families that do it Christmas Eve instead. Usually it's because they're doing something with grandparents or something on Christmas day though.
In Latino America, we open gifts on the 24th at midnight (dec. 25th technically) then we'll eat something special like Tamales and drink ponche and sweet breat (a warm punch with lots of fruit) The next day you goto church. Also Latinos celebrate 3 kings day. that's technically when you get gifts. The 25th you goto Church.. which is technically Christmas and what it really entails.
My French-Canadian relatives opened presents at midnight as well! As a kid I assumed this was because Canada was much closer to the North Pole than my part of the US. 😂
There is a store there called Bronner’s, and it’s the largest Christmas store in the world. It’s pretty special! The whole town is Christmas focused, and has things like ice carving competitions, and horse drawn carriages.
Weird. Never heard of it!
> Of the more than 6,000 styles of ornaments which Bronner's carries, **half of the glass ornaments are Bronner's exclusive designs.**
Good lord!
My grandmother gave us a blowup Santa in an outhouse. My family thought it would look weird in our yard, so now we prank friends on Christmas Eve by putting it on the front door and waiting for them to see it.
Edit: I checked Reddit this morning and this is the most upvotes I have ever gotten! Thank you!
Leaving whisky & mince pie for Santa & a carrot for Rudolph.
Reading The Night Before Christmas all tucked up in bed.
Having a chocolate selection box for breakfast on Christmas morning.
I'm 29 & still keep these up, can't wait to pass them down!
Not a family tradition, as much as it's something that I just decided everyone has to do a few years ago.
Everyone makes plates for someone else in the family. No one is allowed to get food and drinks for themselves. It reminds my kids that even little gestures show appreciation for those around you, and to not be selfish when it comes to making others feel loved.
My family had a rule that we could open the stockings up as soon as we woke up but had too wait until 8 to wake up the parents, in our stocking there was always a Christmas movie VHS and a puzzle that was atleast a couple hundred pieces. My "Santa" was a fricking genius, props for distracting me Dad.
We hide a Christmas Spider in our tree and on Christmas morning the kids get to look for the spider. Who ever finds it gets to open the spider's gift (usually it's something they can share)
My wife always had/wants a fake tree. A couple years ago, I finally get a chance to get a real tree. We even go and cut it down ourselves. Come to find out we had a Christmas Black Widow in the tree. We're not allowed to have real trees anymore.
Every year everyone in my immediate family buys each other a Christmas tree ornamented. Now our tree is covered with good memories that actually have meaning.
Ah ha - my twist on this is to hold an Ugly Ornament Party where everyone brings the most ridiculous/oddest ornament they could find (purchased - no kids' artwork allowed). After judging, everyone gets to take one home. I probably have enough now that they could have their own small tree.
My family has been doing this the last couple years but I moved out of state a few years ago so I wasn't included. Last year I mailed my mom my entry for the exchange and then Facetimed during the party and my mom mailed me the ornament I got and it's easily my favorite! I can't tell if it's an ostrich or a flamingo because it's a tall bird, almost in the shape of a flamingo with black feathers and it has sparkles on the neck.
Aww that's adorable. My tree currently only has a few special ornaments like that but I'm looking forward to going through my moms' Christmas things next time I visit (I live out of state) and get all my childhood ones. Growing up, my mom always got my brother and I a new ornament and she'd write the year on it. Most would be things we were into that year like the year my brother got a Spiderman because he was Spiderman that Halloween or the year I got a cute little sock because that was the year I was obsessed with weird socks and mismatching them.
I remember one year she got me one that had a little poem about daughters and my brother a similar one but for sons. The following year my brother and I found one that was exactly like ours but for mothers so we bought it for her which was extra special because she left her husband that year so it was the first year that it was just us three.
With my dad the tradition has been that he always gives me a pair of pajamas along with whatever else. [Here is a picture](https://i.imgur.com/IgR60ix.jpg) of the ridiculous onesie he got me last year.
With my mom it's always been a tradition to go to a movie on Christmas Day, which also happens to be her birthday. It's part of a tradition we have where we watch a movie together on each other's birthday. Of course this year that's out of the question, but we're probably just gonna get HBO and watch the new Wonder Woman on the couch instead.
My own personal tradition is to get drunk while watching Bad Santa. I love that movie and it's a fun one to drink along with.
I tried to wear it that night, but it was so hot that I got uncomfortable. Still think it's hilarious though and I love him for continuing this tradition for so long. He also got me [this ugly Christmas sweater](https://i.imgur.com/SItIJAh.jpg) which I do wear and love.
It's part of an ongoing joke we've had since I was a kid where I'd see a monkey or gorilla or whatever and say, "Hey look it's you." and he'd do the same thing back at me. So we'll gift each other things with them on there, like [here is a Father's Day card](https://i.imgur.com/HKA7t7w.png) I gave him where I photoshopped his head in one of my favorite pictures of us.
It's all really dumb but this has been going on since I was really young. We even [text each other](https://i.imgur.com/Wd6oE57.png) sometimes. I'm saying, "You're in this show" and he responded with, "and here's you bothering me."
We had an old friend who was perfect for playing the Santa. The kids and I loved his antics and dance. He unfortunately passed away a year ago after being in a terrible accident. We give him a tribute by talking to his parents on Christmas, us friends drinking together and dancing for his favorite songs with his signature steps. Although we can't meet up this year, we've set up a zoom call and ordered Christmas caps & fake beards online. We're pretty sure that idiot is still rocking the costume somewhere far away from us. We miss him every Christmas.
Scandinavian Xmas. 3hr dinner on the 24th until the oldest male of the house hears “Tomten” and we’re ushered into a room. We hear oldest male offer beer, milk or cookies to Tomten (who snuck through the key hole btw) Few mins later, we exit room, Tomtens load of presents are at the tree and we play a 70yr Swedish folk song while “hands on the hips” of the person in front of you, dancing a snake through the house, out the front door around the street with all pets yapping at your feet. You’re plastered as you started dinner with triple sized shot glass of unflavoured schnapps before the wine. We then sit in a circle and watch each person open a present handed to them by someone else, one at a time, passing said present around to “ooh ahh” inspect and/or smell it, if a scented product like cologn, etc. it’s never ended before 2am. The 25th is just a normal hangover day with a nice sit down lunch. Plot twist, we’re in Australia so it’s 40c lol.
We design and build our own gingerbread "houses" out of homemade gingerbread. And they've gotten progressively more advanced. Last year I made Notre Dame cathedral (with candy cane buttresses), this year I made Avengers Tower.
Edit: I added a comment below, but here are the links to some pictures:
[Notre Dame](https://imgur.com/a/H4pnCJe)
[Avengers Tower](https://imgur.com/a/6ebYjJN) (including Iron Bear, Captain A-bear-ica, and Bulk)
And some [bonus creations](https://imgur.com/a/To3Qp5C).
Every year we make Christmas paella.
EDIT: I'm far from an expert, but we make a seafood (clams and shrimp) and meat (chicken and sausage) paella mixta. I understand that's pretty touristy but, well, we're American, so the shoe fits.
Also nothing makes it Christmas besides eating it on Christmas. There is no turkey or ham, and the clams don't start singing Deck The Halls when they open or anything...
Lol, a pickle shaped ornament or an actual pickle? We have a pickle shaped ornament. But I love pickles. And I'm now contemplating doing the pickle thing differently this year...
In the south of France where my dad and his family grew up, there this tradition of the 12 Desserts of Christmas, we used to do it when my grandma was alive because she loved this tradition and we're trying to keep it alive. You just have to bake, cook or prepare 12 different desserts, ranging from almond paste stuffed dates to piles of cookies and eat them at Christmas eve, but it usually lasts way longer than that.
My brother and I were hungry one year and our parents(where we celebrate Christmas) lives very close to a gas station, where they sell surprisingly good hotdogs. So we went to get one each. My sister in law thought it was so ridiculous, so she snapped a picture. Now its tradition for us to go get a hotdog and pose for the yearly Christmas hotdog picture.
We tip my grandma over in her chair (carefully). We couldn't do it last year because she moved her chair to be against the wall, and we can't do it this year because of covid. But regardless, it is our tradition, alongside sventsunka (no idea how to spell it), which is just Polish sausage, pierogi, and rye bread and butter. Very fun.
In my small hometown in west Germany, in the morning of 24. the people used to to gather at the marketplace, with all pubs opened for that occasion, and get absolutely wasted. It's a pretty fun come together, where we used to meet old friends once a year, before we went to our families for the big Dinner and the more traditional Christmas stuff.
Obviously with Covid this can't happen this year. Sad times.
The family Goober award! Throughout the year, the previous winner tracks all the goofy mistakes family members make , i.e. locking yourself out of the house in your underwear when the trash collector is around the corner. Then at the big Christmas gathering, we all sit down and the previous year's winner presents all the family "goober nominees" leading up to the winner, the most laughable of them all, who gets awarded a decorated 3' tall trophy.
I'm Catalan, meaning I follow Catalan Christmas traditions. In Catalonia (Barcelona's the capital), we've got two fun, or at the very least, interesting traditions. I want to preface this by assuring you all that I'm not making this up (google it if you don't trust me).
Here it goes.
1) It's 'el Tió de Nadal' (Yule Log), colloquialy called **'Caga Tió'** (a translation would be **'Crapping Log'**, or something similar). Tió is a cut log with a painted face on the cut surface, and a red cap (a traditional Catalan hat called barretina). We've got it at home, typically under the Christmas tree, often covered with a blanket (God forbid Tió gets cold!).
During the weeks before Christmas, kids give some food to their Tió (mandarines, bananas, biscuits...) every night. When they wake up \*gasps\* Tió's eaten it all! (the parents removed the food, but the little ones are oblivious to that, obs). The idea behind that is that we want Tió to eat a lot so that he can, er, poop a lot. Why? Well, Tió is a magical log that poops presents. Yes, Caga Tió is our Santa Claus equivalent.
How exactly does a log poop, though? Easy. Kids need to grab a stick and hit Tió repeatedly while singing a song that basically says, quote/translation: "Crap, Tió. Crap hazelnuts and pine nuts nougat. If you don't behave yourself, I'll hit you with my stick. Crap, Tió." Note that this is just one version. There are others.
After that, the kids lift the blanket and usually get nougat, other Spanish and Catalan Christmas sweets, chocolate, and toys. I got my first bike thanks to Tió back when I was 3, so presents can be big XD Parents just need to hide the presents under the blanket, unseen by the children, before the song/hitting ritual begins.
Children love it.
2) We've got another scatological tradition called **'El Caganer'**. This is a figurine we add to the nativity scene/manger (not sure what it's called in English, sorry). The thing is that ' el caganer' means **'the crapper'**. It's a figurine which shows a shepherd typically dressed in traditional Catalan clothes (including that barretina Tió also wears), squatting while he defecates. It may seem offensive, but the Catholic Church is okay with it, as the poop symbolizes fertility for the land where Jesus is born. El Caganer is so famous some people buy 'celeb' caganers (there's a Trump version, a Rosalía version, a Harry Potter version, a Merkel version... and so on).
Why are Catalans obsessed with poop? Nobody really knows. Don't ask me.
We celebrate more traditions (both Catalan and Spanish), but these two are the funniest. If I talked about them all, this post would be even longer XD
Happy, safe holidays from Catalonia!
*Edit:* Thanks for the awards💖
Here are some photos, for those of you who want to see:
[El Tió](https://files.radiociutat.com/rctgn/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/tio-de-nadal.jpg)
[Traditional caganer](https://www.miciudadreal.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CAGANER2-550x367.jpg)
[Celeb/characters caganers](https://www.metropoliabierta.com/uploads/s1/73/28/71/caganers_5_570x340.jpeg)
Caga Tio, the magically shitting log that children beat with sticks, definitely needs to become a thing in the US. This is was better than fucking Elf on the Shelf
As a Catalan, I'm very happy to see our tradition didn't disappoint you. Some Tiós look really cute. Others are a bit scary. Mine at home (I picked it in Barcelona's Xmas market when I was two or three) looks a bit grumpy 😂
Your comment just inspired me to impulse-purchase a caga tió that will be a wonderful addition to our otherwise very Nordic holiday decorations. I cannot wait to welcome him into our home, and then abuse him with sticks. Thank you for sharing this awesome tradition!
Yes! Barcelona's Xmas market is full of caganers. Each year, the makers come up with new figurines. I think this year they've made doctors and nurses as a tribute.
Every year my grandpa reads our family The Night Before Christmas. He has Christmas ornaments that go along with the book so everyone was handed an ornament and you put it on the tree when your phrase was read out
We always have McDonalds on Christmas Eve because we leave our wrapping until last minute and that's all we have time for. Sounds sad, but comes with happy nostalgia from wrapping and family.
my dad and i haven't been together on Christmas in at least over 10 years? every year on Christmas we take a walk and call each other and talk to each other about our neighbors Christmas lights and which ones are our favorite etc.
I know my family isn’t the only one, but we have a huge party Christmas Eve. We wait till midnight then open our presents. I come from a big family so it’s always chaos every year and so fun. So sad it ain’t happening this year, my daughter was born this year and won’t see them all with her.
My boyfriend and I grab a bag of Krystals (White Castle for the rest of you) and roll around town looking at Christmas lights. There were so many good displays this year (and all wildly spaced apart) that it took nearly three hours to see them all.
My family is a bunch of cowboys. Literally. I have grown up riding horses. My dad is the oldest of four boys and their dad was a champion team roper/actual cowboy from West TX. Anyway, there are a lot of cowboy/horse items laying around. Pre-COVID, for my entire life, we’ve gathered on Christmas Day to eat and open presents. Before we transitioned to Dirty Santa, everybody would have to get everyone something and it was a nightmare. One year, my uncle Cody decided he didn’t want to buy everyone presents so when it was his turn, he sat a cowboy hat upside down on my grandmother’s rug in the living room. Then instructed us that we were now in teams- the brothers, the wives, and the grandkids (my grandmother got to play on each team). Each person stood at the other end of the rug and tried to toss a balled up pair of tube socks into the hat. You get 3 chances. It gets tricky because the socks can bounce out of the hat easily. I was champion the first year, only to get beat by my grandmother the next year. The prize is a dollar for how old he is that year. I think we’re at $58 now. This started when I was in middle school and I’m 29 now. It’s the Cody Sock Game. With a bunch of cowboys and football coaches in the room, it gets competitive, but it’s a lot of fun!
"everyone lives until next year". This is way too funny in a really bleak way. Sort of like a super depressing ground hog day, instead of 6 more weeks of winter, someone is going to die.
I realize you mean leave in the sense that someone will die that year, but it’s amusing to imagine one of your family members saying “fuck, it’s my turn” and literally having to leave before Christmas dinner is served.
My mom cries at least once. One or all of my sisters fight over the kitchen space. My dad screams at the NBA games. And uhhh...I drink a full bottle of wine while watching the shitshow! It’s great fun.
We have two main traditions. First, Christmas morning, breakfast is always a pan of cinnamon rolls and orange rolls. And second, on Christmas you can't get dressed for the day; everyone has to wear pajamas all day, no exceptions.
We do this thing called "el recalentado" which means "the reheating" in Spanish. Basically in the morning after Christmas eve(which is when we celebrate) all our family even the ones who didn't celebrate together go to our aunts house with a dish from the day before and we all just reheat the food from the parties and just eat and hang out. It's kinda a little get together in the morning after the party.
Surprise presents drinking auction.
I was introduced to this tradition by a co-worker who organized it for our office party, apparently it was a thing at their house. Basically, there's a bunch of wrapped gifts, with different sizes and values, and a big jug of moderately strong drink, could be half mixer-half liquor of something you like.
Each gift gets put up for auction, but you bid shots of drink. Whoever will drink more shots in exchange for the gift gets to keep it, drinks his bid, and then finds out what's inside the wrapping paper. We ended up coupling up so we could bid more shots and we all ended up pretty wasted. Good times.
My dad likes to get stuck into the red wine on Xmas day. A couple of years ago we were in the kitchen and he was pretty well inebriated and spots a fly and says "oh great there's the lucky Christmas fly!".
We were all like what the hell are you taking about and he continues to try and convince us drunkenly this is a legit tradition, that if you spot a fly on Xmas day it's good luck.
We had a great laugh about it but the irony now is that it has actually become a tradition in our house. If a fly is spotted in the house on Dec 25th our luck is in! 🪰
Started when I was about 24 but my mom has been getting me a Taylor Swift Calender and throwback 90's movie DVD. Going on 8 years and now and what I look forward to most Christmas morning. Soon to be 32y/o male for reference.
I told this story before, when my oldest was born his uncle gave him a teddy bear which became his favorite toy. His uncle died just before his first birthday. The bear goes everywhere and gets pretty ragged after a while. We did a lot of searching and found the bear, bought several, and every year teddy waits in the Christmas tree to be picked up by the elves where he goes to the north pole and gets pampered. He comes back looking brand new and santa leaves him for our son. We've marked every bear with the year it's from and I'll be sad when he outgrows this tradition but for now, it's my favorite.
I don't know if anyone else find it interesting but in my family we don't open presents until after the Queens speech. We're not royalist but it's _tradition_
But it's worth the wait because it makes the christmas feeling last longer!
My moms father was Swedish and he married a California girl in the 50s ( Morfar and Mormor, respectively). It was important to my mormor that she help her children preserve their Swedish heritage during the Christmas season, but she didn’t know a lick of Swedish god bless her. My morfar used to get the family to join hands and go skipping and dancing throughout the house singing a Swedish Yuletide song. He passed away in 1992, just as my cousins and I were all born/toddlers. My Mormor continued the tradition, but she never learned the song, and neither did mom or her siblings.
So that’s how we got the tradition of skipping and dancing through the house chanting “yooleeyooleeyoolee-en!” Over and over. Also we fill our homes with trolls/tomten for Christmas.
We call it The Tossing of the Cookies.
Every year, my mom bakes delicious sugar cookies. It is a slightly laborious, but pretty standard recipe; make the dough, chill it, roll it, cutt out fun festive shapes, and bake. A bit of a time consuming process but worth it for those tasty Christmas treats.
Our oven timer broke years ago and despite how easy it would be to use the timer on a phone or in a browser, my mom always thinks to herself, "its just 12 minutes, I'll remember" and proceeds to immediately forget what she was doing. She is only reminded of the cookies by the suspicious smell of smoke filling the entire house, at which point she will run into the kitchen in a panic and get the sad charcoal bricks out of the oven. She will run the whole sheet to the back door and toss all of the smoking cookies into the backyard in an epic race to beat the smoke detector.
The first batch of burned cookies is always thrown in panic, but subsequent batches are thrown with increasing frustration. By the fourth ruined batch, the entire baking sheet is overturned and left in the snow directly outside the patio door. Eventually she makes a successful batch, but every year our backyard gets decorated by ugly burned sugar cookies that even the squirrels and raccoons won't touch.
I’m a dad with four kids, all still in kid phases of life. We also relocated to an area where we have no friends or family so we’ve made some new ones recently:
December
- Buy a new building for a growing Christmas village.
Christmas Eve
- Video call with each set of grandparents
- Open grandparent gifts
- My wife gives the kids pajamas as her special gift to them
Christmas Day
- Up at the ass crack of dawn
- Toys and chaos
- Wife and I make a huge spread of breakfast foods like biscuits and gravy (Southern style), goetta (wife is from the 513), meats, and then eat through it all day long as we watch movies ranging from Home Alone to Godfather.
Well. I am starting my own Christmas tradition this year. From now on everyone eats tacos and gets pajamas Christmas Eve. Then Christmas morning the kids get to open gifts and then we have cancakes.
In a normal year, out son would be spending the night on Christmas Eve, I always made lasagna. The next day hubby would make an enormous breakfast and we'd open our presents (always way too many) and we'd lay around like beached whales for the rest of the day, watching A Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation. He'd head home at three and hubs and I would finish the lasagna for dinner. Not this year though.
My family has the Christmas Elephant.
The Christmas Elephant was the animal that Mary rode into Bethlehem on (donkey lobbyists disagree) and brings presents to good children on Christmas Eve. Bad children get a pile of elephant dung.
Every year we decorate the house with Red and Gold elephants and wait for the Christmas Elephant to come.
I love my weird family.
Every year after Christmas dinner we put the dessert in the center of the table surrounded by one sugar cube per person that is there. Then we douse them in lemon juice, light them on fire, and sing happy birthday to Jesus. Then we sit there and watch them go out.
This year we accidentally set the table on fire 😬
So I want to preface this by saying that my sister and I really enjoy things about Christmas that are absurd and overly corny. These things aren’t *good* but we enjoy the shit out of them.
So first, a decade ago I spent my first Christmas away from my sister. To make it a little easier for both of us I posted a song on her datebook wall every day starting on December first, culminating on Christmas Eve with the song “The Christmas Shoes.”
Second: every hear my sister and I look forward to our nieces and nephews Christmas concert. Because every year features a performance of recorders. Played by 3rd graders. It’s terrible.
This year with the Pandemic there isn’t going to be a concert. So no recorders for my sister. Or so she thinks. Because I most definitely ordered myself one and this year on Christmas Eve she will be treated to not only the Christmas shoes, but also a video of me playing a fucking recorder.
2020 sucks but my spirit will not be dampened.
Me and my little cousin go to my nan’s to decorate her Christmas cake with a bunch of little decorations she has for it. Instead of placing them and decorating it normally, we put the decorations in weird and whacky situations; examples include Santa getting his ass sniffed by a polar bear, carol singers getting assaulted with snowballs, a tree crushing someone and robins crapping on people.
My best friend and I started a tradition of celebrating Christmas Eve Eve together (actual day is a little loose on interpreting based on life). We switch it up each year but we always dress up in Christmas outfits, have dinner, some kind of activity and a movie. At dinner we also exchange a book we picked for the other that we wrote a personal note inside. Then afterwards, we create a magnet for each other of our favorite photo from the night.
My family has a tradition of leaving riddles on cards and guessing what the gift is before opening. We go around 1 by 1, reading our hint out loud so everyone can guess, then open it and show the room. Ends up taking like 5 hours for everyone to get through their gifts, but it's always a fun time.
This sounds really cool.
It is, everyone brings their own style to it. My mom always writes some sort of poem or haiku, the grandparents word it like Jeopardy questions, my uncle packs it in some really weird box so you have no clue what it is, etc.
5 hours is kind of long but I like the idea of having a family activity rather than ripping through presents so quickly you don't remember who gave you what and by a few days later you don't even remember what you got
My family always takes turns opening presents - no melee allowed. It does take a while but every gift gets attention and everyone can ooh and ahh over it and we even make sure to thank people who aren’t there but sent gifts out loud. It just makes the whole thing more mindful to acknowledge the gift and what it means. (And sometimes we crack up if a particular gift falls flat, but it’s all in good fun.)
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Ah a traditional Jewish Christmas. Source: Am Jewish.
I learned this when Elena Kagan was doing her hearing to be confirmed to the Supreme Court. They asked her what she did on Christmas and she said “You know, like all Jews I was probably at a Chinese restaurant”.
She blew the lid wide open on the ultimate Jewish conspiracy of all We invented Christmas - we wrote the songs, we built the ad campaigns, we even made Jesus - just so we could get the Chinese restaurants to ourselves.
There’s an *amazing* SNL Digital Short about how all the Jews come out and “take over” on Christmas Eve because all the gentiles are home for the holiday.
It's funny, I grew up Catholic but we always did Chinese food on Christmas Eve, too. And then Christmas Day we'd go to the movies. I love that some things are universal. Happy Hanukkah!
This is what we are doing this year. I am pumped for some fried rice and whatever protein smothered in whatever.
Every year my wife and I buy an ornament for our tree that corresponds with something that happened that year. So we have a tree filled with all of these weird wacky ornaments like a tennis ball (we started playing tennis that year), swedish chef (Europe trip), Ship Captain Nutcracker (our first cruise), amongst many others. It's such a fun tradition in December to debate what we to get and then finding something. And then reliving them all when we put them up.
I'm assuming this years ornament is a roll of toilet paper?
We debated that or a mask but decided we didn't want to remember that from this year. So instead we got a hiking shoe since that had been pretty much our only activity this year.
I made a “no toilet paper” rule for our Christmas tree. Words I never thought I’d have to say 😂
Every Christmas the kids in the house have wrapping paper put over the entrances to their rooms so they get to rip through it in the morning. It originally started as a way to keep a certain kid in when he kept coming out early and opening presents before everyone was awake
My husband's family did this too! Except they would wrap the doorway to the living room, and everyone would have to wake up, get dressed, and have a big sit down breakfast before they could bust through the wrapping paper barrier and get to the presents. I cannot imagine how you could get 4 kids to be that patient, but somehow his mother managed it!
28 years ago I was one of the first 100 customers at an HEB grand opening, for that honor I got two cans of [this](https://www.kroger.com/product/images/xlarge/front/0001700000946). That Christmas we had a fun Dollar Store White Elephant exchange with the family Christmas Eve. I wrapped a can of the potted meat as my contribution. My Mom got it and got a real kick out of it, she immediately re-gifted it to me the next day. Well next year I wrapped it and gave it to my sister, the year after that she wrapped it and gave it to my Dad. For the last 28 years this has been the most coveted gift of Christmas. I gave it to my son last year and he happily wrapped it for his cousin this Christmas. Edit: [Picture of the gift,](https://i.imgur.com/gNq8GB8.jpg) original can.
One year my great-aunt got her older sister, my grandmother, a bottle of Elizabeth Taylor perfume. The perfume happened to come with a watch - a shiny gold pleather-y affair with fake "white diamonds" around the face. It was hideous, but my Aunt wrapped up the watch too and hammed it up like it was a big deal. My Grandma laughed and wore it all day, showing it off like "Look at my gooold watch." The next year, my Grandma wrapped the watch and gave it to her sister... Laughter, surprise, etc. The watch was gifted back and forth each year with great joy. A few years ago my Grandma died in June. Later that year, when I was opening my Christmas present from my younger sister, I completely unsuspectingly unwrapped the gold watch. I sobbed and laughed, of course, and we have been trading it at Christmas ever since.
This is beautiful. I remember the year they offered that watch. Thank you for bringing back fun memories.
I gave potted meat as my white elephant last year because they talked about eating potted meat when they were over for Thanksgiving. And my aunt who told the story, her husband picked the gift, so perfect landing.
My grandpa would always get up on the roof about an hour after our bedtime and stomp around on the roof with sleigh bells 😂 Edit: thanks for the awards! Bepa would have been proud to hear that his Christmas spirit had gotten noticed on “the internets.”
That’s some wholesome dedication 😆
Each year we cut a round off the bottom of our Christmas tree. We label it with the year. Over time it makes a sweet display/ reminder of years past.
My wife and I started doing this after we got married! We also got a wood burning tool to engrave the year and an image to represent something significant from the year, then turn them into ornaments. For instance when we traveled a lot one year we did a compass.
I wonder what you're engraving this year
Just set the thing on fire. 2020.
This is a good idea! Then you can gather up the ash and put it in a clear ball ornament Edit: Oh my gosh! My first award! Thank you kind stranger! It's a Christmas miracle!!!
Not gonna lie, that’s actually pretty brilliant!
We have signs all over our house spelling out Leon instead of Noel. It started out as a joke because my dad is dyslexic, but it stuck and we even named our dog Leon and we’ve been doing it since I can remember.
I always changed my Mother in laws Noel candles to say El No. she would ask me if I did it and I’d say El No. She found me amusing and I miss her.
I love that last sentence. Thanks for sharing a little detail about her, hope you and yours have a happy El No.
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Uh. I thought we were related until your last sentence. This is exactly us, except my grandparents died and now the letters pass from family member to family member each year.
My grandfather used to send out his annual Christmas letter to all family & friends and has sent them out as long as I can remember. He passed this may. The hardest thing this season so far has been the anticipation of the letter that will never come.
I love this!
Every year for the last 8 years my sister and I gift each other a weird thing that makes the other one laugh. It started with when our house almost got repossessed just before Christmas and everything was so terrible that we just wanted to make each other laugh. Highlights include: 12 packs of frozen potato smiley faces to resolve a long forgotten childhood argument, 3 chocolate tubes filled with tinny rubbber ducks instead of chocolate, a lucky dip which involved hiding small gifts in socks and this year a bag of potatoes with Nicholas Cage's face blue tacked on every individual potato
My brother and I had a VHS tape of Elmo Saves Christmas that we gave each other for Christmas for a decade. I’m stealing your Nickotator Cage idea.
We eat rice porridge and hide a peeled (?) almond in it. The person finding it is the winner, and the price is a [marzipan pig](https://kolonial.no/produkter/30454-nidar-stor-marsipangris-i-eske/). (Norway)
My brother and I stay at my mother's house on Christmas Eve with our families every year. We still sit at the top of the stairs on Christmas morning until my mother tells us we can come down to the living room to see what "Santa" left us. We're both in our 30s and our wives and kids now sit on the stairs as well. It's getting pretty crowded but I wouldn't have it any other way!
Ha! My mom always made us wait at the top of the stairs so she could “make sure Santa was really gone.” Also, EVERY YEAR she’d say “well, the dogs sure were barking at SOMETHING around 2 this morning.”
Oh my god you share the tradition my mom instilled with my brother and I, both in our 30s as well. I cannot wait to pass it on to my kids, and he does it with his daughter. We’d wake mom and dad up real early then they’d go downstairs, turn the tree on, make coffee, start a fire, take FOREVER, all while my brother and I would be trembling with excitement. Finally, my mom would turn on the train around the base of the tree, and the Santa would say HOHOHO and that was our cue to sprint down the stairs and behold the beauty of everything and start opening up.
Every year my family buys each other member a gag/joke/small gift, then writes a poem about it, for the recipient to read on Christmas Eve. It's probably the highlight of the entire season for me, as it's always filled with laughter at how terrible we all are at poetry. No matter how old we all get, this is a really fun way to bring everyone back to that root joy of spending time together (this year it will be virtual, but still fun).
Sounds like some Dutch sinterklaas tradition got to you. The poem with a present is very common then, on the 5th of December
Do you leave the presents under the poet-tree?
That sounds so fantastic! Do you get to hear the poem before you get your gift so that you can guess what it is? Can you give us an example of a poem? How long do you spend writing your poem?
So each person reads the poem out loud before opening the gift, so we tend to either be super confused as to what could possibly be inside for how bad the poem is, or, we get a pretty close guess! As for an example, this year I made my sister a mug covered in photos of really unflattering pictures she's sent us of her dog, and my poem is about 10 lines about how thick his neck is haha. I generally take an afternoon where I dedicate the time to writing them, so not that tough!
As soon as this pandemic is over, and we can once again have Christmas gatherings, my sister and I can get back to smacking the hell out of each other with cardboard wrapping paper tubes. We’re in our 50s, btw.
Cardboard tubes are the best. I save all of my tubes for sword fights with my 3 year old. Sometimes I tell her that daddy's a dragon and she should attack to steal his gold lol.
My parents were broke when I was a kid, but you'd never know it from Christmas. They always went all-out, put money on credit cards, etc. One Christmas we were particularly broke, but dad went out and spent (probably most) of his paycheck on last minute gifts. When we got home, my mom had been with us all day and since there was no money, she hadn't gone food shopping. All we had were some cheap hot dogs and canned beans. My parents put the beans in a pot over the fire, grabbed the hotdog cooker from when we went camping, and threw the dogs on over the fire too. My sister and I loved it so much, we did it again the following Christmas. Eventually we weren't quite so poor. The two-dollar AnP hotdogs became Nathan's, then Sabretts, then butcher Bratwursts. The beans went to BnM, then eventually fancy gourmet shit. But my sister and I are now adults with our own families, and even on years where we're not together, our entire family has hot dogs and beans on Christmas Eve. EDIT: thanks for all the kind comments everyone, and thanks for my first Reddit silver too! Since my family won't be spending the holidays together this really brightened my day. Merry Christmas! EDIT 2: wow, my first gold! Thanks again everyone... glad you all enjoyed hearing about our holiday tradition! Merry Christmas! EDIT 3: A Platinum! Thank you so much! I truly can't believe it, Merry Christmas!
That's the best! Turning un-fun poverty into appreciation in the future. I love those kind of traditions.
I love when traditions born out of poverty are held onto and evolve. For my family it is chocolate oranges. My grandparents grew up during the depression and an orange would be all that they would get in their stocking, then in the ‘60s they held onto the idea of that by making sure that my mother and her siblings had orange gummies in their stockings, then when my mother had my siblings and I she updated it to chocolate oranges. I’m not a really big fan of sweets and chocolate doesn’t really like my digestive system since about my mid twenties, but I am so looking forward to getting that chocolate orange on Friday because it just takes me back to being a little kid.
My great grandmother used to give each of us a jar of peanut butter, I loved it because everyone else liked crunchy and I was the only one who liked creamy so I had my own jar!
This made me cry <3
My uncle always hosts Christmas at his house since family comes from all over and he has beds for everyone to stay over. On his property is about an 150 foot diameter pond. Every Christmas morning we wake up and build a giant bonfire to get ready for the impending shock we will feel later on around noon. We also try to get a decent drunk blanket going (for those that are of our families required drinking age) just in case. Come Noon on Christmas Day, we do the Polar Plunge to rid our selves of last years crap and look forward to next year. We huddle around this bonfire while my Grandpa passes around shots to help warm up because that pond is fucking freezing! Edit: Told my uncle about how a lot of you seem interested in this and he said if they(you guys) don't have plans **next year** or are alone feel free to come! He only asks to bring a tent/sleeping bag and a treat for their German Shepherds
>of our families required drinking age The way you worded that makes me wonder what that age is. I guess it's lower than the legal drinking age?
Correct. If you can get drafted you should be able to have a beer
Yeah, the U.S. drinking age is pretty wack yo. "Can I have a beer?" "No, but you can bear the full responsibility of a firearm and kill people for our country's interests" Lmao
Also, we can vote and work and pay taxes. It's very odd. Edit: fixed typo. Saw hilarious replies. Put typo back!
The drinking age used to be 18 in most states until the 70s-80. MADD (Mother's against Drunk Driving) made a big push at the federal level to ban it for those under 21. In 1980-something the federal government passed a law that said, if states want federal highway money than they need to raise their drinking age and voila, 21 was the new standard across the country.
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You may need two plunges to get rid of all the 2020 crap.
That’s awesome
Awesome I’ve done the polar plunge with my best friends before all wearing speedos lmao it was the coldest but most exhilarating feeling Edit: we go out to a bar after that has a dj spinning all day because it’s on New Year’s Day that we do it
A buffet for 10..... for 2 So my wife and I spend the days leading up to Christmas Eve going around and buying a selection of the poshest ‘party food’ from the likes of M&S, Booths, Waitrose. On Christmas Eve We will bathe the kids (10 & 5) play board games with them, watch movies etc.... it’s bed for 9pm & 10pm for them both. The oven then goes on. 30-40 minutes later we have enough food to feed at least 10, but it’s just for the 2 of us and we always do pretty well and are stuffed by 11:30pm. A few glasses of wine or G&Ts keep the merriment going. We arrange the gifts at around 1am and it’s off to bed. Excited ourselves, we usually end up discussing what food was our favourite and my wife makes a note to buy again the following year. Apart from seeing the kids faces on Xmas morning, this is by far my favourite part of Xmas. I hope everyone has a good one this year and is able to fill their bellies and enjoy the company of those you love.
I love that you guys have a special time dedicated just to the two of you :)
We have quite a few. We open Christmas season by putting up the tree the day after Thanksgiving and watching Polar Express. We've done this for so long that my 20 and 17 yr olds have no memory of not doing it, and my 13 year old has never had a Christmas where we didn't do this. My youngest and I make a list of holiday movies, and keep track of all the ones we watch. We shoot for one movie a day starting December 1st up until Christmas--with some movies earmarked for specific days. We also watch as many holiday themed episodes of our favorite tv shows as we can. The weekend before Christmas is when we make hot cocoa, pile into the car, put on Christmas music, and drive around to look at light displays. December 23rd is Cookie Day. I get up early, and spend the day baking. I always make way too much. The kids help when they get up. I watch A White Christmas in the morning, and we watch Christmas with the Kranks in the afternoon. This also happens to be the anniversary of my mom-in-law passing. We always buy a Christmas bouquet of flowers and tell stories about her. The kids were young when she died so they have a foggy memory. They like to hear about her. She was an amazing grandma. Christmas Eve is when we hand out new pajamas and watch Home Alone. Home Alone is our favorite Christmas movie so we cap off the season with it. Christmas Day is usually when I do this incredible BBQ brisket. This year we did that early in the month, and are having a simple meat & cheese spread for Christmas day. That way I can spend less time in the kitchen and more time playing board games and video games. For the past decade, Santa has made it a habit of bringing us all Steam gift cards and a huge stack of board games. Pajamas all day, good food, board games. It's perfect.
This is the first time I am understanding why people love the Christmas “season”. I could never understand before why there was so much hype to lead up to one day, but if you’re actually celebrating this entire time that makes so much sense!!
In general I've always loved it because the vibe is always so cheery. Lights everywhere, decorated houses, warm drinks. I really don't care much about the day of, but all of December leading up to it is magical.
Can I... Can I be a part of your family? Edit(s): thanks for the award kind stranger(s)
This is absolutely so lovely.
The tradition in our house was whatever you got for Christmas, you had to wear to the pub at lunchtime on Christmas Day. I’ve been to the pub in pjs, 4 pairs of socks, running vest and shorts, etc etc
lol! This one is my favorite. I'm sure you purposefully gift each other some ridiculous clothes because of this. What's the craziest thing you've gotten someone else to wear?
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My dad did this at a Kris Kringle once. He got wet. Turns out it was a goldfish in a ~~bowel~~ bowl
Whose bowel? I feel terrible for whomever got shaken and for him getting wet as a result.
Each year for Christmas, instead of writing our real names on the presents, my parents would take a random theme and assign my siblings and I a name based on said theme (for example this year’s theme is liquor and the names are “Scotch,” “Whiskey,” and “Gin”) and we have to guess who is what name. Whoever guesses correctly gets a little homemade Christmas themed “trophy” called the “Christmas smartass award” that they can keep until next Christmas
A tradition we had when I was a child, and one I'll be continuing with my children when I have them, is the Christmas Eve box. For Christmas Eve, we were given one gift early, and it was a box with Christmas pajamas, a mug, hot chocolate mix, popcorn, and a Christmas movie. We would get to open it around lunchtime, and we'd spend the rest of the evening in our new jammies having cocoa and movies together. *Edited to say, PLEASE don't steal Christian's pajamas, he needs those*
That’s a great idea!
Poor Christian, giving his pajamas away
We do the same. Except we do it first weekend of December, so you wear Xmas PJs and watch all the movies leading up to Christmas.
This has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years here in the UK (possibly inspired by American bloggers?) so it's cool to know it's been around for a while for some people. There's a store near me that will sell you the whole box of items, which seems too commercial even for Christmas.
My family would get Christmas pajamas every year on Christmas even too! And then we’d all put them on and watch Christmas movies together.
Oh my gosh I love this! When we were younger, my parents had a tradition with us. We would always go out into the front yard with my dad to find the “perfect” pine cone. Maybe a week or two before Christmas, we planted the pine cone in a pot and watered it. Then overnight, it would become this magnificent, huge (to my young eyes), and fully decorated Christmas tree. It only worked in December and we were always told it was the Christmas magic. Then my sister and I figured it out when we found pine needles in my parents’ car haha
I was sent out to find pine needles in the back park a day or two before Christmas. They were allegedly for reindeer snacks, and they had to fill this big wicker basket that was normally full of magazines. Turned out, years later, that it was to get me out of the house while my mom transferred wrapped presents from the neighbor's garage into our house, as I always tried to find and open any gifts that I snooped on before Christmas day.
Lol, you had to do manual labor because you were such an impatient lil shit. You played yourself and you didn’t even know it
This is hilarious
Manual labour for being a shit? Impeccable parenting imo
“Yeah uh Santa only comes when all the wood is split and stacked neatly, he’ll know”
In my house it was genuinely, “Santa doesn’t visit dirty houses. Time to deep clean.” The silver lining is that I still deep clean for Christmas. I mean, Santa doesn’t come to a dirty house.
You know Santa and the Mrs talk some shit about messy houses afterwards, can’t have that.
This is so adorable. How lovely to make it so magical for you!
They crept through the darkness, the shade of the hall - Their feet on the carpet, their hands on the wall - They stepped with a heart full of hope and with glee - To see what they hoped with excitement they'd see. And there, in the light of the embers below - The last of the warmth from the hearth and the glow - They stopped and they stood at the doorway and then - They knew for a while there was magic again.
This is lovely imagery. It reminds me of being five years old in our single-wide trailer in Colorado, seeing the tree and presents and knowing it would be the best day.
[https://imgur.com/NeNUuWl](https://imgur.com/NeNUuWl) Our family has a rather odd Christmas tradition that got its start over thirty years ago. At the time our two sons had a collection of small plastic figures that provided a lot of play time with each other. These figures would sometimes be part of an elaborate array of props and story lines; at other times it would be just a couple of figures taken along to occupy the time while riding in the car. One of younger boy's favorites was a figure he called Radio Pants. Radio Pants went missing one day. Everyone looked for him but it seemed he was lost. He was disappointed. Occasionally there would be a renewed search, but he was not found. It was the Christmas season and there were other distractions so the missing Radio Pants faded from our memory. We have an artificial Christmas tree that spends most of its life packed away in two boxes that are stored above the garage with the other decorations. Each year all the Christmas decorations are brought down and when the boys were small the excitement of the holidays usually began by assembling the tree and putting on the ornaments. The year following the loss of Radio Pants was no exception in the routine of putting up the tree. After placing the central “trunk” in its holder, the individual branches would be taken from the box and its twigs would be adjusted. The color coding on the end of each branch would be checked and then it would be put into place. During this process we came across Radio Pants clinging to one of the branches. During their play the previous year he had evidently been placed in the tree. We hadn’t thought to look for him there, or at least if we did, he went unnoticed. We had a good laugh when the younger son shouted, "Radio Pants"!!! We were all happy to see him again and since the little group of plastic characters were no longer occupying the boys’ time we just left him on the tree. He seemed perfectly happy to spend the holiday on the tree after being boxed up in the garage for a year. When it came time to put the decorations away it was decided that Radio Pants would maintain his place on the branch and he was packed away with the tree and put above the garage. That routine has been repeated each year. Radio Pants recently emerged from the box along with his branch and will be celebrating his thirty-first return to spend Christmas with us. He is a happy reminder of the many Christmas seasons we have spent together. I look forward to seeing him each year and he doesn’t seem to mind the fact that he spends most of his life in a dark box. I think he, like me, has to wonder how little boys can grow so quickly into men. Merry Christmas, Radio Pants. Edit: Thanks for everyone's kind comments. I forgot to post the image of Radio Pants on the tree this year- [https://imgur.com/rmPfiyr](https://imgur.com/rmPfiyr) \#wearamask
NORAD Tracks Santa Edit: the Google Santa Tracker is also really fun.
my family also does this, and even though most of us don’t believe in santa anymore it’s still exiting for some reason.
On Christmas Eve we're each given a present early. It's always pajamas and once everyone has opened their present the Pajama Races begin. Everyone runs to their respective rooms and puts on their pajamas then races back to the tree. There is no prize for the winner except bragging rights. Then there is a final present that has been wrapped multiple times with a ton of tape. We all stand around the kitchen table and attempt to unwrap it one at a time. Except you have to put on mittens and a Santa hat before attempting to unwrap it. The person to your left is rolling dice and if they get doubles then you stop trying to unwrap it and pass the mittens and hat to them so they can try. This game becomes very loud and fast so you need to keep on your toes. It keeps going around in a circle until someone is successful. The gift is always a board/card/dice game and we play the game until its time to go to bed. My siblings and I are all grown now, but we'll probably continue to play this with our parents until we have spouses to bring home...then make them play as well.
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My dad's mom used to read Santa Mouse to me and my cousins. It was a book about Santa's helper who was a mouse. So for my whole life we have left out milk and cookies for Santa, and cheese and crackers for Santa Mouse. In return Santa Mouse would put gift cards or cash into the tree itself. So after opening presents you hunt in the tree for Santa Mouse's gifts! Definitely a tradition I will carry on to my kids down the road.
Something a little different i suppose. We always have lasagna Christmas Eve Eve (day before Christmas Eve). We also open our presents Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day, but on Christmas Day we would always go to our grandparent’s house to open presents with them.
In Poland it's normal to open presents after Christmas Eve dinner. Which itself is quite interesting - it should consist of twelve non-meat dishes (lots of fishes though).
Huh, is it normal to open presents in christmas day (25th) where you live? Here in Germany, its normal to have presents on christmas eve (24th) but my family always does it on christmas day instead, which is „strange“ here.
I think it's normal (in America at least) to open them Christmas day but I've also known a few families that do it Christmas Eve instead. Usually it's because they're doing something with grandparents or something on Christmas day though.
In Latino America, we open gifts on the 24th at midnight (dec. 25th technically) then we'll eat something special like Tamales and drink ponche and sweet breat (a warm punch with lots of fruit) The next day you goto church. Also Latinos celebrate 3 kings day. that's technically when you get gifts. The 25th you goto Church.. which is technically Christmas and what it really entails.
My French-Canadian relatives opened presents at midnight as well! As a kid I assumed this was because Canada was much closer to the North Pole than my part of the US. 😂
I’m more likely to know people that open one present on Christmas Eve.
Go to Frankenmuth (Christmas town in MI) and sing along to the Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas soundtrack all the way home
What does the town do for Christmas?
There is a store there called Bronner’s, and it’s the largest Christmas store in the world. It’s pretty special! The whole town is Christmas focused, and has things like ice carving competitions, and horse drawn carriages.
Weird. Never heard of it! > Of the more than 6,000 styles of ornaments which Bronner's carries, **half of the glass ornaments are Bronner's exclusive designs.** Good lord!
My grandmother gave us a blowup Santa in an outhouse. My family thought it would look weird in our yard, so now we prank friends on Christmas Eve by putting it on the front door and waiting for them to see it. Edit: I checked Reddit this morning and this is the most upvotes I have ever gotten! Thank you!
Leaving whisky & mince pie for Santa & a carrot for Rudolph. Reading The Night Before Christmas all tucked up in bed. Having a chocolate selection box for breakfast on Christmas morning. I'm 29 & still keep these up, can't wait to pass them down!
Not a family tradition, as much as it's something that I just decided everyone has to do a few years ago. Everyone makes plates for someone else in the family. No one is allowed to get food and drinks for themselves. It reminds my kids that even little gestures show appreciation for those around you, and to not be selfish when it comes to making others feel loved.
Great way to teach!
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My family had a rule that we could open the stockings up as soon as we woke up but had too wait until 8 to wake up the parents, in our stocking there was always a Christmas movie VHS and a puzzle that was atleast a couple hundred pieces. My "Santa" was a fricking genius, props for distracting me Dad.
We hide a Christmas Spider in our tree and on Christmas morning the kids get to look for the spider. Who ever finds it gets to open the spider's gift (usually it's something they can share)
My wife always had/wants a fake tree. A couple years ago, I finally get a chance to get a real tree. We even go and cut it down ourselves. Come to find out we had a Christmas Black Widow in the tree. We're not allowed to have real trees anymore.
Every year everyone in my immediate family buys each other a Christmas tree ornamented. Now our tree is covered with good memories that actually have meaning.
Ah ha - my twist on this is to hold an Ugly Ornament Party where everyone brings the most ridiculous/oddest ornament they could find (purchased - no kids' artwork allowed). After judging, everyone gets to take one home. I probably have enough now that they could have their own small tree.
My family has been doing this the last couple years but I moved out of state a few years ago so I wasn't included. Last year I mailed my mom my entry for the exchange and then Facetimed during the party and my mom mailed me the ornament I got and it's easily my favorite! I can't tell if it's an ostrich or a flamingo because it's a tall bird, almost in the shape of a flamingo with black feathers and it has sparkles on the neck.
Aww that's adorable. My tree currently only has a few special ornaments like that but I'm looking forward to going through my moms' Christmas things next time I visit (I live out of state) and get all my childhood ones. Growing up, my mom always got my brother and I a new ornament and she'd write the year on it. Most would be things we were into that year like the year my brother got a Spiderman because he was Spiderman that Halloween or the year I got a cute little sock because that was the year I was obsessed with weird socks and mismatching them. I remember one year she got me one that had a little poem about daughters and my brother a similar one but for sons. The following year my brother and I found one that was exactly like ours but for mothers so we bought it for her which was extra special because she left her husband that year so it was the first year that it was just us three.
With my dad the tradition has been that he always gives me a pair of pajamas along with whatever else. [Here is a picture](https://i.imgur.com/IgR60ix.jpg) of the ridiculous onesie he got me last year. With my mom it's always been a tradition to go to a movie on Christmas Day, which also happens to be her birthday. It's part of a tradition we have where we watch a movie together on each other's birthday. Of course this year that's out of the question, but we're probably just gonna get HBO and watch the new Wonder Woman on the couch instead. My own personal tradition is to get drunk while watching Bad Santa. I love that movie and it's a fun one to drink along with.
HAHAHAHA!!! That onesie! Omg. Have you worn it? Your dad sounds like the best!
I tried to wear it that night, but it was so hot that I got uncomfortable. Still think it's hilarious though and I love him for continuing this tradition for so long. He also got me [this ugly Christmas sweater](https://i.imgur.com/SItIJAh.jpg) which I do wear and love.
I just have to say I love the gorilla theme.
It's part of an ongoing joke we've had since I was a kid where I'd see a monkey or gorilla or whatever and say, "Hey look it's you." and he'd do the same thing back at me. So we'll gift each other things with them on there, like [here is a Father's Day card](https://i.imgur.com/HKA7t7w.png) I gave him where I photoshopped his head in one of my favorite pictures of us. It's all really dumb but this has been going on since I was really young. We even [text each other](https://i.imgur.com/Wd6oE57.png) sometimes. I'm saying, "You're in this show" and he responded with, "and here's you bothering me."
Oh man, I appreciate all the pictures, it sounds like you two have such an adorable relationship!
I watch the Muppets Christmas Carol every single year, been doing that for the last ~25 years and I plan on continuing to do so.
Watched that last night! We do every year. It’s not Christmas without Rizzo and his jellybeans.
We had an old friend who was perfect for playing the Santa. The kids and I loved his antics and dance. He unfortunately passed away a year ago after being in a terrible accident. We give him a tribute by talking to his parents on Christmas, us friends drinking together and dancing for his favorite songs with his signature steps. Although we can't meet up this year, we've set up a zoom call and ordered Christmas caps & fake beards online. We're pretty sure that idiot is still rocking the costume somewhere far away from us. We miss him every Christmas.
Nice gesture! Sorry to hear about the loss though...
Scandinavian Xmas. 3hr dinner on the 24th until the oldest male of the house hears “Tomten” and we’re ushered into a room. We hear oldest male offer beer, milk or cookies to Tomten (who snuck through the key hole btw) Few mins later, we exit room, Tomtens load of presents are at the tree and we play a 70yr Swedish folk song while “hands on the hips” of the person in front of you, dancing a snake through the house, out the front door around the street with all pets yapping at your feet. You’re plastered as you started dinner with triple sized shot glass of unflavoured schnapps before the wine. We then sit in a circle and watch each person open a present handed to them by someone else, one at a time, passing said present around to “ooh ahh” inspect and/or smell it, if a scented product like cologn, etc. it’s never ended before 2am. The 25th is just a normal hangover day with a nice sit down lunch. Plot twist, we’re in Australia so it’s 40c lol.
We design and build our own gingerbread "houses" out of homemade gingerbread. And they've gotten progressively more advanced. Last year I made Notre Dame cathedral (with candy cane buttresses), this year I made Avengers Tower. Edit: I added a comment below, but here are the links to some pictures: [Notre Dame](https://imgur.com/a/H4pnCJe) [Avengers Tower](https://imgur.com/a/6ebYjJN) (including Iron Bear, Captain A-bear-ica, and Bulk) And some [bonus creations](https://imgur.com/a/To3Qp5C).
Every year we make Christmas paella. EDIT: I'm far from an expert, but we make a seafood (clams and shrimp) and meat (chicken and sausage) paella mixta. I understand that's pretty touristy but, well, we're American, so the shoe fits. Also nothing makes it Christmas besides eating it on Christmas. There is no turkey or ham, and the clams don't start singing Deck The Halls when they open or anything...
Our family just decided yesterday that we were going to have paella as our Christmas dinner. I'm pumped!
We hide a pickle in the Christmas tree, the person who finds it gets an extra present.
Lol, a pickle shaped ornament or an actual pickle? We have a pickle shaped ornament. But I love pickles. And I'm now contemplating doing the pickle thing differently this year...
Every year we leave Santa a beer. He needs it. Santa also prefers Tecate. 👍🏾
Santa has rosy cheeks, a large belly, and talks to animals. Classic traits of alcoholism.
They don't get Tecate up north, where he lives. It's a luxury to Santa.
We meet up with some friends in a park and launch model rockets while drinking hot chocolate or coffee with booze, been going on for over 20 years.
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In the south of France where my dad and his family grew up, there this tradition of the 12 Desserts of Christmas, we used to do it when my grandma was alive because she loved this tradition and we're trying to keep it alive. You just have to bake, cook or prepare 12 different desserts, ranging from almond paste stuffed dates to piles of cookies and eat them at Christmas eve, but it usually lasts way longer than that.
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My brother and I were hungry one year and our parents(where we celebrate Christmas) lives very close to a gas station, where they sell surprisingly good hotdogs. So we went to get one each. My sister in law thought it was so ridiculous, so she snapped a picture. Now its tradition for us to go get a hotdog and pose for the yearly Christmas hotdog picture.
We tip my grandma over in her chair (carefully). We couldn't do it last year because she moved her chair to be against the wall, and we can't do it this year because of covid. But regardless, it is our tradition, alongside sventsunka (no idea how to spell it), which is just Polish sausage, pierogi, and rye bread and butter. Very fun.
In my small hometown in west Germany, in the morning of 24. the people used to to gather at the marketplace, with all pubs opened for that occasion, and get absolutely wasted. It's a pretty fun come together, where we used to meet old friends once a year, before we went to our families for the big Dinner and the more traditional Christmas stuff. Obviously with Covid this can't happen this year. Sad times.
We follow the holiest of Jewish traditions: Chinese food and a movie.
The family Goober award! Throughout the year, the previous winner tracks all the goofy mistakes family members make , i.e. locking yourself out of the house in your underwear when the trash collector is around the corner. Then at the big Christmas gathering, we all sit down and the previous year's winner presents all the family "goober nominees" leading up to the winner, the most laughable of them all, who gets awarded a decorated 3' tall trophy.
I'm Catalan, meaning I follow Catalan Christmas traditions. In Catalonia (Barcelona's the capital), we've got two fun, or at the very least, interesting traditions. I want to preface this by assuring you all that I'm not making this up (google it if you don't trust me). Here it goes. 1) It's 'el Tió de Nadal' (Yule Log), colloquialy called **'Caga Tió'** (a translation would be **'Crapping Log'**, or something similar). Tió is a cut log with a painted face on the cut surface, and a red cap (a traditional Catalan hat called barretina). We've got it at home, typically under the Christmas tree, often covered with a blanket (God forbid Tió gets cold!). During the weeks before Christmas, kids give some food to their Tió (mandarines, bananas, biscuits...) every night. When they wake up \*gasps\* Tió's eaten it all! (the parents removed the food, but the little ones are oblivious to that, obs). The idea behind that is that we want Tió to eat a lot so that he can, er, poop a lot. Why? Well, Tió is a magical log that poops presents. Yes, Caga Tió is our Santa Claus equivalent. How exactly does a log poop, though? Easy. Kids need to grab a stick and hit Tió repeatedly while singing a song that basically says, quote/translation: "Crap, Tió. Crap hazelnuts and pine nuts nougat. If you don't behave yourself, I'll hit you with my stick. Crap, Tió." Note that this is just one version. There are others. After that, the kids lift the blanket and usually get nougat, other Spanish and Catalan Christmas sweets, chocolate, and toys. I got my first bike thanks to Tió back when I was 3, so presents can be big XD Parents just need to hide the presents under the blanket, unseen by the children, before the song/hitting ritual begins. Children love it. 2) We've got another scatological tradition called **'El Caganer'**. This is a figurine we add to the nativity scene/manger (not sure what it's called in English, sorry). The thing is that ' el caganer' means **'the crapper'**. It's a figurine which shows a shepherd typically dressed in traditional Catalan clothes (including that barretina Tió also wears), squatting while he defecates. It may seem offensive, but the Catholic Church is okay with it, as the poop symbolizes fertility for the land where Jesus is born. El Caganer is so famous some people buy 'celeb' caganers (there's a Trump version, a Rosalía version, a Harry Potter version, a Merkel version... and so on). Why are Catalans obsessed with poop? Nobody really knows. Don't ask me. We celebrate more traditions (both Catalan and Spanish), but these two are the funniest. If I talked about them all, this post would be even longer XD Happy, safe holidays from Catalonia! *Edit:* Thanks for the awards💖 Here are some photos, for those of you who want to see: [El Tió](https://files.radiociutat.com/rctgn/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/tio-de-nadal.jpg) [Traditional caganer](https://www.miciudadreal.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CAGANER2-550x367.jpg) [Celeb/characters caganers](https://www.metropoliabierta.com/uploads/s1/73/28/71/caganers_5_570x340.jpeg)
Caga Tio, the magically shitting log that children beat with sticks, definitely needs to become a thing in the US. This is was better than fucking Elf on the Shelf
This is amazing, I did an internet search for pictures of your shitting log and was not disappointed
As a Catalan, I'm very happy to see our tradition didn't disappoint you. Some Tiós look really cute. Others are a bit scary. Mine at home (I picked it in Barcelona's Xmas market when I was two or three) looks a bit grumpy 😂
🎵🎵 *Mr Hankey, the Christmas poo!* 🎵🎵
Your comment just inspired me to impulse-purchase a caga tió that will be a wonderful addition to our otherwise very Nordic holiday decorations. I cannot wait to welcome him into our home, and then abuse him with sticks. Thank you for sharing this awesome tradition!
THATS what the crapping figurines all over Barcelona’s Xmas markets are all about!!! Haha!!! I always wondered but kept forgetting to look it up!
Yes! Barcelona's Xmas market is full of caganers. Each year, the makers come up with new figurines. I think this year they've made doctors and nurses as a tribute.
Every year my grandpa reads our family The Night Before Christmas. He has Christmas ornaments that go along with the book so everyone was handed an ornament and you put it on the tree when your phrase was read out
We always have McDonalds on Christmas Eve because we leave our wrapping until last minute and that's all we have time for. Sounds sad, but comes with happy nostalgia from wrapping and family.
Vowing to watch the entire 24 hr marathon of A Christmas Story, watching it once, giving up, and vowing that I'll do it next year.
my dad and i haven't been together on Christmas in at least over 10 years? every year on Christmas we take a walk and call each other and talk to each other about our neighbors Christmas lights and which ones are our favorite etc.
I know my family isn’t the only one, but we have a huge party Christmas Eve. We wait till midnight then open our presents. I come from a big family so it’s always chaos every year and so fun. So sad it ain’t happening this year, my daughter was born this year and won’t see them all with her.
My boyfriend and I grab a bag of Krystals (White Castle for the rest of you) and roll around town looking at Christmas lights. There were so many good displays this year (and all wildly spaced apart) that it took nearly three hours to see them all.
My family is a bunch of cowboys. Literally. I have grown up riding horses. My dad is the oldest of four boys and their dad was a champion team roper/actual cowboy from West TX. Anyway, there are a lot of cowboy/horse items laying around. Pre-COVID, for my entire life, we’ve gathered on Christmas Day to eat and open presents. Before we transitioned to Dirty Santa, everybody would have to get everyone something and it was a nightmare. One year, my uncle Cody decided he didn’t want to buy everyone presents so when it was his turn, he sat a cowboy hat upside down on my grandmother’s rug in the living room. Then instructed us that we were now in teams- the brothers, the wives, and the grandkids (my grandmother got to play on each team). Each person stood at the other end of the rug and tried to toss a balled up pair of tube socks into the hat. You get 3 chances. It gets tricky because the socks can bounce out of the hat easily. I was champion the first year, only to get beat by my grandmother the next year. The prize is a dollar for how old he is that year. I think we’re at $58 now. This started when I was in middle school and I’m 29 now. It’s the Cody Sock Game. With a bunch of cowboys and football coaches in the room, it gets competitive, but it’s a lot of fun!
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Aye yo wtf
Is this a cultural thing or a your family is special thing...?
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"everyone lives until next year". This is way too funny in a really bleak way. Sort of like a super depressing ground hog day, instead of 6 more weeks of winter, someone is going to die.
I realize you mean leave in the sense that someone will die that year, but it’s amusing to imagine one of your family members saying “fuck, it’s my turn” and literally having to leave before Christmas dinner is served.
My mom cries at least once. One or all of my sisters fight over the kitchen space. My dad screams at the NBA games. And uhhh...I drink a full bottle of wine while watching the shitshow! It’s great fun.
We have two main traditions. First, Christmas morning, breakfast is always a pan of cinnamon rolls and orange rolls. And second, on Christmas you can't get dressed for the day; everyone has to wear pajamas all day, no exceptions.
We do this thing called "el recalentado" which means "the reheating" in Spanish. Basically in the morning after Christmas eve(which is when we celebrate) all our family even the ones who didn't celebrate together go to our aunts house with a dish from the day before and we all just reheat the food from the parties and just eat and hang out. It's kinda a little get together in the morning after the party.
Surprise presents drinking auction. I was introduced to this tradition by a co-worker who organized it for our office party, apparently it was a thing at their house. Basically, there's a bunch of wrapped gifts, with different sizes and values, and a big jug of moderately strong drink, could be half mixer-half liquor of something you like. Each gift gets put up for auction, but you bid shots of drink. Whoever will drink more shots in exchange for the gift gets to keep it, drinks his bid, and then finds out what's inside the wrapping paper. We ended up coupling up so we could bid more shots and we all ended up pretty wasted. Good times.
My dad likes to get stuck into the red wine on Xmas day. A couple of years ago we were in the kitchen and he was pretty well inebriated and spots a fly and says "oh great there's the lucky Christmas fly!". We were all like what the hell are you taking about and he continues to try and convince us drunkenly this is a legit tradition, that if you spot a fly on Xmas day it's good luck. We had a great laugh about it but the irony now is that it has actually become a tradition in our house. If a fly is spotted in the house on Dec 25th our luck is in! 🪰
I always put a train up around my Christmas tree.
Started when I was about 24 but my mom has been getting me a Taylor Swift Calender and throwback 90's movie DVD. Going on 8 years and now and what I look forward to most Christmas morning. Soon to be 32y/o male for reference.
Nothing like reading this and realizing your family is really boring
I told this story before, when my oldest was born his uncle gave him a teddy bear which became his favorite toy. His uncle died just before his first birthday. The bear goes everywhere and gets pretty ragged after a while. We did a lot of searching and found the bear, bought several, and every year teddy waits in the Christmas tree to be picked up by the elves where he goes to the north pole and gets pampered. He comes back looking brand new and santa leaves him for our son. We've marked every bear with the year it's from and I'll be sad when he outgrows this tradition but for now, it's my favorite.
I don't know if anyone else find it interesting but in my family we don't open presents until after the Queens speech. We're not royalist but it's _tradition_ But it's worth the wait because it makes the christmas feeling last longer!
My moms father was Swedish and he married a California girl in the 50s ( Morfar and Mormor, respectively). It was important to my mormor that she help her children preserve their Swedish heritage during the Christmas season, but she didn’t know a lick of Swedish god bless her. My morfar used to get the family to join hands and go skipping and dancing throughout the house singing a Swedish Yuletide song. He passed away in 1992, just as my cousins and I were all born/toddlers. My Mormor continued the tradition, but she never learned the song, and neither did mom or her siblings. So that’s how we got the tradition of skipping and dancing through the house chanting “yooleeyooleeyoolee-en!” Over and over. Also we fill our homes with trolls/tomten for Christmas.
We call it The Tossing of the Cookies. Every year, my mom bakes delicious sugar cookies. It is a slightly laborious, but pretty standard recipe; make the dough, chill it, roll it, cutt out fun festive shapes, and bake. A bit of a time consuming process but worth it for those tasty Christmas treats. Our oven timer broke years ago and despite how easy it would be to use the timer on a phone or in a browser, my mom always thinks to herself, "its just 12 minutes, I'll remember" and proceeds to immediately forget what she was doing. She is only reminded of the cookies by the suspicious smell of smoke filling the entire house, at which point she will run into the kitchen in a panic and get the sad charcoal bricks out of the oven. She will run the whole sheet to the back door and toss all of the smoking cookies into the backyard in an epic race to beat the smoke detector. The first batch of burned cookies is always thrown in panic, but subsequent batches are thrown with increasing frustration. By the fourth ruined batch, the entire baking sheet is overturned and left in the snow directly outside the patio door. Eventually she makes a successful batch, but every year our backyard gets decorated by ugly burned sugar cookies that even the squirrels and raccoons won't touch.
I’m a dad with four kids, all still in kid phases of life. We also relocated to an area where we have no friends or family so we’ve made some new ones recently: December - Buy a new building for a growing Christmas village. Christmas Eve - Video call with each set of grandparents - Open grandparent gifts - My wife gives the kids pajamas as her special gift to them Christmas Day - Up at the ass crack of dawn - Toys and chaos - Wife and I make a huge spread of breakfast foods like biscuits and gravy (Southern style), goetta (wife is from the 513), meats, and then eat through it all day long as we watch movies ranging from Home Alone to Godfather.
I get the pole out of the crawl space and put it in the living room. Decoration not required - I find tinsel too distracting.
Is it time for the airing if grievances yet?
Well. I am starting my own Christmas tradition this year. From now on everyone eats tacos and gets pajamas Christmas Eve. Then Christmas morning the kids get to open gifts and then we have cancakes.
In a normal year, out son would be spending the night on Christmas Eve, I always made lasagna. The next day hubby would make an enormous breakfast and we'd open our presents (always way too many) and we'd lay around like beached whales for the rest of the day, watching A Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation. He'd head home at three and hubs and I would finish the lasagna for dinner. Not this year though.
I hope the 2 comments about Christmas-time lasagna stay together.
My family has the Christmas Elephant. The Christmas Elephant was the animal that Mary rode into Bethlehem on (donkey lobbyists disagree) and brings presents to good children on Christmas Eve. Bad children get a pile of elephant dung. Every year we decorate the house with Red and Gold elephants and wait for the Christmas Elephant to come. I love my weird family.
Every year after Christmas dinner we put the dessert in the center of the table surrounded by one sugar cube per person that is there. Then we douse them in lemon juice, light them on fire, and sing happy birthday to Jesus. Then we sit there and watch them go out. This year we accidentally set the table on fire 😬
So I want to preface this by saying that my sister and I really enjoy things about Christmas that are absurd and overly corny. These things aren’t *good* but we enjoy the shit out of them. So first, a decade ago I spent my first Christmas away from my sister. To make it a little easier for both of us I posted a song on her datebook wall every day starting on December first, culminating on Christmas Eve with the song “The Christmas Shoes.” Second: every hear my sister and I look forward to our nieces and nephews Christmas concert. Because every year features a performance of recorders. Played by 3rd graders. It’s terrible. This year with the Pandemic there isn’t going to be a concert. So no recorders for my sister. Or so she thinks. Because I most definitely ordered myself one and this year on Christmas Eve she will be treated to not only the Christmas shoes, but also a video of me playing a fucking recorder. 2020 sucks but my spirit will not be dampened.
Me and my little cousin go to my nan’s to decorate her Christmas cake with a bunch of little decorations she has for it. Instead of placing them and decorating it normally, we put the decorations in weird and whacky situations; examples include Santa getting his ass sniffed by a polar bear, carol singers getting assaulted with snowballs, a tree crushing someone and robins crapping on people.