Megan of Toast & Laurel {who designed our cute “Coastal & Southern” notes} agreed to give us one set of 75 holiday photo cards from the Toast & Laurel 2010 Holiday Collection. The winner will choose one of seventeen standard designs and personalize it with their favorite photo and holiday greeting. All of the designs are Toast & Laurel originals, are printed on premium 130 lb. uncoated cardstock, and are accompanied by white european flap A7 envelopes.
Question to win: Are there any unusual holiday traditions in your family? Answer in the comment section and someone will win… win… win.
Our unusual traditions…
Allison: Steak and Cheese Grits for Thanksgiving Dinner
Paula: For her childrens’ big Christmas gift they would send them on a scavenger hunt on Christmas morning to find the gift
Lauren: Lauren and her brother (ages 23 and 26) still wait at the top of the stairs on Christmas morning until her mom and dad allow them to come down
Joan: Decking her halls involves stringing lights, garland, and ornaments in a palm tree
Me: White Elephant Bingo on Christmas Day (with gag gifts and re-gifts)
(If you are perfectly normal and don’t have any unusual traditions, feel free to simply share your favorite holiday tradition!)
Tradition- family and friends Xmas eve party after mass- stiff egg nogg
Before my grandpa passed away we always had pizza for Christmas Eve dinner. To him it was cheap and easy and fed a lot of people. Hard to argue with that logic!
We divide the family into two teams: the Pilgrims and the Indians and play a Thanksgiving themed game — like Family Feud with Thanksgiving trivia. My aunt and uncle who host Thanksgiving choose the game every year.
one Christmas morning my dad was playing (a very confused) bartender and could not figure out mimosas and screwdrivers. he just kept mixing them up. we scolded him
and he defended himself by explaing he was just creating a new drink: “screwmosas”. so we now have screwmosas every Christmas morning (and yes – do still make it subsequent engagements throughout the day).
My family always has spaghetti for dinner Christmas Eve! Not sure when it started but it’s great to have the sauce hot and ready in a Crockpot when you get back from Christmas services!
We make homemade pizza and act out the Christmas story on Christmas Eve, with costumes and all!
ahhh… we make orange twist donuts in the afternoon…they are simply melt in your mouth AMAZING!!
me & my family get together christmas eve night for board games and mimosas. after board games we always watch it’s a wonderful life.
My family always goes snow skiing the week before Christmas. We look forward to a winter wonderland every December!
Santa comes on Christmas Eve every year (as in we actually see him) and he gives us one gift out of his bag. We’ve done this my entire life and we have continued the tradition. Now that my brother and I have children it is so much fun to see their reaction. We all take pictures with Santa and then look for rudolf as they fly away.
Christmas morning – NO ONE goes in the den until EVERYONE is awake!!!! Also, we all open gifts ONE AT A TIME – even with 7 grandchildren!!! It takes forever, but it’s fun to see what everyone else got!!!
My son’s b-day is Dec. 19th so every year he gets a “Birthday Tree” at my in-laws’ house. The tree is in a different room than the Christmas tree so he can have a b-day celebration that isn’t completely mixed in with the Christmas celebration. So far the b-day tree has been decorated in a racecar theme, animal theme, and dinosaur theme. Not sure yet what my MIL has in store this year…
Stone crab on Christmas Eve! Once a Floridian … always!
i’m a meany mama that requires only one gift opening at a time. otherwise it’s all over in about 33 seconds
& i bake a sausage egg casserole, cheese grits & brown sugar bacon for christmas breakfast
great giveaway..i’m in serious need of a great card
Oh my, I’m so glad that someone else has to suffer through the ‘sitting at the top of the stairs’! My sister (30) and I (28) still have to do that too! They even made my husband do it last year!
I married into a family that does fondue for Christmas eve after all the kids are in bed. It’s really fun!
We still wait for t he go-ahead from my parents too!! Although, not living at home and having our own children now, logistics have changed a bit.
my husband’s family always gets an ice cream cake for Thanksgiving.
Martha Washington candies. YUM!!
Thanksgiving bean bag tournament! EVERYONE plays… winner of the kids’ bracket gets $1 and the adult winner gets $5… and bragging rights. : )
Birthday cake for Baby Jesus on Christmas Day!
We don’t have any unusual traditions, but we’re anything BUT normal!
Not too unusual, but each year my sisters, mom and I do a Christmas craft night where we each bring a craft to teach each other and enough supplies for everyone to make one of your crafts. We then leave with 4 (mine, 2 sisters & mom’s) new Christmas crafts to decorate our homes and trees with.
Sometimes they work out great, and sometimes you end up with a ball of wires and jingle bells. But that’s the fun of it!
We were given baby ducks every year for Easter as children. We would take care of them until they grew up and then put them in a pond near our house. It was really delightful.
Not too unusual, but each year my mom, sisters and I have a Christmas craft night where we each bring a craft to teach to each other and enough supplies for each of us to make your craft. So we each leave with 4 (mine, my mom’s and my 2 sister’s) new Christmas items to decorate our homes and trees with.
Sometimes they turn out great, and sometimes we end up with a ball of wire and jingle bells. But that’s the fun of it!
i can’t think of anything weird but maybe that means my family is so weird that we think weird is normal.
HAHA, re: Lauren… I also have to wait at the top of the stairs. I’ll be 26 by Christmas but I have siblings age 12 + 10 who don’t think it’s fair I’m an adult and shouldn’t have to wait!
We used to order chinese on Christmas eve and open all of the presents that were from the grandparents
Every Thanksgiving my family stays at the old navel base on the washington coast, it’s one of the only times of year we actually are all together in one place (all 30 of us). It’s always rainy and cold, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.
My Mom always makes cinnamon rolls Christmas Morning – it’s the best!
Chinese for Christmas Dinner
We have a huge party on Christmas Eve to celebrate a great grandfather’s birthday!
We call everyone in the family Christmas morning – most times before we open presents. We all try to be the first to call my grandparents-it’s a real race!
I’ve really liked the Toast & Laurel designs I’ve seen! Would L-O-V-E to send them out this year. My family’s tradition is having ramen noodles on Christmas Eve with lots of yummy toppings like sliced hard-boiled egg, BBQ Chinese Pork, snow peas, green onion, and a little cayenne. Yum. My dad is Japanese so it’s also a must to have Japanese sticky rice with gravy i/o traditional mashed potatoes.
Nothing too weird at our house, just the “one present being opened at a time” rule that seems pretty common.
Being one of five children, there are always crazy things going on. We draw names then give stocking stuffers to everyone else – last year my sister gave us all tacky xmas sweaters…then we typically pose for several cheesy pictures. I might mention that our ages range from 35-22…not exactly typical for “grown” kids.
Opening stocking stuffers on Christmas eve.
We always make Christmas theme sugar cookies and a BIG mess of my mom’s kitchen. You will find my brother and I still carrying on this tradition at 28 and 30 this year!
My husband & I started making pina coladas every year when we decorate the tree – tree-trimming can be stressful.
All siblings (we are all over 19) and spouses still spend the night at our parents on Christmas Eve and are not allowed downstairs until we are all awake. This year I will have my 3 week old baby spending the night there too!!
p.s. we all live in the same town so it isnt a have to but it is a tradition!!
If you ask my husband, MY family is weird because after glutton-stricken Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts, they drink potent coffee to get energized for Skeet shooting. In his family, they all take naps after eating, which I happen to think is weird
He says my family does “hard-core holidays” and I say his family does communal nap-time gatherings.
On thanksgiving my family {aunts, uncles cousins} all draw names … and the persons name that we drew we write a poem about that person and read it out during Christmas Eve dinner. Of course some family members write theirs weeks in advance and others {me} are still rhyming out lines 30 minutes before the dinner. No one is to tell whose name you drew and we all try and guess who wrote the poem…it’s obvious when sisters get each other … lines such as “you like to steal my shirt and like to flirt” usually come out. We have done this for nearly ten years now, and it’s hysterical to read back on the poems. For the college boy cousins we usually have to set a line limit to prevent a two-liner “haiku”. Posted below is an example of one that my husband wrote about my uncle…. we have some family SEC rivalry:
As most of you know it,
Alan is a tough draw for a poet.
Alan is a lot like his smoked meat,
Charred on the outside and hard to eat.
But don’t get me wrong, Alan has a big heart.
He loves family, and hunting, and playing his part.
Alan achieves balance between work and play.
Mixing business with pleasure is his way.
While at work, he is intense and even packs heat.
While at play, he tunes to Buffett and kicks up his feet.
Most would envy such a wonderful life,
But inside Alan burns a tiny bit of strife.
You see, Alan can’t stand the success of the Tide.
And Watching this year’s championship ride.
Yes, Alan is an Auburn man,
And he enters 2010 as the longhorns’ #1 fan.
We usually do chili or pizza on Christmas Eve and ALWAYS open gifts on that night as well. Christmas morning is cinnamon rolls, hot chocolate and opening stocking stuffers. Then we have a more formal meal and just enjoy the rest of our day together.
My mom always makes the best cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning, making my parents house smell so good.
My mother-in-law always make Christmas cookies, but we all get to decorate them. Then we pick the best cookie to win!
On Christmas Eve we still go to the Children’s Mass, each “kid” gets to open one present, and we all sit around and read Christmas books (The Christmas Story, The Night Before Christmas, etc) and sing Christmas carols–no background music, just all 6 or 7 of us singing in our horrible voices messing up the words. It’s all corny but I love it (don’t tell my mom
If you ask my husband, MY family is weird because after glutton-stricken Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts, they drink potent coffee to get energized for Skeet shooting. In his family, they all take naps after eating, which I happen to think is weird
He says my family does “hard-core holidays” and I say his family does communal nap-time gatherings.
By the way, have you seen this lady’s work? http://www.knackstudios.com/ I recently discovered it and thought you may want to keep it on file.
My Dad makes us sing “The 12 Days of Christmas” over and over again. Everyone draws a “day” and you have to stand up each time it is your turn to sing. Sometimes we are laughing so hard, we can’t even sing.
My mom always did “table presents” at Christmas Eve dinner. The gifts were in the middle of the table and a ribbon was attached from the gift to your dessert spoon/fork. She always weaved the ribbon all around so you had a hard time figuring which was yours. It was a fun way to end dinner!
Not sure that this is unusual, but when I was growing up we would all load up in the car (dog included) and drive around playing Christmas music looking at Christmas lights. Loved it!
Tacky Gift Exchange – Everyone throws $20 into the “pot” and they then photograph {but not buy} the tackiest holiday themed gift under $20 they can find. Everyone votes on which gift is actually the tackiest and that person gets the “pot.”
Love the cards… my fingers are crossed.
Nothing too unusual, but we grew up traveling every Christmas, and all I wanted to do was stay in my own home for Xmas. Wah!
I love her stuff, by the way, I was just checking it out yesterday for Xmas cards!
In the Wilson family…we have 74 stockings hanging (yes, hanging) that each family puts a Christmas happy in each one!
I always have to have 7up with thanksgiving dinner. My mom would make the “kids” champagne with it when I was little and now it is a must have… not sprite… no squirt.. 7UP!
Is it weird that our family dogs get to open their presents first?
Such a generous giveaway. Crossing my fingers to win!!!
at the end of the meal on both christmas and thanksgiving, we break the wishbone from the turkey. i am sure my brother cheats every time;)
We still have to open each gift one by one to see what everybody gets. I start decorating right away also the week of Thanksgiving and love to watch the Griswolds! We even have the moose mugs!
We stay up to watch the Midnight Mass from the Vatican, then we are allowed to open our gifts. I guess after a word from our mecca {for Catholics} we are then deserving of gifts.
Every holiday is different (where are YOU going to be this year so I can make my plans) with in-laws and such! But, the days leading up to Christmas are filled with cookie and candy making with my daughter. Of course the classics are watched ie. It’s a Wonderful Life, Christmas Story and the beloved ELF! I try not put too much emphasis and demands on family (my daughter and son) for every holiday! I may not give my grandchildren their presents (birthday, Christmas) until after the holiday….the holiday is being with them and seeing their little, bright faces. That is my tradition!
We are (apparently) pretty traditional, boring folks, at my house! We do however, always watch “Miracle on 34th Street” Thanksgiving night, while we start decorating for Christmas, and then watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” Christmas Eve(some years, while doing some last-minute gift wrapping!).
We eat spaghetti for Christmas dinner!
We play endless games of rook and rummikube. Love it!
My mom’s a rural mail carrier so Christmas Eve my sister and I get to help her open all her gifts from the people on her route. There’s always tons of chocolates and cookies and we all sample everthing!
mexican food on christmas eve.
My mom and her sister always serve cucumber mousse every year for Thanksgiving. We love our congealed vegetables!
My sisters, husband, and I still have to wait at the top of the stairs for our Santa presents. We are 28, 24 & 22, but hopefully that will change next year since we’ll have a little one!
I LOVE the White Elephant Christmas Exchange we do every year with our friends at the Eve of Christmas Eve Party–I love finding outrageous things that are funny, yet people will “fight” over!
The entire family watches Christmas Vacation, and years later we are still laughing. “Grace? She died years ago.”
My mom and her sister serve cucumber mousse every year at Thanksgiving. We love our congealed vegetables!
What beautiful cards!!! Well once upon a lonely holiday season when I was alone and far from home, I stumbled upon It’s a Wonderful Life and bawled myself silly; so every year since then (1984) my family knows that I will watch this again and again on DVD while I wrap presents. However!! I MUST watch it for the first TV broadcast of the season, and not on DVD. I don’t know why? this is also true of the Rudolph cartoon…..I guess I’m IN-DE-PEN-DENT!
Back when my grandmother was my age, she and her sisters/female cousins started passing around a gag gift each year. It was an old bottle of perfume, in a tacky gold bottle. And it smelled HORRIBLE. We are still passing it around today. Each year, it is wrapped and mixed in with the gifts and marked with the name one poor soul (rule is it must be female). Rule is that if you get the perfume, you must announce it, then smell it in front of everyone. (you can imagine, after all these years it just smells worse!) you then take responsibility of the perfume and must bring it back the following year, and you are allowed to pick the next “victim”. As the years pass and we all are aware of the dreaded perfume tradition, more strategy is involved in disguising it. We wrap it in big boxes, large bags with lots of tissue paper (weighted with rocks to add to the mystery)…and sometimes we see it wrapped with a $5 bill peeping out of the wrapping paper. As cousins grow out of the kid gift stage and into the ladies group, it makes a fun initiation!
Ever year on Christmas Eve, we make my Grandmother’s Russian Tea recipe and have a homemade international-style dinner (Italian, French, Cajun, etc.). We’re 100% American.
We always go out to dinner on Christmas Eve.
White elephant booze exchange! So stress free to shop for!
I STILL write letters to Santa. And I now respond to myself. From Santa. But my son loves it so that makes it ok!
we are starting all new traditions this year as our family has changed. more on that to come. but for now we are doing handmade.
We always have a birthday cake and sing Happy Birthday to Baby Jesus. It was my grandmother’s tradition (including a little baby in a manger cake topper) and it’s stuck even though she passed several years ago.
We always had to wait in the bathroom before our Dad told us it was okay to come out. Love those memories!!
like lauren’s family we {26. 34 and 35} still have to wait upstairs until “santa comes” – haha.
My sister, brother and I all slept in the same room on Christmas Eve and did until about 2 years ago when my brother couldn’t get home for Christmas. We were 37, 32 & 27 then. Also, my mom always makes this bread with apricots and cherries inside for breakfast on Christmas morning. A few years ago we found out that she is the only person in the family who actually likes it- the rest of us just ate it because it was tradition. Now she makes some other options as well, but I still have a little piece of the “gross” bread because its’s just not Christmas without it!
we kick off the season thanksgiving night by watching christmas vaccation… on christmas …we go to christmas eve services… then out to chinese food… and get to open one gift… it is always matching pj’s (this year will be hard to manage as i am VERY pregnant) and top it off my dad reads from Luke the real story of how God gave us his Son on Christmas… and we head off to bed… then in the morning when we wake we have to wait at the top of the stairs to play a variation of mother may i to come down to what santa has brought us… we slowly marvel at the morning and enjoy the slow pace. we then eat a BIG brunch with all sorts of german sweet breads that my great grandmother has passed down to us and relish the JOY of the season.
For Christmas dinner we have Steak and baked potatoes.
I love it just because its different.
Susan
we have so many strange traditions! When I lived at home I always had to get my Mom her slippers and her robe before she would get out of bed. Every year I would bring her the slippers and she would tell me that was the wrong pair. At my husbands house we have to sit at the top of the stairs and wait to be invited down. Between all the kids and spouses and dogs it gets pretty crowded! I think my favorite tradition is the annual family shopping trip to Nordstrom where we all pick out exactly what we want for christmas and casually walk away while Dad steps up to the counter.
Our family is very “unusual” but for reason I can’t think of a funny tradition…but my sweet dad has written a note from santa for us that he reads aloud on Christmas morning…we are now grown and starting our own families, but the reflections from his viewpoint always bring tears to our eyes!
We all dress in the same pj’s – normal when you are a child – not normal as adults!
My family always orders Chinese food for dinner on Christmas Eve. It’s easy, good, and requires no cooking, which is fabulous since there is always lots of cooking to be done for Christmas Day!
I can’t think of anything too odd! In recent years my husband and I have started buying a new game every year, and it becomes the one gift the family opens on christmas eve. Then on Christmas day we break it open and play as the feast is being prepared. We hope it will become a tradition for years to come!
Dessert wigs (one lucky person gets the colonial wig!) and a silver dollar in every stocking.
When my grandfather was alive, we’d go to his house on Christmas eve to see if we could see Santa in his sleigh! We’d also listen to the “barking dogs Christmas song.” They barked jingle bells!
We celebrate St. Nicholas Day on Dec. 6th, following my husband’s family’s German traditions. It is such a wonderful way to kick off the Christmas season! And we always eats vats of fondue on Christmas Eve! Mmmm….
Probably not too unusual, but stockings are opened after breakfast and breakfast is after all the presents under the tree!
we always get/got oranges at the bottoms of our stockings
Our siblings draw names for “makey” gifts in addition to normal gifts. Each “makey” gift is homemade!
Sausage balls for breakfast while we open presents on Christmas morning.
Not unusual…but we always have one present we can open on Christmas Eve (and I do this with my 2 girls now too) and it’s always new pjs to wear that night…hoping to think of some other traditions to start now that my girls are getting a little older! maybe I’ll get some ideas from all of the comments
favorite holiday tradition: “feast of the seven fishes” on christmas eve!
These are darling! While it’s not totally unusual our tradition is to write a letter to each of our kids every year and put it in their stocking so they have memories of what they loved and didnt love, etc….for every year of their lives.
This is a WEIRD tradition that has not been done in a few years, but we always did when I was younger – there are 10 cousins (8 boys and 2 girls) and on Christmas Eve we all go to my grandparent’s house. My grandfather – Potts – had a MEAN fat mother (my great-grandmother) and her name was GranGran. Potts would play the piano and all the cousin would sing, “She’s a big fat woman and she weighs 400 pounds – GranGran!” Haha! It was so much fun, only because she was such a terror!!
For Thanksgiving, we eat a different nationality food. Instead of the traditional American turkey, dressing, etc.. we eat Thai, Mexican, Italian and change it each year
My family goes on a run after we open presents..then we come back and play with everything.
We always have soup on Christmas Eve.
I loved reading these! Too funny. We make it a contest to see who arrives at Grammy’s house first on Christmas morning. Needless to say, she’s probably seen us MUCH earlier than she would have liked a few Christmas mornings. I distinctly remember Dad putting us in the car in our pj’s one year and we got dressed there simply so we could beat my aunt and uncle.
We were always allowed to open one gift that was already under the tree on Christmas Eve.
Our Christmas Eve dinner is a buffet of dips and assorted appetizers and we open one present that is a game and we all play it (4 brothers and sisters and now all the BIL and SILs).
I also make enough pumpkin bread to last the whole month and eat a piece every morning and sit with my Christmas tree all lit up while it’s still dark and nobody else is up yet.
)
always opened pajamas on christmas eve growing up
our “unusual” tradition comes from my husband’s side of the family (his grandmother was italian) and they (now us too) always have lasagna for christmas dinner.
When we were kids and trying to fall asleep on Christmas Eve, our
parents were still awake downstairs having lots of fun with family and friends. As the laughter got louder we would always hear family friend Flo say “Oh s–t!” She has passed now, but we always make a toast with the saying she was famous for.
I make a set of pajamas for everyone in my family (that all match!) and we take a goofy picture either in front of the tree or in front of the fireplace/mantel.
We always have biscuit toast on Christmas morning…as in left over homemade biscuits, cut in half and buttered and then toasted in the oven. It wasn’t so weird when we were young, because we actually HAD left over biscuits, but now it has to be done intentionally.
We do a steak dinner for Christmas night. After Thanksgiving and our Christmas Eve festivities we’re usually “turkey’ed out” so we have steak, baked potatoes and salad. So good!
If there is decent snowfall, we run around the house in only shorts and a T shirt – no shoes, socks, coat, etc, to see who all can brave it.
nothing strange here…but our favorite is opening our stockings on Christmas morning!
The whole family (adults & children) get AND wear matching pajamas on our annual Christmas trip. It makes for some pretty hilarious pictures!!
Normally on Christmas, the “big kids” (my husband’s siblings and their significant others) all draw names and exchange a gift…but this year, because of the lovely economy, we’re doing the “White Elephant” type gift exchange with gag gifts, donation gifts, whatever, stealing others’ gifts, etc. Except in my family we call it a “Dirty Santa” gift exchange.
We load up in the back of a truck on Christmas Eve night to drive around and look at lights. We bring hot chocolate and cookies and sing carols the entire time!
My sisters and I have started the last several years, buying matching christmas pjs (we’re all in our 20s and 30s, which probably kicks this into the weird category of traditions?) that we wear on Christmas morning. It’s starting including our kids the last couple of years, where the kids have coordinating pjs or Christmas outfits. Anyway, it’s our fun little tradition.
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is a huge part of my husbands family traditions. We usually watch it about 5-6 times between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.
Chuck-E-Cheese! Growing up my husbands entire extended family went to chuck-e-cheese in Mobile on Christmas Eve every year.
every year since i was little my parents have given me and my brothers three gifts on christmas eve– christmas pajamas, an ornament for the tree, and a christmas book. and even now that we are older, my mom insists that we all put on our festive pjs and sit together and read the books (children’s books, mind you). can’t lie, i sort of love it.
We sing Karaoke Thanksgiving night. with an old machine, so it’s hilarious!
We don’t do anything too crazy but I’ve gotten some great ideas reading through all the comments!
Every year my mom hides a pickle ornament on the Christmas tree. After all the gifts have been opened, we have a contest to find the pickle on the tree. Whoever finds it gets an extra Christmas treat!
On Thanksgiving EVE we have a bonfire where my husband proceeds to jump over it. Like, literally jump over the fire. It’s annual… and it is AWESOME!
We do the White Elephant gift game as well!
Every year my mom gives my sister (29) and I (28) pajamas. We wear them on Christmas Eve. We love getting them every year!
Even though we are all grown up and have families of our own, our mom still hides all the presents until Christmas morning just like when we were little. I love to come down and find out stockings stuffed with goodies, just like the old days!
We have Allison’s menu for Christmas eve!
We always open our stocking stuffers on Christmas Eve. Usually with All I want for Christmas (the movie) playing in the background…I can’t wait!!
A few years ago, my mom tried to start this new tradition of having Italian food on Christmas Eve. It went over like a lead balloon. And it never happened again. Ha!
We make homemade pasta every Christmas eve:)
I have 4 sisters and my mother always put crayons and a coloring book, along with other small gifts, in our stockings. We are all between the ages of 27-37 now and we still get crayons and a coloring book. We love the nostalgia!
Merry Margaritas!!!
Santa leaves a couple of fun trinkets outside the kids’ doors in the morning.
We always open presents on Christmas Eve after church because my mom thinks it makes for better pictures than in the morning. When we were kids we’d go to midnight mass and come home and Santa had already come! Then we’d sleep in late on Christmas:)
When its just my husband, my three kids and I instead of traditional Christmas dinner we eat appetizers all day!! Its a lot of fun!
On Black Friday, while I’m out scooping up the deals, my two boys and the hubbie go and buy two real Christmas trees. When I get home from shopping, they help me decorate “their” tree.
we don’t eat dinner on Christmas Eve, only dips and snack foods! Christmas day we usually stay in our pajamas ALL day…last year we even played in the show in our pjs!
Not sure if this is “unusual” – but we can always predict the one gift we get to open on Christmas Eve. It is always either Christmas pajamas or new sheets to use that night.
Last year our family started Yankee Christmas – FAIL!
Gumbo & other cajun food for Christmas dinner. And on my husband’s side of the family, they make each other open presents one at a time as they sit around the room in a big circle. Its actually a little awkward.
We always eat clam chowder on Christmas Eve. (Unless you’re me, and you eat vegetable soup because you don’t like clam chowder.)
We have COOKIE breakfast on christmas morning, that’s right, sugar coated goodness as far as the eye can see! You have to fuel up to open all those presents!
Growing up before the holidays my two younger sisters and I would sleep in one bed because we were too excited to sleep together. We would talk about everything we wanted and give out hints for the gifts we were going to give each other the next morning.
Not anymore, I now live in Florida, but while growing up in San Antonio, Texas my Aunt always prepared tamales and homemade enchiladas on C-Mas eve…. when in Texas
Ahhh- paper products are my drug of choice, I love this giveaway. Like Lauren, my sister, brother & I still wait at the top of the stairs before all heading down together (with our significant others & toddlers in tow.) It’s not a tradition, but a few years ago after a particularly tough Fall, when I came home for christmas, my Dad picked me up from the airport in a full blown Santa suit. Turns out he’d arrived an hour earlier than my flight landed to “play Santa” at the airport. We’re lucky security didn’t pick him up! Cheers.
Chinese food for Christmas!
I guess the strangest tradition we do is after church on Christmas eve we go out to dinner. (I know that’s not really strange but that’s all I got)
Beer and Oysters on Thanksgiving eve!
Same as Lauren! I’m 26 and married, and I still make my brother and HUSBAND all wait until we can go downstairs together. My favorite of our traditions is we have my mom’s famous gumbo every Christmas Eve…it’s amazing!
You know how some people open one present (or all of them) on Christmas Eve? Well, my husband and I spend Christmas Eve with my family and since his birthday is the day after Christmas, that’s when we celebrate his birthday. There’s a nice dinner and cake and birthday gifts. Even though it’s not totally separate from the holiday, I really appreciate my family doing their part to make his birthday special since it can sometimes get lost in the craziness of Christmas.
Watching The Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation is a must and quoting favorite movie lines…well, all year long…and drinking “Granny Slammers”…the name is almost as fun as the drink!
I don’t know if this is unusual or not but, my 3 children and my B/F’s 2 kids (all are grown) spend the night at our house on Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning my (now) 6 year old grand daughter goes around the house and wakes everyone up to watch her open gifts.
Lauren! My sister and I (23 and 29) also need to wait for permission to come downstairs!
The Christmas music goes on in our house on Black Friday and doesn’t go off until the end of New Year’s day. We LOVE our Christmas tunes!
we don’t have any unusual traditions. just food, family, church, gifts, relaxing. love these christmas cards!
When we gather with my Mom’s side of the family each year (there are a LOT of us) we get in pairs and gather around in a circle and sing and act out The Twelve Days of Christmas. So. Much. Fun.
Not really wacky, but our family Christmas celebration just wouldn’t be the same without Tom Smith Christmas Crackers.
Christmas eve gift: the first person to say “Christmas eve gift” on the morning of Christmas eve gets to open a special present that night.
We stay up until midnight on Christmas eve so we can open a few presents before going to bed!
i still put out cookies for Santa at age 25!
STEAK and artichokes for Christmas dinner.
We still leave cookies out for Santa: keep in mind that all siblings are above the age of 20! Oh…and sometimes even carrots for the reindeer. Don’t judge.
My mom saves one small gift for everyone as an “after dinner gift” (and we save one for her). At Christmas night dinner, long after most of the presents have been opened, everyone has a written clue that’s placed in a little ornament by their spot at the dinner table. During dessert, one by one everyone reads their clue and tries to guess where their final gift is hidden. The clues take on a variety of tones depending upon who writes them but it’s always a fun game and stretches out the gift giving through Christmas night!
After an ice storm that left us without power for several days, my family always goes to the movies on Christmas Day. It was a nice escape from the cold house and we’ve continued doing it for 8 years!
For Christmas Eve dinner, each family member picks a favorite appetizer. A typical meal includes chile con queso, cajun shrimp, corned beef/sour cream dip with pumpernickel, etc. It’s totally random and one of my favorite meals of the year.
Board games and chili on Christmas Eve
On my husband’s side we always play dirty santa. Well, there is always one package in the room that is marked from “Santa” and it makes the game true to its name. Justin’s Uncle is the ring leader in this and if you are the recipient of his “Santa” gift (which everyone avoids like crazy) then it is sure to make you blush! It typically gets opened by the newbie in the group who doesn’t know better…which is a fun right-of-passage into this silly family tradition!
cinnamon rolls early christmas morn! i am 28 (married with kid) and my sis is 25 and we still wake up at the crack of dawn to run down and tear into our presents. we sneak peeks over the balcony to see what santa has brought
instead of having a christmas dinner, my family has a christmas breakfast. it used to happen after we opened gifts, but now that we are all older, we can wait and eat first. it’s a huge feast – sausage, pancakes, eggs, biscuits, gravy, juice, milk, hasbrowns, grits. you name it, we have it.
it’s a tradition. it wouldn’t be christmas without it.
We always get dressed up on Christmas Eve, go to the Christmas Eve service at our church, then go drive around looking for the houses with the best lights/decorations, then we go home and have appetizers. i LOVE christmas traditions! So fun!
I don’t know how unusual it is for mixed-faith families, but our Christmas tree sports blue and white lights and a homemade tin foil star of David topper.
My dad and I always do the stocking stuffing shopping together on Christmas Eve, just the two of us. It was such a treasured time to spend alone with him shopping and picking funny things out for the rest of the family. Wonderful memories!
We eat schnitzel every Christmas Eve. Yum!
We go to my only living grandmother’s house on Christmas day and exchange gifts with her. My mom finds out how much she is going to spend and we give her at least that much money back in a Christmas card. Every year the gifts become more questionable. Last year my sister and I received one shoe each. My grandmother also thinks my husband’s name is Stewart and nobody ever corrects her that his name is Patrick.
My brothers and sisters and I, ranging from ages 29 to 11 (6 of us total), line up in order of youngest to oldest down the hall outside the living room until my parents tell us we can come in on Christmas Day. I think my sister and I finally made it our of this tradition once we were married!
As long as my memory serves me, my mom always made sausage balls for breakfast on Christmas morning. Now that I am old enough, I pour a tall mimosa and we open presents by the fire. Love it!
Not too crazy, but every Thanksgiving, we have the English “crackers” at each plate – the kind you pop and out comes a little trinket and a paper hat. Of course, everyone has to wear the tissue paper hat and recite the silly, silly joke… the little kids all the way up to my 95 year old grandmother.
As quoted earlier in the giveaways…my family is crazy about karaoke…so on Christmas Eve everyone is forced to be entertained with karaoke-ness.
probably the most unusual holiday tradition at my house is that we eat corned beef for thanksgiving!
Although I can definitely say we are *not* normal, every year George makes us listen to The Beach Boys Christmas album while we decorate the tree. It’s a must. And now we all love it. Besides this tradition, since Dad passed, we now try and do everything differently so as not to get too sad.
This just reminded me we need to think of *new* traditions! Thanks, this is the best and most fun UG blog week yet!
My Dad is from El Paso, and so every Christmas Eve my parents host a large party for the neighbors after services and we eat tamales and Mexican food
White Elephant instead of a typical gift exchange!
Growing up, it was always strictly enforced that there was no Christmas music played until the day after Thanksgiving. It was always super exciting when we got to officially listen to the first Christmas music of the season! I always loved the anticipation and ceremony of this tradition so much that we still do this with my children.
We always have our lovely Jewish neighbors over for christmas dinner. They bring down a Jewish treat to go with our christmas dinner
Then we are invited down to their house for seder when passover rolls around.
This isn’t the classiest thing, but for the past two years, on christmas eve (after church) my husband and i (we’ve been married for two years) go to the ‘boats’ to gamble all the loose change we saved throughout the year.
We eat Christmas Eve dinner in our new PJs– everyone, adults and kids alike. Makes for some funny picture and a cozy and comfy way to spend the evening together.
My dad’s extended family used to select two recipients each year to receive a “tacky” Christmas outfit or gift (80′s clothes, ridiculously large pants, ugly shoes, etc) The gift giver would make up a funny poem or song to accompany the gift.
We have a barbecue on Christmas Eve here in New York! It’s great to see my dad out there on the grill in the snow
And it’s totally not fancy – hot dogs, hamburgers, and I always insist my mom makes her classic potato salad. It’s tradition.
We dine on Chinese food on Christmas Eve. The tradition started because a Chinese restaurant was the only place open after Christmas Eve service one year!
Our unusual (and somewhat unfortunate!) tradition is that after Christmas Eve church we always seem to forget to have something together for dinner. This means we either end up throwing together ‘breakfast for dinner’ Christmas Eve dinner or, on one particularly unfortunate Christmas, we ended up with a sackful of Krystal burgers!
We get together with family to eat and my aunt usually buys a new board game for us to try. It’s lots of fun!
My inlaws eat enchiladas on Christmas Eve – random! To me Christmas dinner is turkey, dressing, etc. But hey, the enchildas are good so I shouldn’t complain.
We live 8+ hours away from all of our family so for the past few years our holiday tradition has been a ‘game’ to see how many grandparents we can see in 48 hours in different cities. Looking forward to staying at home this year and starting new traditions. (LOVE all of the cards by the way!)
Non-traditional – um, honestly, guess we are pretty traditional – so I’ll go that route…..birthday cake for Jesus on Christmas morning, complete with the happy birthday song
we get to open one present on christmas eve!
We traditionally celebrate Christmas Eve with my dad’s family and we open gifts one at a time in order from youngest to oldest. It takes forever, but we look forward to it every year. Then we all have a slice of Lane Cake! YUM!
We also have to wait at the top of the stairs and we’re (26 and 23), but my favorite tradition is our Candlelight service at my church.
My husband and I do a Christmas themed costume party every year. This year is going to be “ugly x-mass sweater”! I’d love to win those cards too! Thanx for this giveaway!
my brother sleeping under the tree on Christmas eve since he was two. He still does and is 26…
among the kids, we draw names and have to make gifts for each other. last year i got a recycling bucket that also charges an ipod. yippee.
This kids are allowed to open one of the presents from Grandmama and Grandpa (my parents)who live in Massachusetts (we’re in Alabama) on Christmas Eve. The catch is that I get to pick which one. Amazingly I usually have a really nice Christmas Eve day with my two boys being very, very sweet to me…
We open Christmas “crackers,” (a British tradition) which are paper containers that make a large crack noise when you pull them apart. Inside are a bunch of goodies…including a bright colored paper hat that must be worn throughout the entire Christmas dinner!
We open all of our family Christmas gifts on Christmas eve… When we were young, our parents told us Santa came early because we were his favorites. It’s one of my favorite traditions.
We all look forward to baking and sharing our Christmas cookies!
we have lots of christmas traditions, but one of my favorites is saving all the Christmas cards we receive, in a big bowl, that sits on our dinner table. So each night before we pray for our dinner, we pick one or two cards and pray for that person/family as well. Its a good reminder for us and our children that we need to be praying for others more than just when they are in need.
Quail hunt with the family Thanksgiving morning, followed by quail dinner
Bananas Foster French Toast for bruch on Christmas morning. Yum!
My grandmother used to give us spare change in Crown Royal bags as one of our Christmas presents.
Christmas Day at our house is Pajama Christmas. Everyone comes over dressed in fresh p.j.’s and we are cozy all day long!
My siblings (24-32), our spouses and our kids still have an Easter egg hunt at my parents and it gets VERY rowday.
LOVE THESE CARDS!!! My unusual holiday…it is probably the same with everyone else who gets sucked into watching “The Christmas Story” on tv and my dad and I constantly quote “you’ll shoot your eye out kid”!
After opening a good gift, quoting Christmas Vacation: “Well, this is just a REEEAAALLLL nice suprise” And yes, there are home videos of this.
My Grandmother made the best stuffing for Thanksgiving, it was legendary. She decided to try to make it healthier one year and use turkey sausage, and of course it wasn’t nearly as good. So every year after that we bought regular sausage and fibbed through our teeth when she asked if it was turkey sausage that we bought for her. Makes me smile every year when I make it with my Dad now that she’s gone. It’s worth it to splurge that one day on the calories and make it the real way!
My family holds a “Cookie Weekend” every year after Thanksgiving. We pack in to my granparents’ cabin in the Poconos and bake over 20 different kinds of cookies (most are double or triple batches). The cookies get frozen and used throughout the season for hostess gifts, holiday parties, etc. The best part is hanging out in the cabin eating, drinking, baking, and cutting down everyone’s Christmas trees at a local farm.
Santa comes to the grown-ups on Christmas Eve night as opposed to Christmas morning…
We tell the story of Christmas using Fisher-Price little people every year.
Gumbo on Christmas Eve – delish!
My mom has (at last count) 11 different trees throughout the house, all decorated with a different theme.
Matching Christmas pj’s opened on Christmas Eve along with a new DVD and movie theater candy. It is mandatory that we we put on the pj’s immediately, then we all watch the movie together.
Every Thanksgiving morning my mom turns on the radio to find Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie. The entire 19 minutes she insists on silence and tries to sing along. After all of these years, she STILL hasn’t memorized the lyrics.
Since we are out of town visiting family on Christmas morning, Santa Claus comes to our house on Christmas Eve or Eve Eve morning. We explained to our boys that Santa can’t really make it to EVERY house on Christmas, so the really good children get their presents early. So far they are buying it and it is really nice to spread out the holiday and enjoy some traditions in our own home.
Nothing really unusual, but we usually have lasagna for Christmas dinner.
- my mom’s overly spiked egg nog
- I still have to come down the hall/stairs piggy back on my brother’s back (both of us well in our twenties)
- swedish pancakes christmas morning
When I was younger I happened to come across my gifts from Santa…that were hidden nicely in a closet. Well, my mom found out. From that moment on she dedicated a barcode system of numbers for our gifts. We didn’t receive “to kelly, from santa” we had “121416.” It could be different combinations of odd or even numbers, and was different every year. Lesson learned – dont cheat and look for your santa gifts!
Growing up in Southern California each year before Christmas my parents would take us to the “Harbor of Lights” boat parade… we’d put on heavy coats and bring a thermos of hot chocolate even though it was usually 70 degrees and watch all the beautifully decorated boats cruise the harbor.
LOVE all the Christmas Card designs by Toast & Laurel- thanks for the chance to win!
We get to open one present of our choosing on christmas eve. Wow, we sound kind of boring don’t we???
My brother, sister, and I always slept in my room the night before Christmas….every single year until the year my sister and I both got married. We had a big slumber party with our new husbands and my poor, single brother one last time….and then all decided it was getting a little weird
Christmas caroling
Ohhh…although I was in grade school when we’d do this it I remember it like it was yesterday. Singing 12 days of Christmas on Christmas Eve with aunts, uncles and cousins where everyone was assigned one night and all h#*@ would break loose if you missed your queue. I believe this tradition was vetoed by the third year
We light luminaria on my step father’s grave in the shape of a star after Christmas Eve services. In Michigan this can be very, very chilly, but we travel to the beautiful cemetery every year in the dark and sing carols then bolt.
Tamales on Christmas eve, and stocking stuffers that are too big for the actual stockings.
Our unusual holiday tradition began with a sad trip for our family to visit our terminally ill great-aunt Bea who lived in St. Pete, FL. She had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was not doing well when we all decided to travel 12 + hours by limo to visit our family there. (My uncle has a limo for work purposes and knew he could fit everyone in there!) So we loaded up my then 18-month old (I was surprised at how well limo’s accomodate carseats:) and headed south. My Aunt Bea is now in Heaven but we’ve continued our limo trips during the holiday season and everyone always thinks we are famous as we pull into town in a limo!
We make reindeer food with the children and sprinkle it in the yard to give them a snack too!! We also put a pillow in the fire place so santa doesn’t hurt his bum on the way down!!!
Nothing too unusual here that I’d admit anyways…
One tradition I love is on Thanksgiving, whatever grandkids are around at my grandmother’s dinner always get to put her Christmas tree up -I still love doing it!
My favorite Christmas tradition started when my now 28 year old daughter was tiny. She and I would get matching Christmas pj’s on Christmas Eve after church. It was fun to have a gift before going to bed, and perfect for darling Christmas morning pictures. We still do it!!!
We play Taboo after dinner!
we usually go see a movie christmas afternoon, but that’s not too weird.
Chilidogs on Christmas night! We all “dress down” from the day’s formal luch and gather as a large extended family in our casuals and jeans to ring in the day.
My two sisters, mom, two nieces and I all buy matching pajamas and wear them Christmas Eve while opening presents. You wouldn’t believe how difficult of a hunt it is to find matching PJ’s for all of us!
We all open Christmas pjs on Christmas Eve to wear that night regardless of our age.
every christmas eve my mother gives us all matching pajamas to wear. And by all i mean my brother(27) & now his wife(26), me(24) & my husband(25)and my sister(19).
So fun!
For the past few years we play a combination of White Elephant and the Right/Left game.. it’s fun and gets the party started.
Driving around town looking at all of the Christmas lights on all of the houses.
Being from a pretty big extended family, all the cousins would act out the Christmas story…complete with a narrator, angel, shepherds, sheep, wise men, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and any other random part if we had an excess of actors/actresses. Sweet memories.
we just started this year drinking champagne and eating donuts as we decorate the tree…i totally read that in real simple magazine!!!
Being from a pretty big extended family, all the cousins would act out the Christmas story at our big Christmas Eve dinner…complete with a narrator, angel, shepherds, sheep, wise men, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and any other random part if we had an excess of actors/actresses. Sweet memories.
Instead of egg nog, we make White Russians.
Oh! I’ve got a lot of good ones. Lauren — My sisters and I have to sit at the top of the stairs, too! But, the best … My mom makes us get our picture made with Santa every year. She puts the pictures in frames and they are on display throughout the holidays. Sure it is a cute, fun tradition. But, you have to go until you are TWENTY FIVE!
To wind down Christmas Day all of the cousins play a very competitive game of Monopoly and eat a delicious bowl of sausage/cheese dip.
Listening to the Amy Grant Christmas album over and over and over
We have to have cinnamon rolls fresh from the oven within minutes of opening up our presents on Christmas morning!! Yumm
Every year on Christmas eve we gather at my Mimi’s house for a lasagna cookoff and open stocking stuffers. It has been a tradition for many years and now the family has grown to include great grandchildern. It such a close family time and I love it.
We always eat Kraft Macaroni & Cheese for dinner on Christmas Eve!
We are pretty typical except that growing up we always had to spend the night at my grandparent’s house on Christmas Eve. Now that all the kid’s have kid’s, we all stay at our own homes on Christmas Eve so our children can wake up to their things in their home. As children, we always wanted to have Christmas at our home then visit relatives, but we did’t really get a vote in the holiday plans. My dad & step-mom travel all over Christmas day to see the grandkids and eat a lot.
Chinese food for Xmas Eve dinner! YUM!
Not too unusual, but since my husband is a pastor and works on Christmas Eve we started a tradition of picking up barbecue instead of having a fancy Christmas Eve dinner. Good food and less work since I’ve got to get myself and kiddos to Church:)!
My husband’s HUGE Catholic family sings Happy Birthday to Jesus. I was a little confused the first time when the priest sat down at the piano and the birthday cake came out lit with candles
I’m 25 years old… and my parents still wait to put presents under the tree until we are all in bed christmas eve night!
Hmmm…no strange Thanksgiving traditions here but we did eat Taco Bueno for Easter dinner one year. Does that count?!
I grew up in Charleston, SC. Being a coastal city, fresh seafood is very inexpensive. For Thanksgiving every year instead of having the typical spread (turkey, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, you name it) we always had crab, lobster, shrimp, shark, etc. I never knew that wasn’t what everyone did! To be completely honest, I never had a “Thanksgiving Meal” until I married my husband and we traveled to have Thanksgiving dinner with his family. They got such a laugh out of me because I got so excited over every little thing that they just saw as routine! I was so tickled (especially with the pumpkin pie)!!
My Mema and Papa have all of the grandkid’s over the day after Thanksgiving and we dig in the “money bucket”. We have done this since we were born. Throughout the year my Papa saves change (no pennies, thank you) and put’s it in this big Christmas Bucket with Holly all over it. The rules are you get ONE grab with ONE hand and NO SCOOPING
Best family tradition ever. It really kicks off the Christmas season!
we open one gift the night before…not too crazy
When I was little we opened 1 present on Christmas Eve – our choice. It always ended up being pajamas. How was that?
we too do a white elephant exchange!
We do the same thing as Lauren! My grown up siblings and I still wait at the top of the stairs (now with my husband included) until my parents say we can come down. My dad is always there at the bottom, video in hand, and my mom always says “I don’t think he came!”..referring to Santa of course! There are some things we’ll never be too old for! ( we don’t still believe in Santa…in case you were wondering
)
As a child, my sisters and I always received new pjs on Christmas Eve. I have since started this tradition with my girls. On Christmas, we don’t open presents until after eveyone has eaten brunch. Sometimes it is almost lunchtime by the time we get around to it.
We always go for a long run on Thanksgiving morning to make room for the FOOD! We call it our Turkey Trot.
It is hard to think of something unusual, isn’t it?! since our traditions have been the same my entire life the unusual seems normal! Every christmas i get to open one gift on Christmas eve- pajamas! All of our presents are from Santa, unless they are the one gift to/from a sibling.
playing RISK after dinner! not that unusual, but so fun!
Present opening takes HOURS. We throw everyone’s name in a hat, pick them one at a time and everyone watches each person open their gifts. This year there will be 20 of us! FIVE kids under THREE years old. A test of patience, for sure.
we save the Christmas tree for at least 3 months after we take it down, then torch it in the front yard for fun. It’s scary to see how quickly it burns up!
Every year we paint each of our 5 kids hands to put their hand print on our tree skirt. i love taking it out each year and seeing how they have grow and seeing when they were first able to write their name under their hand print!
When we pick up our tree we head right to the Hallmark store and the kids pick out one new ornament each!
Too funny. We still all wait at the top of the stairs (my sister and I are 31 and 35 respectively…with spouses and kids..). Our dad still reads us “The Night Before Christmas” before bedtime. We always get those plastic candy cane-shaped tubes of m&ms in our stockings. Love it all!
After celebrating Christmas, we go to a movie as a family on Christmas afternoon.
Lauren, your family is not the only one!! I am the oldest of 5 children, I am now married, and all 6 of us have to wait at the top of the stairs (for Mom to get the video camera started at the bottom) before coming down to see what Santa brought us!
My favorite tradition is having a pinata for the kids late on the night of Christmas Eve.
getting krispy kreme donuts then going to look at christmas lights!
nothing unusual for us.. Going to cut down our tree the day after Thanksgiving just like always!
Monkey bread on Christmas morning and…gasp…colored lights
My husband’s family has always eaten this unusual cake on Christmas. His Grandmother makes an “Irish Potato Cake” for each of her four children to share with their families. I had never heard of it before I met him, and I must say it is not one of my favorites. It has quite an extensive list of ingredients, including: potatoes, raisins, carrots, chocolate chips, coconut, walnuts…
I am loving the steak and cheese grits tradition! Yum! Sounds good enough to adopt for our weekly Tues night meal.
One unusual tradition, which used to feel normal, is continuing to open a gift on Christmas Eve. Now that I am a mom of three children I don’t feel the need to receive a gift (normally PJs), and I am excited to see my children open one on Cmas Eve, but my mom still insist I receive one!
Reading a tattered copy of Tomi Depaola’s A Christmas Story in foreign accents – each family member reads a page and passes on…
My favorite christmas tradition still is waking up at 6am and waiting at the top of the stairs while my Dad turns on all of the lights and the Johnny Mathis Christmas CD before we can go down and open presents.
Not anything too weird except 6 years ago this Christmas I had my first baby girl. Now we have to squeeze in time to have birthday cake and birthday presents every Christmas day.
We do a progressive dinner the week before Christmas, going to 3 family members homes partaking in a 3 course meal by the time we’re done. And at each home, there is an activity, game, or craft. It’s so much fun!
We still, to this day, sing Christmas carols every year on Christmas Eve together. We play the piano and guitars and sing at the top of our lungs. It’s so much fun and such a special tradition!
Not unusual but perhaps a lost classic – we always watch the movie Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby and Fred Astair. And we quote from the movie throughout the year (shortcut to the shortcut!)
We are super casual on Christmas Eve – we have hot dogs and dip night before we go to church! I look forward to “dip night” every year!
We always drink boiled custard during the holiday season. My brother and I started calling it boiled mustard, for what reason? I’m not sure! But we have called it that since we were younger!
It sounds like Lauren and I have similar family traditions! Every year my Dad goes downstairs first to make sure that Santa really came to visit. My sisters and I wait on the stairs and have to play the “did Santa really come visit?” game. I’m newly married and this will be the first time my husband stays with us Christmas Eve, so I guess he’ll be waiting on the steps with us on Christmas morning too! Photo cards would be a perfect way to share a nice wedding photo with our family and friends!
Growing up we always had cheese fondue for Christmas eve dinner. My hubby and I began a tradition with our oldest, we sing and dance to Christmas music on Christmas Eve all together (in our own home of course, although the neighbors may get a kick out of watching us!)
My husband and I go to church every Christmas eve for the candlelight service, then drive around town to look at the houses all lit up. This has always been a special and peaceful time for just the two of us. We never miss a drive up Luzerne St. with it’s century old grand homes built by Bethlehem Steel execs and oldest stand of elm trees in the country…it’s enchanting. Then we visit with my Dad’s family and then head home where we exchange our gifts (we just can’t wait one more day!) Christmas morning we have brunch (complete with mimosas) with my mom and brother’s family and then we go to his parents’ house to eat again!
We turn off the lights while we sing “you’re growing so old” instead of happy birthday to the special birthday person!
My husband’s mother always made chili for Christmas Eve dinner. Now that she is no longer here, I make chili for our family to keep the tradition going.
Since we were little, my family has always opened only one gift each per hour. It makes Christmas last all day and helps children (and adults?) to appreciate each gift! (Only downside – when you open the gift of socks. That’s a good hour to go have a shower!)
We have Swedish meatballs for dinner on Christmas Eve AND Christmas Day. What can we say? UFFDA!
When I was twelve, my cousin and I bought a chia pet and wrapped it up in beautiful paper to give to my aunt as a joke. Every year since it gets passed on to another member of the family from “Santa.” You never know who will get it but beware of beautifully wrapped gifts!
We eat at Waffle House on Christmas Eve. Every. Single. Year.
In addition to Christmas, we celebrate St. Nick’s Day on Dec 6th. This is the day we bring out the Christmas decorations and hang the stockings – that evening St. Nick visits and leaves small Christmas goodies to mark the start of the Christmas season.
OYSTER STEW!! For breakfast! So serious! ;o) Everybody always seems to think that is odd, but to us it is a given. I craaaaaave oyster stew on Thanksgiving and Christmas mornings. That blue and green stripey card is cuh-ute.
We always put reindeer poop out in the front yard so the girls know
Santa was here! (just chocolate marshmellows)
I’m not sure if the tradition is unusual, but on Christmas Eve my parents always give me Christmas pjs to wear to bed that night and to wear while opening gifts on Christmas morning. They continued this tradition when I got married and had a baby so now my husband and daughter get to participate. I always look forward to it!
random but true…every year for Christmas my sister and I would choreograph a “routine” that we would perform before we went down to open gifts on Christmas morning. It usually consisted of flips on the bed, high-fives, cheers, and various semi-gymnastic moves. We practiced for weeks before hand to make sure no mistakes were made on the big day…we were so weird!
Let’s see, we still wake up at 5am to open gifts (even though we are in our 30s) and always have tamales on Christmas Eve!
Egg Nog Christmas Eve, Christmas breakfast with my mom’s side of the family, lunch with my dad’s side, and by dinner we are all so full we can’t see straight!
Chinese food on Christmas day!
My dad always plays The christmas carol with George C. Scott. over and over again and dont you dare change it!
Every Christmas eve I make homemade cinnamon rolls and we have them for breakfast on Christmas morning. I only make them once a year so it is a wonderful treat.
Hi All! I’m a new reader, so I thought I would post my first comment! My mom has us all gather around an old school projecter to view at least a million old family pictures on Christmas Eve. It’s fun but lengthy! Love your blog – very inspirational for a recent college graduate!
Watch Christmas Vacation together and then quote it all year long:)!
it’s nice to see that my family isn’t all that unusual! we are also 30 and up and have to wait to see our gifts – the “Santa” one usually being unwrapped. at my momma’s we do the same things, eat the same things, and watch the same things every year “because we’ve always done it that way.” however, definitely unusual: my mom turns on the air conditioner so she can build a fire.
I’ve always loved wrapping gifts, so when I was growing up, I would wrap all of the Christmas gifts for my mom….including my own. She would box everything up so I wouldn’t know what I was getting, but she left all the wrapping to me! Surprisingly, I don’t think I ever peeked!
Before grandparent’s passes away we would spend Christmas Eve at their house and have pizza and pecan pie for supper.
When my kids were little we would let them open one gift on Christmas eve.
We always open our presents on Christmas Eve. This is possible because our house is Santa’s first stop of the evening. My parents started doing this so their younger, single brothers could be there when the kids opened presents but didn’t have to get up early!
i’m not sure about weird ones, but we always read Santa Mouse on Christmas Eve & leave out cheese for him… I guess we’re not too original!
Oh my goodness – for some reason, we used to stop at BURGER KING on the way home from church on Christmas Eve!!!! I have no idea why!
My favorite tradition is a wonderful breakfast on Christmas morning.
Even though all of us “kids” are in our 30s, if we can’t come home for Christmas, my mom sends us our childhood stockings–filled. I LOVE IT.
Watching the movie ‘O God’ on Christmas Eve. It’s a good time filler before midnight mass.
My granddad’s eggnog is 5 parts bourbon/1 part nog (I’m exaggerating a bit, but not too much). It’s the annual joke.
My father still insists that my siblings and I take a Christmas card picture and then he sends it out to all of his friends. The only problem is we are 31, 29, 27 and 16. Last year, my husband was in it too
Christmas crackers and tissue paper hats on Christmas day dinner
I can’t think of anything unusual, but I love how my family always spent Christmas @ home. We’d open our gifts from our extended family Christmas-Eve. Now that I’m married & have a family of my own-I love being at home even more!
Homemade cinnamon rolls on Christams morning. Nothing unusual, but they are sure are yummy!!
white elephant every Christmas!
We always read from the Story of Christmas advent book http://www.amazon.com/Story-Christmas-Book-Advent-Calendar/dp/1563055473) it’s great! We usually all read different days.
My family eats at a local Mexican restaurant every Christmas Eve! My mom doesn’t want to cook and they are generally the only place open in a small town.
This tradition is just getting underway, but my brother, 2 sisters, and I draw names for gift giving. This year we decided to all give homemade gifts. Time to break out the glitter and glue!!
We do “birdy gifts”. Birdy gifts are cheap, cheap…meaning they are thoughtful gifts under $5. We usually get together around the holidays and exchange these gifts.
Beautiful cards! I can’t think of any *unusual* traditions per se, but I will say that our Christmas Tree was always, dare I say…ugly! My Mom refused to throw away any handmade ornaments that we made as a child no matter how hideous they became over the years! It was a mish mash of ugly homemade ornaments, colored lights, blinking lights, white lights!
We have a family dance-a-thon to “All I Want for Christmas” by Mariah Carey on Christmas. This is somewhat of new tradition, though, as I’m fairly certain it didn’t occur to us until drinking wine was involved!
unusual – yes! growing up we ALWAYS went to disney world or epcot on christmas day! so many fond memories!
Santa would always leave call us on the phone on Christmas eve…still to this day my parents won’t tell who it was that called us!
Gumbo (with extra shrimp) and french bread for our Christmas Eve meals. My husband and I both grew up with this same tradition!
Growing up, my mother would hook up a device to the Christmas tree that was the sound of a bird chirping. It became such a tradition that we were devastated when it finally broke!
On Thanksgiving after the big meal we have a family gingerbread house building contest. Usually a child is paired up with an adult for each team and we use kits to keep it simple. The men take a break from football to judge and give “awards”- like “most colorful” or “best landscaping”
.
There is a long going debate about whose stockings are whose. Every year, we change it up.
When I was younger I would unwrap all of my gifts after everyone went to sleep and re-wrap them before morning. Terrible!
On Christmas Eve, we have champagne and dessert in front of a roaring fire with all of the grownups after the kids have gone to bed. We open all of the adult gifts that night so we can focus on the kids and Santa Claus’ gifts on Christmas morning.
Oyster casserole at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’ve never heard of anyone else making it, much less having it on the holidays.
My husband likes to wrap up fake gifts to me and put them under the tree to make it look like he has lots of gifts for me. The last couple I open are the “real gifts”. It is always so funny to see what crazy thing he has wrapped up. It sounds strange…but very funny to us!
My grandma use to always make her famous teacakes for Christmas. Since she’s been unable to cook my dad and uncle try to compete with the best tasting teacakes! We also have breakfast for Christmas eve dinner.
On Christmas Eve we go to my grandparents house, eat ham sandwiches and oyster stew, drink lots of red wine and then we sing along to a Christmas album at the top of our lungs. The album is by the Harry Simeone Chorale and was made in 1955. Several years ago our copy of the album was on it’s last leg, so I found an original 1955 copy on ebay and gave it to my mom on Christmas Eve. Not a dry eye in the house!
Holiday tradition: silly Christmas cousins photo. Every year on the stairs.
We do Christmas at Thanksgiving…started that family tradition three or four years ago. Then, we can focus on the true celebration of Christmas – our Savior – during Christmas (in December
).
Socks every year from Mom in the stocking. My husband now gets them too since he’s a part of the family. I always thought it was strange, but now I look forward to it!
HUGE scavenger hunt on Christmas morning for all of our gifts… my gifts are always wrapped in pink and my sister’s gifts are wrapped in polka dots! This past year, “Santa” also hid cash- play money that my father also exercised his “artistic” (sarcasm) talent on- an earring drawn on Abe Lincoln, mohawk on Ben Franklin! It is quite entertaining, and makes for a playful Christmas, even though we’re all adults now!
Scratch off lottery tickets in our stockings. Keeps everyone busy for awhile!
So I am really loving all the unusual holiday traditions and am thinking I am going to have to start one! Tradition: Christmas Morning the males in the family all meet at my parents cabin for an early morning duck hunt. When they return we have Christmas breakfast, relive the hunt with them and then open gifts.
Chinese food on New Year’s Eve.
On Christmas Eve we eat take-out Chinise food on a picnic blanket on the living room floor with just our Christmas lights on.
skeet shooting on thanksgiving day all geared up in camo…my one day a year to be a redneck! thanks, taylor
Every year it never failed that before my (2) sisters and I could open up Santa’s gifts we had to first give my dad a foot rub. He so enjoyed teasing us and making us wait before we could dive into the gifts with paper flying here and there…These days I make my husband rub my feet!
My mother-in-law always makes a batch of “Reindeer Food” for each of her grandchildren. {Reindeer Food = oatmeal + glitter!} She wraps them individually in little cellophane baggies with ribbon & gives them to each child as they leave her house Christmas Eve night so they can sprinkle it on their front lawn once they get home. This way, Santa’s reindeer know how to find their house & don’t go hungry! Always an exciting time when the reindeer food comes out!
being swedish…we have lots of interesting traditions. i treat my husband to swedish treats and coffee on st. lucia morning (walk in the bedroom with everything on a tray with a candle lighting the way singing the lucia song)! we enjoy glogg on christmas…a delish spiced hot wine! we also open christmas gifts in the evening…not on christmas morning. but i’m married to a wonderful american and adore intertwining our lives&traditions. most important…celebrating the birth of jesus!
We have breakfast the morning after christmas at my brother-in-laws house … his wife is a gourmet cook, everyone looks forward to it more than christmas dinner.
After Thanksgiving dinner when everyone is stuffed to the gills, we lay on the floor and try to see who can blow (paper) napkins the highest into the air. We have a cousins round and then an aunt and uncle round. When my grandmother was still alive she sat in her recliner and judged.
We do a present pull on Christmas Eve. The gifts act as a centerpiece and each one has a ribbon that leads to every seat. The ribbons are all intertwined, so it is hard to guess which gift belongs to your seat. One of my favorite traditions as a child!
Our best tradition is the pickle ornament. My Mom always was quite the joker and insisted she made it up but one year we had to buy a new pickle ornament and it had the German-rooted story on the back of it so we found out that it had been around long before her time. The gift for finding the ornament was always a Whitman Sampler. My brother and I would always race to find it and by the time one of us had found the pickle my Mom had ripped the Whitman sampler open and eaten the Mailman chocolate…all of our favorites…hahaha.
My parents always made Santa’s boot prints for us to find on Christmas morning. They used sprinkled powdered sugar in the entry way or fireplace hearth to serve as pretend snow! Now, we do this for our two girls! It’s so sweet to see their expressions on Christmas morning when they realize Santa was standing “right here!”
Our family (brothers, sisters, parents) do not give presents to each other or give presents to their sibling’s kids/spouses, etc. Instead, every year, on a rotating basis, each sibling chooses a “charity” or “cause” of their choice, and all money that we would normally have spent on xmas gifts for this group of people goes to that specific opportunity. Every year it’s different because it’s someone else’s choice, but it really takes the guesswork out of shopping for lots of people and we have a lot of fun with it!
Shrimp gumbo for Thanksgiving at my in-laws
My family plays this great game that we call roll the dice. We all bring gifts under $15 and put them in the middle. There is a 10 minute time frame where you roll two dice to get doubles and if you do you grab one of the gifts in the middle. Then once the 10 minutes is up you start another 10 minutes where you try to roll doubles again and you have to recall who got what so you can steal their gifts. But you have to remember who has it and what they have or else your turn goes unused and when there are a lot of gifts out there and people around the table you start to get confused. Basically everytime we play there are the highly coveted items, ie gift cards, etc and people are shouting and having a really good time.
We always go look at Christmas lights on Christmas Eve to see if we can “find” Santa. I can’t wait to start this with my own little boy when he’s older.
We are of German and English heritage but have tamales and chili for dinner Christmas Eve, then open gifts, and then pass out scratch off lotto tickets and see who’s the big winner!
For as long as I can remember we would all pile in the car and go look at Christmas lights in our pajamas on Christmas Eve. We still pile in my brothers pick up truck (inside the cab) and go look at lights. My brother and I are both married now so there are two more people to squeeze in the truck. All six of us return to my parents house to watch “Christmas Vacation”. Cousin Eddy(my brother dressed as CE) has been known to make a special appearance to serve us hot chocolate in silly reindeer mugs.
My sister and I (and now my husband since last year!) still wait at the top of the stairs for my parents to call us down to see what Santa brought! Cheesy, I know, but it’s tradition and sometimes you can’t mess w/ it!
We also go to my grandmother’s house for Christmas eve every single year and have the same “Christmas punch”. One year we tried to change it up and everybody went nuts!
We always get an apple and an orange in the bottom of our stockings.
Taco Soup and Rotel on Christmas Eve after church.
We get a birthday cake for Jesus and sing happy birthday
Nothing unusual, I’m afraid we’re a pretty traditional family.
Maybe I need to introduce a new tradition this year!
Ohh la la, LOVE today’s giveaway! Our parents always had us leave wine and cheese for Santa Claus instead of the usual cookies & milk!
Me and my 3 other siblings always slept under the christmas tree on Christmas Eve. We did it even when we were in high school and college because our little brother was younger and still wanted to do it.
We open one gift on Christmas Eve after church & it always just so happens to be Christmas pajamas
My in-laws make something called sandwich loaf to be served with christmas dinner. It is made to look like a cake with cream cheese icing, but is actually a loaf of bread stuffed with things like tuna, eggs, pickles, olives, etc. Gross!
Everyone must wear the Christmas popper crown on their head for the entire Christmas dinner!!!
Now that we have little ones in our home we are having fun starting new family traditions. Our favorite to date has to be our birthday party for Jesus! The kids LOVE it!!!
We still leave cookies and milk out for “Santa” even though we are all grown.
We always have lasagna Christmas Eve with the whole family and open gifts afterward, then on Christmas day we enjoy the more traditional dinner with family.
My mom is fanatical about reusing the wrapping paper so we sit their each christmas morning carefully opening gifts and folding the wrapping paper up for the next year. Her pride and joy is to announce on xmas morning “that angel wrapping paper I have had since you were both in elementary” (we are now both in our 30′s!)
Our Christmas traditions are pretty standard and gluttonous, but we do have an unusual Thanksgiving tradition started by my dad. On Thanksgiving morning he organizes a half marathon run for family and a few close friends that includes personalized medals and rest stops with mandatory shots of wiskey. We earn our turkey dinner!
We have so many fun things we do, but the most special is giving a Christmas ornament to each child every year. It is a tradition handed down from Jeff’s family. His mom did it for him and when we married we had a loaded Christmas tree with all the very special ornaments from each Christmas of his life. We now do it with our boys and it is so exciting to decorate the tree and bring back memories of Christmas past. Our tree is full of amazing stories, memories and treasures.
My five siblings and I since I was old enough to remember have acted out the famous Christmas song, ” The 12 Days of Christmas”! Since we’ve been doing it for so long we have REALLY gotten creative in the last few years! Its one of my best memories from the 22 Christmases I’ve had! (Not that I remember them all…
My dad would wake us up only to make us sit in the hall with the door closed until his video camera was set up. Then and only then could we go in to the living room and see what Santa brought us. I should also mention all of my great-aunts and uncles, along with grandparents were sitting there watching us and drinking their coffee or bloody Mary.
My dad was a video fanatic. In fact, we have video of every Christmas GIFT We have ever gotten, along with the family breakfast, dinners and cocktail parties on Christmas. A few years ago, after reviewing the videos, we decided who in our family could do what. (i.e. who can wink with both eyes, who can roll their tounge, who can touch their tounge to their nose, etc.) You can imagine how funny that will be down the road seeing your grandparents, parents and great-aunts and uncles along with oodles of cousins trying to do those things after a few drinks at dinner.
Even though my sister and I are 30 and 28 years old, we still get new PJs on Christmas Eve every year. And always lots of mimosa drinkin on Christmas morning!
My dad started a tradition where he gives my mom a big “Fleet Farm” orange plastic bag each year from “Santa.” It may be new cookware, or a garbage disposal or maybe even a fly swatter. We always save it until the end.
We used to do a white elephant gift exchange. This one old ratty tennis shoe would also make it into the mix, always in beautiful wrapping. It would trick you every time!
Every year a few days before Christmas, we have the “Gingerbread House Throwdown”. The extended family comes over, we break into teams of two and try to one up each other with our gingerbread house designs. So much fun!
Not sure how unusual, but we always make a “tree” out of cinnamon buns on Christmas morning and then decorate it with icing and sugar crystals after it comes out of the oven
My husband and father-in-law re-gifting the same box of men’s shirts back and forth every year, for the past 10 years. Still have the tags!
I’m 25 and every Christmas eve I spend the night at my parents house. Not in my old room, but with my little sister in her bed (she is 20). We watch The Santa Claus that night. The next morning we still go down the stairs together, look at our stockings first & then go into the next room to look at our Santa’s gift’s together. We have been doing this since we were little girls. I hope we still do this even after I get married!
My mom and I decorate a bird’s tree in our backyard instead of having a christmas tree inside. We string popcorn into garlands and hang apples and birdseed balls. We’ve done it since I was little and it always makes me smile
We STILL have to wait at the top of the stairs, in our pj’s, and all walk down together and open each gift (not Santa’s gifts of course, because they still arrive in front of the fireplace unwrapped) one by one and never 2 people at the same time!
We STILL have to wait at the top of the stairs and all walk down together on Christmas morning, in our pj’s, and open each gift (non-Santa gifts of course, because Santa’s gifts still come unwrapped in front of the fireplace) one by one and it takes a loooong time!
One year after looking through all the pictures from Christmas morning, my mom realized her nightgown was SEE THROUGH so all the Christmas pictures were a little too racy to share. Ever since then we all have to be showered and dressed before we’re allowed to open a single present. In exchange we each open one on Christmas Eve to hold us over through waiting for everyone to shower!
On Christmas Eve my siblings, cousins and I all hot tub and then get out and roll in the snow in our bathing suits and then jump back into the hot tub. Brrrr!!
We have enchiladas and mexican food on Christmas day
yay for Texas!
My sisters and I still listen to the same Disney Christmas Songs CD for the past 15 years while setting up our tree. We know exactly what song is coming up next and imitate some of the character’s voices when they sing.
We (31, 30, 27 ) also still have to sit at the top of the stairs to wait for my Mom to ring the Christmas Bell! We also always had to wake my grandmother up because she was a late sleeper…always thought that was so weird…ha
As kids we were always shaking the gifts under the tree and guessing what they were. It frustrated my mom so much that, to this day, she doesn’t have names on the gifts she puts numbers on them and she has a copy of the key…then we have to open them one by one.
)
White elephant gifts on Christmas Day and my Grandpa’s Christmas Punch:)
My Grandmother’s spaghetti & meatballs on Christmas Eve….I can’t wait!
Growing up we always opened all gifts on Christmas Eve and left the stockings for Christmas morning.
After Thanksgiving dinner we have a Christmas ornament swap and we have a reading of Tws The Night Before Christmas. We put some words from the story in a bowl and everyone draws a word and when your word is called you pick an ornament…same rules as a dirty Santa party. But, you have to yell “hootie hoo” when your word is read because that’s what grandma did years ago and it is now a tradition on it’s own. This is soooooo much fun for the adults as well as kids. Of course, we all try to bring that one ornament that everyone will fight over.
The “baby” of the family passes out the presents…I am 38 years old…and I pass out the presents :O)
my husband, kids, parents, sisters and their spouses all stay in our pajamas all day Christmas day!
The most unusual thing we do is make one person a year (varies who – usually kids or newcomers. When my husband joined our family he endured it) does a scavenger hunt for their ‘big’ christmas gift. Clues are poems that are hidden all around the house!!
after I got married, my husband’s mom and step-dad included us in the back-and-forth exchange of a tacky gift bag embellished with a photo of a kitten and cartoon flowers covered in glitter. we try to pass it off to one another throughout the holiday season trying to be the one to keep it the least amount of time.
Oranges are a must-have in our Christmas stockings!
My father is a preacher and after Christmas Eve service we invite everyone who does not have anywhere to go on Christmas Eve to eat at a local Mexican Restaurant with us. I love this tradition! We have been doing this for over ten years and it is so much fun!
Love the blog by the way:)
We had to wait at the top of the stairs for mom and dad to say it was okay to come down–the catch–we had to be fully dressed, teeth brushed, beds made, rooms straight, etc. Nothing like mom and dad trying to get a few extra minutes of sleep! The surprise-all the kids pitched in to help each other get beds made and everything ready so that we could get downstairs even faster!
About 6 or 7 years ago we started a tradition of going bowling on Christmas night. Our family and 3 sometimes 4 other families met up for a bowling tournament after all the gifts had been opened each Christmas night. It was a great get together and we always had a ball. Why did we choose bowling…because that was the only place in our town that was open on Christmas night!! This year we have an 8 month old and I am looking forward to starting fun Christmas traditions with her!!!
We read The Polar Express book. A tradition that we started even before Christmas.
fish!
We must have country ham biscuits on Christmas morning!
Chinese food delivery for Christmas Eve dinner!
We have wafers blessed & “break bread” with each member of our family giving each our wishes for them in the new year.
We watch A Christmas Story every year and laugh like we have never seen it before! When my grandfather was alive he would pass through the living room saying “is this still on?” not knowing that it was 24 hours of A Christmas Story. Ha!
We don’t have any unusual traditions, but this year we are taking our 2 daughters to the AZ Cardinals vs. Dallas Cowboy’s football game on Christmas Day! My husband and I have season tickets and I told him I wouldn’t go on Christmas without the kids, so he worked some magic to make it happen!
Great giveaway!
I think my favorite Christmas tradition is having banana bread on Christmas morning at breakfast, that’s really Jesus’ birthday cake.
We have lots of traditions, of course, like everyone. But my favorites are: drinking wine and fighting over Trivia Pursuit on Christmas Eve, walking in the cold winter weather with my mom and sis on Christmas morning, tea and cookies for dinner.
My family has the “December 1st Box.” When we were kids, we’d beg my mom to start decorating for Christmas as soon as December started. As a teacher, she wasn’t ready to devote the time to it until she got out of school in mid-December. Our compromise was the “December 1st Box.” We each chose a few of our favorite decorations to put in it. Mom got it out (along with the Christmas books & music) on December 1st, and that would tide us over until we did the tree and everything else as soon as school let out.
Tradition: Sister and I wear matching Christmas pajamas and are allowed to open one small gift on Christmas Eve. Thanks for the chance to win! Merry Christmas!
My husband’s grandfather waits until all presents have been exchanged, then slips out of the room and dresses up like a well-known character from the year and passes out his gifts in character. He has been SpongeBob, a pirate after Pirates of the Caribbean came out, and even Hannah Montana! He is now 95 and still continues the tradition… The smallest of the children get so excited, as do the adults, and he always has a little song/ phrase/ or theme to tell as he enters the room.
Not really sure how this got started, but we actually eat Chinese takeout in the den while watching the Polar Express. It’s the only time we let them watch that movie all year. (…and mommy gets to escape from the kitchen for a bit!)You can ask Lauren about the 70 stockings.
I know this is not a Christmas tradition but its still a holiday tradition… at Easter my parents still hide Easter Eggs around the house for me to “hunt”. I am 27 years old. Kinda similar to Lauren’s tradition. Also… my mom has a pickle orniment she hides on the christmas tree. She makes any and all visitors look for the pickle on the tree. She claims it is a German tradition. She is Italian.
White Elephant gift exchange just adults.
We light the “Christmas candle” on Christmas day all day long.
We have a huge day after Thanksgiving sports challenge and oyster roast with extended family and friends. It is a raucous time and something we all look forward to every year! The funniest part is that everyone has to bring a piece of “flair” to decorate Ernesto, the giant driftwood log that washed up on the shore during Hurricane Ernesto a few years back and that my dad erected in the oyster roast pit…one year my husband’s mom brought a catheter since she’s a nurse.
Seafood! We gather at my grandmother’s house and the first half of the day is spent peeling shrimp. We eat it fried, boiled, etc., plus crab cakes, crawfish bisque, etc. We’re over the turkey/ham traditional food by Christmas
Nothing unusual about our Christmas traditions, just plenty of traditional Southern food! I do love the baking though, and I always make a thin-layer chocolate cake for Christmas!
My BIG Irish Catholic family gets together on Christmas Eve for a talent show. My 90 year old Great-Uncle Emcees and everyone there has to participate! Tons of hilarious memories have come from this tradition!
In my family we hid a pickle ornament in our Christmas tree. The first person to find the pickle will win a little gift. My mom still does this for my sister and I even though we now have are own families. We are on the hunt for more pickle ornaments so we can start it with our families!
Watching nearly all 24 hours of A Christmas Story!
We have a Christmas sing-a-long, complete with Mom at the piano and songsheets for everyone!
christmas eve and sandwiches at my grandparents! mom always leads us in ‘silent night’ and grandpa chokes up. every. year.
Every Christmas Eve for dinner our family eats tamales. Mother’s reasoning was that by doing so we got to unwrap something that night!
My family makes 7 different fishes every Christmas Eve. We are Italian so it’s a big Italian tradition.. Although 7 is alot, it is fun!
We skip the fancy Christmas meal and just have a huge brunch. It’s always amazing!
I can’t think of anything super crazy that we do…does my family just being crazy count? I do love going to look at Christmas lights after Christmas Eve Church every year!
My grandmother’s Christmas tree is always FILLED with all of the ornaments she’s collected over the years. Each Christmas Eve, she lets us pick one of her ornaments for us to keep. I really enjoy it because I’ve treasured looking at these every year for my whole life and now I get to add them to my tree.
Not really a tradition… but to this day, my mom still will never admit that there is no such thing as santa claus. Even though we’re all much older now and my youngest sister is a teenager. Its sweet and keeps some of the holiday magic still alive.
Thanks for the great giveaways! I am loving the products and questions! You must have a ball reading through them =]
We’ve always eaten BBQ on Christmas Eve…sort of seems strange to me now…though it has always been yummy!
my mom hides a pickle ornament in the tree, and the first person to find it opens the first present! Crazy, right? And these cards are amazing.
Our favorite tradition is when decorating for Christmas, we leave set out all 10 nativity scenes but we don’t put out baby Jesus… He hasn’t been born. So all the baby Jesus figures are tucked away and on Christmas morning we celebrate His birth first thing, by placing Jesus in his mangers.
Everyone makes a graham cracker house and we create a magical village in the center of the dinning room table.
on new year’s eve we lace the extremely-dried-out-because-we-stop-watering-it-after-Santa-comes Christmas tree with strings of “fire-crackers” then light roman candles and shoot them into it. (Is that wrong?)
We do a white elephant exchange as well with lots of regifts and gag gifts.
We go around the table after Thanksgiving dinner, and one by one, starting with “A”, name something we are thankful for that begins with that letter…next person gets “B” and so on. The kids always look forward to it.
On Christmas Eve, we go to church, come home and eat lots of appetizers for supper (Bagel Bites, shrimp, Pigs in a Blanket, etc). Then we decorate the tree!
We all fill each other’s stockings….each person puts a small priced item in everyone’s stocking (it can be funny or meaningful). It’s always fun to get creative with one another.
I love toast and laurel! Was planning to use one of her Minted cards, but would love the chance to have the real deal!
Spiked egg nog on Christmas Eve
I’m loving your giveaways:)
My husband’s family always goes to a Japanese restaurant for dinner on Christmas Eve! A long time ago, when they wanted to go out after a Christmas service, it was the only restaurant open so they have done it ever since. It took me a while to get used to sushi on Christmas Eve!
My extended family eats all “game” from my grandfather’s hunting trips on Christmas Eve. One holiday tradition I would like to not keep!
we take the tree and all the decor down on Christmas day after breakfast
3 Christmas (and Thanksgiving!) dinners- one at my house, then my boyfriend and I leave and go to his house, then afterwards my grandparents house! By the end of the day I feel about a trillion pounds!
The highlight of our Christmas Eve get togethers has to be my grandmother reading (and making fun of) the Christmas letters she has received from her friends all over the country (the mass letter that tells every little thing their children and grandchildren have done all year, vacation stories, etc.) We then write a pretend letter for our family, making fun of our dynsfunctional-ness. At least we can laugh about our crazy family!
Mimosas and breakfast casserole every Christmas morning as early as 7 am. It’s a bit early to be drinking but it’s our crazy family’s tradition. :0)
We usually go to Waffle House on Christmas Eve ever since the year my mom ruined dinner. Sorry Mom!
we have a pink peppermint pig that gets re-gifted to an unsuspecting person every year!
Wearing the paper hats from english Christmas crackers at Christmas dinner!
My parents still buy us matching pajamas to wear on Christmas morning.
Every single year, I would wake the entire family around 4 a.m! I was (and still am) SO excited on Christmas morning! I can’t wait to see what Santa brought! And Santa still came at my mom and dad’s house until I married and got a house of my own to celebrate at! We also were allowed to open one gift on Christmas Eve, which was always new Christmas pj’s for us to wear for Christmas morning pictures!
We get together and make about 50 different types of cookies and candies and box them up to give to friends. We bake for 3 days straight the weekend before Christmas! We feel like we work in a bakery for this long weekend, which is much harder work than our real day jobs! This has been a tradition for over 60 years, starting when my mom was young. We look forward to it every year!
Not too unusual…but I must have mimosas and sausage balls for Christmas morning breakfast!!
Sadly no. Really small, really boring family!!
My mom still checks to see if “Santa” came before we all go in to the tree on Christmas…even though her baby is 30 years old.
We do a fabulous hors d’oeuvres buffet on Christmas Eve instead of a traditional dinner. It’s always fun to try out new and decadent dishes for this special gathering!
Thanksgiving is a weekend event! My very large family from all over the U.S. gathers at my aunt’s house in small town Kouts, IN Wednesday night. The next 3 days are full of laughing, euchre, food, food and more FOOD!
KFC on Christmas Eve…classy and delicious!
Campbell’s chicken & star soup and clam chowder for Christmas Eve dinner…
We also have to wait upstairs until my parents are ready! My husband has to do it too now
My mom started us an angel collection years ago and we each open our angel and some Christmas PJs on Christmas Eve.
My husband’s grandmother always gives me embarrassing underwear in front of the family …
… she thinks it is funny. A ‘fun’ way to usher in Christmas …
We have a $5 gift draw among our family on Christmas eve. We each draw a name, kids included and we each have $5 dollars to spend. We head out to face the CRAZY christmas eve crowds and spend the $5 wisely…..You would be surprised what we come up with…It is sort of a love/hate tradition..ha ha!
Christmas Eve church service and then nice dinner and open one present before bed. Continuing that tradition with my family. LOVE the cards! Thanks for hosting the giveaway!!
My family decorates the Christmas tree together every year while listening to the Beach Boys’ Christmas album. The “kids” are allowed to open one gift on Christmas Eve – pajamas to wear that night!
“Dough Daddies”….sounds strange, but only once a year, my FIL makes homemade fried dough with all four of my girls on Christmas morning. They actually want to eat these before they open presents….the time is just as precious as the treat
We always go to my grandmas house for appetizers, my moms for dinner, & my uncles for desert!
My parents hide a pickle ornament, which I know when hidden on the tree somewhere is not weird, but we are sent on a scavenger hunt for it..first to find it wins a $20 bill!
Oh my!!! So pretty
I’d love to win this one. I’m a 1st generation American…my parents and grandparents were all born in Cuba (great-grandparents in Spain). So every Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve we have a double menu – a full Cuban meal and a full American meal, complete with the traditional main dish from both sides and all the matching side dishes. The traditional Cuban main course for both holidays is a roast pig (called “lechon”). We literally buy the pig whole and roast it on a spit in this wooden box full of burning coals called a “caja china” (which translates to “Chinese box”…not sure where the name came from). Then when it’s done, the pig is brought inside and the meat is carved out right there while the head stays intact. Pretty gross, but the meat is delicious 
Birthday cake for Jesus! And, pizza the night before Thanksgiving.
We celebrate Christmas with my husband’s cousins on New Year’s Day every year. We have a white elephant gift exchange and someone always brings the chia pet. It has been circulating for years!
My husband grew up with a mom who hosted Icing Saturday in December. She baked a TON of sugar cookies and freezes them ahead of time. Then on Icing Saturday all the kiddos and their friends come over and ice away. We do it at our house now, and it’s amazing how many kiddos start asking when the big day will be in November!! They actually plan ahead for it. I LOVE anything that makes the kids want to hang out at our house. Reading the other posts is great too. This is always a question I ask my friends/coworkers.
white elephant as well, on christmas eve… but white elephant bingo sounds even more fun!! And watching Elf!
my husband’s family used to have a nordic dinner every Christmas Eve at midnight. The unusual part? In order to “prove” you were old enough to stay up with the grown-ups, you would have to eat the traditional raw pickled herring
With 9 kids in our family it was hard for my Mom to keep any kind order let alone tradition. But the one we did have and I keep with my kids is opening presents in PJ’s. Not too hard to keep.;)
I still sit at the top of the steps at my parents house and slide down on my bottom when it is time Christmas morning. Thankfully I have a 3 year old that enjoys doing it with me so my husband does not have to anymore:)
Christmas Eve- (Pre Santa) Playing dirty Santa with $10 gifts!
We are from New Mexico and green chile is always included in all of our family meals. For Christmas we always have green chile dressing for our turkey and green chile mashed potatoes! Ummmm! I’m getting hungry just thinking about it!
Katie
We play croquet on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. The best part of this tradition is that we live in Colorado. We have played on gorgeous 65 degrees days and in 6 inches of snow. The snow tends to help us not so good croquet players by evening out the field
As a child, on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, I opened my “Christmas Eve outfit” to wear that evening (to church and for gifts/dinner). For some reason, this tradition is lost on my three boys.
Jammy rides!!!
we do an advent chain opening it each day to reveal something fun to do! then christmas eve we go to church then come home and track santa on noradsanta.com
When I was young, each person of the family always opened their gifts at the same time and very quickly. As my sister and I got older we realized that we really wanted to slow things down, enjoy the morning, and see reactions to each gift.
We started a tradition of numbering each gift on Christmas Eve night. We put corresponding numbers in our special Christmas mug. The next morning we draw numbers out of the mug one at a time. When a number is drawn, the gift with that number is taken from under the tree and is opened by the recipient. We love doing this as it makes the opening of gifts much more personal, special, and fun.
We hide “pickles” (glass ornaments) and then when they find them, our boys get to open a new ornament for that year. They will start their adult life with some ornaments and I just know their wives will probably hate me for my ornament choices:)
When we celebrate with my husband’s family, we have Belgium waffles with strawberries, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and ice cream for breakfast Xmas morning!! Yummy!
stuffed shells as part of the lineup on Thanksgiving
My favorite tradition is Christmas Eve Family Game Night! We get a new game to play each year!
I’m 27 and still know where my mom stashes presents- in her closet. Without fail I stumble upon them everyyear and have to act surprised on Christmas day
Getting new Christmas PJ’s every Christmas eve!
We always go to a movie on Thanksgiving day and get a hot dog! Of course, we still have Thanksgiving dinner, too!
My mother in law likes to play “let’s make a deal”…she buys double the amount of gifts for everyone and then at the end tells us we can only keep half…The crazy part is she returns the ones we don’t keep the day after Christmas!
we have Krystal hamburgers for dinner with my family on Christmas Eve.
At my mom and dad’s we have to wait upstairs for our gifts until our dad yells “daylight in the swamps.” I have no idea what that means, my Grandpa started it. He passed away last fall, so it’s nice to do something that makes me think of him.
We always wear tacky Christmas sweaters to Christmas dinner at my in-laws. So fun!
My mom loves nativity scenes. On Christamas Eve we hide all the Baby Jesus from the scenes. On Christmas morning we must find Jesus and put him back in the manger. We can not open a present or look at anything until all the Baby Jesus have been found. Strange but a good way to make sure we remember why we are celebrating!!!
lasagna for dinner & pajama exchange with family on Christmas Eve…
I guess my own personal tradition would be asking for children’s art supplies every year even though I am an adult!
yes, I have bought more expensive art supplies through the years… But there is something nostalgic about opening up a fresh box of markers, crayons or paints every Christmas morning. Happy holidays!!!
We have a family band that performs on Christmas Eve – made up mostly of kids and Grandpa! It is such a blast to watch all the kids perform on such a fun night!
we always watch Chevy Chase Christmas Vacation and laugh. lounge. and eat. Christmas day we bake a cake for Jesus and of course go to worship!
love the cards
Every Christmas Eve, my dad still reads The Nught Before Christmas to my sister and I … In various accents.
In my family we love competitions….so we play shuffle board every year on Christmas Day. Double elimination, winners and losers brackets, the whole nine
for Thanksgiving we serve sauerkraut, our family recipe! Turkey just isn’t the same without it!
-Amber S
We “kids” (29, 26 and 23) all open our stockings first thing in the morning then my Dad makes us pancakes and we open the rest of our presents as a family.
We are still trying to make them! We just had a kid and are trying to figure out how to make Christmas work with both families.
We do a yankee swap with our family on christmas eve. About 10 years ago my sweet Grandmother put the ugliest nativity set in the swap. It has come back every year (re-gifted). Sometimes it is just a small piece of the set wrapped so no one knows untill its open. Happy holidays everyone:)
Post-Christmas (or Thanksgiving) kickball and touch football! We generally play until a couple of people are injured
We eat fried cheese with salsa on Christmas Eve before bed
My brothers and I (ages 24-29) still leave goodies out for Santa and get gifts from him.
before my grandfather passed away, my cousins and i would always try to play a new prank on him every year
it usually involved a whoopie cushion ha!
My family has that “one present being opened at a time” rule, we as my Hubs family is all at once. The best of both worlds!
nothing unusual, but I love that its the one time of year my entire large Irish family gets together!
We read the Christmas story, eat chilli and spend the night on the couch or in sleeping bags in front of the fire. Doesn’t seem unusal except for the fact that we live in Florida and crank the AC up just to have the fire.
Matching pajamas for the whole family…uncluding my dad and now my husband:)!
nothing unusual about our Holiday traditions…the little ones get new pjs to wear on Christmas eve, my mom starts the ham in the oven late Christmas eve and Christmas morning we have it with scrambled eggs and biscuits, we do still leave something sweet out for Santa
We get Christmas Eve PJs and after all the presents are opened Christmas morning – someone finds the pickle ornament hidden in the tree for an extra gift.
As a mom of five ages 2-15, every year is different. But we have always followed the German tradition of hiding a mercury glass pickle ornament in the tree. I hide two of them…the kids take this very seriously and act as though they found something really grand!
Ooh, This is a good one…..Growing up, my Aunt Ellen coordinated a family Christmas program with my three sisters and me and my cousin, Karen. We would each do a religious reading and then a solo song and a group song. It does not translate as funny writing this, but, if you could hear us sing, it was BAD. VERY. BAD.
Boiled Shrimp for my family’s Christmas dinner!
My mom still likes to buy us pajamas. Luckily she doesn’t make them all match still.
Every year my mom hides a glass ornament that looks like a pickle in the Christmas tree. My brother and I (age 22 and 29) still fight to see who will find it first!
My husbands family has clam chowder and shrimp for dinner ever xmas eve. My family we would get together before xmas and watch White Christmas! It isn’t christmas unless we watch that movie.
My family (including myself) eat the cooked skin on the Thanksgiving and Christmas turkey. I know, I know, but it seriously tastes soooo good
We rent an RV, dress in Christmas pajamas and drive around looking at Christmas lights in town. Then we exchange sibling gifts (I am 1 of 6, so we draw names) and declare a best gift giver at the end. (I must say that I won hands down last Christmas
. We also rent a huge bouncy house/obstacle course thing and have adult races.
My mom buys everyone lottery tickets and we scratch them off on xmas eve. Nothing like a little gambling to get in the holiday spirit!
We always open gifts on Christmas eve!
Growing up, the only unusual thing we did was….well, nothing.
We were pretty normal. What is unusual now for me, is that my husband and I only celebrate Chanukah when we’re together. However, if I go home for the holidays, you better believe I’m caroling and breathing in the scent of an evergreen! 
Oh, how things change!
Not really weird, but we were always given handmade pjs from my aunts for Christmas. And on Christmas we were allowed to open our stockings when we woke up but had to wait for presents. Mom and Dad still write from Santa on the packages.
We would always get to open one present on Christmas Eve…and it was always a pair of new comfy jammies to wear that night!
We always go to the mountains and cut down our own Christmas tree. We usually pick a big one and then have to cut a couple feet off the top to get it to stand up in the house. My husband is sweating and cussing at the end of this adventure but we will do it again this year:)
No unusual traditions, but our girls are four and two so maybe it
s time we start some!
we open one present on Christmas Eve..not very unusual, but I am thinking after reading these comments, that I should start coming up with some new traditions!
I want to think that we do, we’re not exactly normal. But nope, no unusual traditions. Traditionally we go to my husband’s family gathering on Christmas eve and spend Christmas day with mine. Something we can plan on and look forward to every year.
My sister and I, ages 30 & 20), still wake up early to go downstairs together and see what Santa brought! Now we have my son to add to the festivities, which definitely makes Christmas even more fun!!
Helping my father make tamales, while my mom watches a few days before Christmas. My mother is not the best cook, so thank God for my dads cooking.
The favorite tradition in our family is that everyone (starting at age 3) must draw a name of the another family member to MAKE a gift for. Not buy! It is, by far, the gift everyone anticipates most each year and it is so much fun to see the things everyone come up with. You don’t have to be artistic, just creative. One year my husband made my grandmother a letter opener out of the hardware they use for hip replacements since she had broken her hip during the previous year. He thought this was extremely clever since he is an orthopedic surgeon and she showed off her “new hip” to all of her retirement home friends! We have a photo album with giver and recipients of all gifts since our tradition started many years ago!
Growing up my sister, brother and I always slept under the Christmas tree on Christmas eve. Our kids have now started to do the same. It’s so fun to try to catch Santa in the act!
We have always done stockings first on Christmas morning, and my brother and I (now ages 36 and 34) would take turns and watch as the other closed their eyes and unloaded their stocking, trying to guess what each item was as they took it out. So fun!
I always make a Red Velvet cake and we put a candle in it and we sing Happy Birthday to Jesus. All the children(young and old) KNOW that we will have Jesus’ birthday cake! We also always have those European “crackers” set at each place setting to honor our Irish roots. The children LOVE to pop them open and get the silly prizes and the paper crowns! (we usually have few extra around because they have so much fun popping them!) It makes a wonderful, festive mess all over the house!!
Disaster seems to befall us each year at Christmas time. One year, our pipes froze in Christmas Eve. Another time, we always went and cut down our Christmas tree, my dad sliced his hand open cutting down the tree. And yet another time, my dad fell while out running Christmas morning and looked like he had gone several rounds with Sugar Ray Leonard. I guess you could disasters are our Christmas tradition!
Tamales and chili on Christmas Eve and we open all of our presents (except what Santa brings- and those are unwrapped!)
we have made homemade pizzas a few years after a big lunch feast!
My husbands family comes down the stairs every year while being video taped. While they walk down they have to say how old they are, they have done this every year since they were babes! Now that I am part of the family I am part of the yearly tradition too!
We get together with some of my extended family on Christmas Eve and do dinner and play games. At the end of the night, we read the Christmas story together and sing the 12 days of Christmas… everyone is paired up to have a certain day and belt out singing when it is their turn. Kind of entertaining, when we are not all musical…
I never thought my family’s tradition of making and eating of our favorite holiday hors d’oeuvres was odd until, I got married. Who knew that pickles, covered in cream cheese and wrapped in corned beef (you know the old school cheap kind from those little bags?) and sliced like coins was white trashy?☺ I still hold strong to these every Thanksgiving, even though it kinda grosses my hubby out.
Wow, I have share some of the “unusual” traditions with the Urban Grace staff- white elephant exchange with my family even though ours is somewhat of a “ugly things you find out the dollar store” type of exchange and getting everyone up at the same time to see what “santa” left. This is only unusual because we are 30, 26 and 24 and all married
we open our present from our secret santa sibling on christmas eve and our presents from santa on christmas morning. and there’s always a little karaoke during the holidays.
Regifting. We have “the plaid box” which has been passed back and forth for years. Each year, whoever gets “the plaid box” writes their name on the back of it and the year they received it. It’s been going since the late 70′s!
& i would LOVE LOVE LOVE to win Megan’s amazing stationary! Every since you first showed the “oh happy day” stationary, I’ve been in love (and have definitely purchased at least 3 sets of my own).
My husband and I always watch Elf on Christmas Day. My own personal tradition is to bust out the Love Actually soundtrack friday after Thanksgiving listen to it non-stop until the Christmas decorations come down. (this tradition is not a favorite of my husband’s)
Each year since I can remember my brother and I got a pez dispenser and refill pack in our stocking…and I hate pez, but I got it anyway. I am sure it was because my mom loves the stuff!
We give various members of the family gag gifts disguised from other family members. . . it makes for a very fun Christmas!
My husband’s fam has to watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation movie. every. single. year. =)
The grandchild that found the Christmas pickle ornament hidden on the tree gets an extra gift on Christmas morning!
my brother would always wake up around 2am and we would go see what santa brought us. we would then end up on the couch watching one of the movies we just opened…
my husband and i started this traditon back when we were dating & living in NYC…we always string popcorn & cranberry to use as garland around the tree. i can’t wait until my little one can join in!
LOVE these holiday cards. crossing my fingers & toes! xoxo
We always remind my sister that it’s Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving because one year we were on vacation and didn’t eat turkey, etc. and after the fact she complained that “no one told me it was Thanksgiving!”
My parents still have my sister and I, along with my husband and child wait at the top of the stairs too! I love it:)
Our tradition isn’t as unusual as it could be… growing up, we were not allowed to open gifts until the entire family had showered and changed out of their pj’s. I think it was my mom’s way of ensuring we’d have good pictures.
Instead of adult stocking stuffers, my Mom buys a bunch of small ($5 or less), random, odd ball items and makes us guess what they are. No one ever knows, and we spend hours throwing out guesses/suggestions of what they could be. By the end our guesses are pretty wild and sometimes, if we’re lucky, we’ll get a couple right.
The day after Thanksgiving, we head out of town to cut down our christmas tree at an adorable tree farm. My sister and family always go with. The farm is owned by a lovely retired couple who have built an outdoor fireplace, a troll trail for fun, and sell cookies to raise money for the local food bank. It is so fun! The best part is the photo we take every year with the giant wreath they hang for just photos. It is usually our christmas photo card. (We considered going out of town for christmas, but my teenage kids were devestated to think we wouldn’t be getting a tree!)
We put together a big puzzle!
We do white elephant bingo on Christmas Eve! But my favorite tradition is opening a new pair of jammies on Christmas Eve. I’ve done it since I was a child and now my kids do it. I love the tradition.
hot pot on thanksgiving!
My husband’s family stay up until midnight on Christmas eve and open all of their presents then! Where’s the anticipation that comes from having to try and sleep when you know Santa is on his way?!?
Our 4 children regift hideous things to each other. A son and daughter fought over an awful wood lamp at a thrift store when they were at Auburn. He got it, then 10 years later gave it to her the Christmas before she married for her “hope chest.” Lucky girl!
Love the giveaway, hope to win.
My family has a tradition where we stand in a circle with a candle. We each light the candle of the person next to us and tell them why we love them. With the adults its so great to share these feelings as we don’t say it often enough to one another.
Can’t think of a single traditional tradition – we’ve purposely been flexible, although the core is always the same, centered on Jesus.
My parents never wrapped our presents!
We always eat Japanese food on Christmas Eve
I suppose the spanikopitas i serve are associated with the festive Holiday season in my household. But as the years go by I have extended and take the word season literally why stress out on one day enjoy the Advent season and do cherished things throughout the month. I have done away with some traditions eggnog for one oh gosh is it just too sweet or what. I also try to do more things– visit the holiday decorated historic house in town, enjoy the luminarias downtown lit by the scout troop join in the sing along Christmas carol event and I always play my 45 of John Lennon’s And so this is Christmas
Being the youngest I was always the designated Santa who passed out the gifts to each family member. I won’t have as much work this year as it is the first year we will draw names for presents and then use the rest of the money to adopt a family for Christmas. Now that we’re all 30+ we decided we didn’t really need all the gifts!
Our family always makes a visit to Borough Market the Saturday before Christmas to stock up on even more food. Then on Christmas Eve we exchange family cards and open one present. And I suppose our strange thing is doing Christmas stockings even though I am 27 and my mum and dad in their 50-60s. But I still think the stockings are the best!
Instead of cookies and milk, we leave Santa a glass of sherry and a mince pie – to warm up, of course, after all that flying in the cold!
I’m SO excited for christmas with my new little girl!
New pajamas every year on Christmas Eve. They used to be matching (unfortunate some years) but now that we are older they are maybe just a little bit coordinated.
Santa puts deodorant and shaving in my stocking every year. I am 32. I hope this isn’t a hint.
boiled custard–I know it sounds gross but everyone loves it! The problem is it takes hours to make and it is very fickle. Every year we try to ‘beat’ last years batch!
Nothing weird I suppose that I can recall.. I do enjoy cooking a fabulously fancy meal for my husband and I on New Years Eve…. other than that we are pretty normal- HA
Not all that strange, but my favorite. We open one gift Christmas Eve (usually the new Christmas PJ’s). Quite possibly my favorite gift @ Christmas!
My Mom is Scottish and every year she orders “crackers” (not the food, but something that 2 people pull on each end, makes a sound when pulled apart and there is always a paper hat, a useless tool (like finger nail clippers with a magnet attached or a really really REALLY small screwdriver) and a fortune inside. We all have to wear the hat for dinner and have our picture taken.
Our Christmas Eve dinner is appetizers from all our favorite restaurants. So good and fun!
We dress up like the Griswolds from Christmas Vacation for Christmas dinner. Last year, my mom was Uncle Lewis. Hilarious!
We always have shrimp and grits on Christmas Eve. Love the cards!
Lasagna dinner on Christmas Eve! Our Christmas is pretty traditional aside from the fact that my Dad is Jewish and partakes in our Christmas
When I was little we would go out to a nice resturant a few days before Christmas. My sister, brother and I would guess the amount of the check and whoever was the closest would get to ride shotgun on the way home. I never won!
I vote for “screwmosas”! That was hilarious as I was laughing so hard and I bet they will take the “Bah Humbug” out of anyone!
I don’t know that it’s weird, but my favorite thing on Christmas morning is our eggs benedict for breakfast. Nobody makes it like my mom. We talk about it all year…..These cards are beautiful. Thanks for the chance to win!
I vote for “screwmosas”! That was hilarious! I bet they will take the “Bah Humbug” out of anyone!
We watch the Peter, Paul and Mary Christmas special every year. It’s hilarious and so cheesy, but it wouldn’t be Christmas without it!
Matching pajamas with my mother in law (you read that right!) It sounds way more terrifying than it really is.. she’s pretty cool
My grandmother writes what the gift is on the bottom of the gift so she can remember what it is. She doesn’t realize that the kids know about this and find out what all their presents are on Christmas Eve…
I am the “master” of Christmas presents. Now that our kids are older (23,21,19), I wrap all of the gifts. Rather than put names on them, I label each with a number. I have the “master” list that tells me what each present is and who it goes too. The kids love looking at all of the gifts not knowing which ones are for them. I love being “in charge”!
I wouldn’t say mine is unusual but we normally travel for the holiday so instead of opening presents on Dec. 25th, we open presents either a few days before or after. That way we aren’t lugging all our presents with us. Happy Holidays!
Lauren and I have the same tradition…up until 3 years ago when I got married…my brother and I still had to wait at the top of the stairs on Christmas morning until Mom and Dad would let us come down. I loved it! I plan to carry that tradition on with my children.
Always a chocolate dessert at thanksgiving dinner
Every Christmas my family sits around the table and cracks jokes at my grandparents salt and pepper shakers because they look like long nipples. Someone always has a new joke to say about them. The story behind them is my Grandpa stole them from the Persian bar when he served in the military when he was in his 20’s. He said they reminded him of my Grandma….
Until my girls (and their little brother who is still in high school) went to college, they slept under the Christmas tree in sleeping bags on Christmas Eve. Once they married, their husbands wouldn’t agree to do it!
One year my wife wasn’t really appreciating me enough, so I had the center diamond removed from her ring while she was asleep. She was absolutely devastated when she woke up and frantically searched everywhere for at least two months. Then, when Christmas came, I had the diamond put back in, and surprised her with it. (Huh.. Somehow it just magically appeared in the seat cushion the week before.) She was so overjoyed that she treated me like a king for a year.
My favorite tradition is going to the Christmas Eve service at our church and then coming home and decorating cookies for Santa! We do this with just our immediate family and its great!
My extended family exchanges Billy Bass the singing fish. He’s made an appearance at Christmas to unexpecting recipients many times. He even showed up at my cousin’s bridal shower. A gas grill was the gift and when the bride and groom opened the grill, Billy started singing Christmas carols. Needless to say they were quite surprised to see Billy in the middle of the summer!
We always have bar-b-que after church on Christmas Eve. Yum!
On Thanksgiving, our family picks a name. This is our secret “Krissy.” For the next few weeks until Christmas, you are supposed to do extra-nice things for your “Krissy” (I think this may come from the name Kriskringle..but I’m not sure how we gave it the name!) The fun part is that you don’t want anyone to figure out who your real Krissy is- so you end up doing extra nice things for everyone to throw them off…
The Great Turkey comes to our house every Thanksgiving….while Mom is cooking, all the Dads mobilize, create a disturbance with all kinds of turkey noises, get the kids to run outside and try to “catch” the GT….lots of feathers get strewn on the lawn, but that darn turkey gets away every time. When the kids come back inside, small gifts have been left for them from the Great Turkey. Good times!
We are more traditional but we do have a bonfire Christmas night, shoot fireworks and play with fire balls, semi-dangerous, but fun!
Our annual holiday tradition is not usual. My hubby & I & my sister, brother in law & nieces all go the saturday after thanksgiving to my grandparents’s mountain home & cut down our christmas trees. it kinda feels like the scene from christmas vacation where they walk a million miles out into the woods…yep, that’s us!
We always stayed in our pajamas all day on Christmas day and then got dressed that night to go to a movie. One year we saw two in a row because we couldn’t pick.
Egg, green chili and tortilla casserole Christmas morning!
We always eat grapefruit and sausage quiche on Christmas morning. The grapefruit is a tradition as my uncle, who has since passed away, would always send us a box of Florida fruit. Though my uncle is gone, we continue the tradition.
I don’t know if it’s unusual because it feels normal to me, but all throughout my childhood we would spend Christmas morning at our own house, then drive to the grandparents for lunch & more gifts and then drive to my aunt & uncles house for delicious desserts. It was always in that same order every single year. Now that I’m away and don’t always get to participate, I miss the routine of Christmas day.
WOW! Where do I start on the unusual Christmas traditions?!?! My family is Italian, so we make homemade ravioli for Christmas Eve. It takes the entire week before Christmas… you would think we didn’t have anything else to do!!
The “kids” (range 25-31) and grandkids still have to wake my parents (and wait for dad to get the camera) on Christmas morning to see what Santa has brought us. And don’t you dare say Santa isn’t real!!!!!
My sister and I always pull out our old NKOTB Christmas CD and sing Funky Christmas!
We all buy each other $5 stocking stuffers and stuff it in each others stockings the night before and all open them together the next morning. There are about 16 adults now so it gets a little crazy but its fun to pick out small gifts you think others would ike.
My sister and I still race to find the pickle ornament on our parents tree on Christmas morning. We link arms and can’t enter the room until my parents count down. Then we sprint in and try to find the ornament. It is so much fun!
After our Thanksgiving meal we go and look for mistletoe. When we get back home we are all ready for pie!
we always play a game (pictionary, cranium, charades, etc…) on christmas night while (and after) partaking in numerous adult beverages….tom & jerry’s, bloody marys, egg nog with, wine, beer, screwdrivers…so you can just imagine how well those games turn out
My sister and I (ages 31 and 30) always go out for a couple of drinks and then shop for our parents presents… its tradition! even after husbands and kids
We have filet mignon and boiled shrimp as our Christmas meal. It is so delicious, and we always look forward to it!
My favorite “normal” tradition is that all my family (cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles) all seem to make it every year to my mom and dad’s house for Christmas brunch. No matter how busy we get, this seems to be a priority for everyone. We all think this brunch is the heart of our Christmas.
Watching Christmas Vacation…my sisters and I always watch it at least once over the holidays.
My family has a tradition of blowing up the Christmas tree a few days after Christmas. We take it out in the backyard, pour gasoline on it, and shoot fireworks at it until it blows up! Fortunately, we live in the countryside in TN, so no one has complained about our tradition yet. It’s a lot of fun, excitement, and WARMTH and at the top of the list for UNUSUAL!
My family always hikes out onto the lake (that is, if it’s frozen over by Christmas). We trek across to the other side, visit a neighbor or two and deliver some yummy baked goods. In the past few years, we’ve had LOADS of snow in WI and our new snowshoes from Santa have come in very handy! We recently had a Fall family photo shoot and I’m dying to use one of our fun shots for Christmas cards! Pick me please ! ! !
i recently married into a giant italian family and found that they have a tradition of having a massive fish fry on christmas eve, which also includes cleaning calamri and cooking snails in spaghetti sauce. maybe this isn’t an unusal tradition for some but it certainly was for me…did you know squid have beaks?
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Since there are six kids in my family with three of us married, my siblings and I (and now our spouses) all draw names around Thanksgiving time to see who we will give our secret santa present to. We exchange gifts on christmas eve and have so much fun seeing the unique gifts everyone has come up with. Our favorite last year? these http://www.orvis.com/store/product.aspx?pf_id=7211 which were given to my ex-football player brother-in-law!
Our parents always let us open Christmas presents about a week earlier since they themselves couldn’t wait for our reactions
We leave chocolate and bourbon for Santa (which gives him energy for his journey), and my husband cooks a huge Indian feast on Christmas eve.
So,we are pretty normal, but something I wish was a tradition is what we did 2 years ago. We got to the beach late Christmas Eve, and the only place to get food was convenience store Chinese. We ate it on the balcony, and it was so good.
We wrap our gifts, then place the wrap gift in a slightly bigger or much bigger box and add things like rocks, phone books, old photos, etc.! It’s a great way to throw off the “big kids” and little ones too about what they might be getting! We love it!
Summer sausage & little smokies on Christmas Eve!!!
Christmas Eve dinner, 4 (grown) children = a walnut is placed in the rice, whoever has the walnut in their given scoop of rice gets to open the first gift.
We have “Secret Santa” who leaves envelopes with clues about your “big” present. You have to figure out the clue and then go find your gift. It is a lot of fun — the children especially love it.
Happy Holidays!
We always have shrimp cocktail as an appetizer on Christmas day! It’s so good and a break from all the other heavy (but oh so delicious) food!
Our dog, who doesn’t leave the den area, (she’s scared to walk on hardwood floors but the rug in the den is big enough for her to feel safe in there) gets carried into the living room and we set her bed beside the Christmas tree. She gets to open presents first and is then allowed to retreat to the den.
My grandmother is English, so we have Christmas crackers that we open and then wear the paper hats for the rest of the meal.
We all line up in order of age (oldest to youngest) at the top of the stairs with bells. We go down the stairs and wind through the house singing “Jingle Bells,” with a stop at the creche in the dining room, where we sing “Happy Birthday” to baby Jesus. When we were kids, my dad would torture us by winding around and around the house slowly so it took forever to end up in front on the tree.
We have a seafood dinner for Christmas!
we can’t decorate the tree if the kenny & dolly christmas album isn’t blaring & afterwards we all sit & watch white christmas. i have two sisters so “sisters, sisters” is always a sing along.
My folks like lasagna on Christmas eve. And my husband’s grandma always makes her version of “chicken pot pie” on Christmas day which sits well with no one over 20, but we all have to eat a little not to hurt her feelings. It’s a shame she doesn’t have a dog.
We watch the marathon of A Christmas Story for the full 24 hours. Never turn off the TV.
Making a happy birthday Jesus cake on Christmas Eve with my girls, 6 and 3, to eat for breakfast on Christmas morning.
Thanksgiving at my favorite aunts house and then off to the BEACH for Black Friday shopping!
play hide and go seek on christmas evening on the 5th floor of church
in the dark
The person passing out the presents on Christmas morning must wear a santa hat!
Every Thanksgiving before my father died, we would load up the potato gun and see who could shoot the farthest across the lake. Those were the good old days! You might be a redneck if…..
We always have Christmas dinner on Christmas eve. On Christmas day, we just lay around and eat left overs!
Opening all of our presents on Christmas eve instead of Christmas morning.
I love these cards!!
My brother & I never believed in Santa [yes, shame on us]. Mom & Dad let us open a little present every night during the week leading up to Christmas Day. We saved the “big present” for Christmas morning! We still get presents early even if she ships them to us!
My husbands dad gets on the roof of the house with bells and stomp around like he was Santa. I have a feeling my husband will do this for our son. Oh the excitement to believe that Santa was on your roof!
on christmas morning my sisters & I had to sit on the stairs and get our picture taken before we could head to our presents, I of course now do that to my children. Also, pumpkin puff pancakes for breakfast christmas morning – AMAZING! i think i make them just like my mom did…
Sorry to say that there are no unusual traditions in my house. I hope I still qualify to win!
We traditionally leave a cup of Mt Dew on the hearth because when the kids were small, my husband told them Santa prefers Mt Dew with this cookies!
We leave a traditional drink of Mt. Dew on the hearth with cookies because obviously Santa prefers Mt Dew with his cookies!
no crazy traditions… just always enjoyed our family tradition of picking out our christmas tree the day after thanksgiving. oh, and opening one gift from under the tree the night before christmas. i LOVE the holidays!!!
We search for a hidden pickle ornament on the Christmas tree…whoever finds it first wins a prize (usually money!)
Annual Xmas day hike and picnic with the familia and all our little four legged fur friends.
Nothing says the holidays like a little poison oak and dads flask of his special “Xmas cider”
We read the Christmas story on Christmas Eve (the youngest person the family gets to read it aloud), then we each get to open ONE present from under the tree.
Nothing to crazy here, but we always get to open 1 present on Christmas Eve and it is always Christmas pajamas and we always celebrate Christmas Eve with an enormous italian feast..
@Shannon- My grandmother makes boiled custard for Christmas Eve dinner every year- it’s awesome.
Also we have to wait until adults wake up, make breakfast, AND eat before we can open any presents.
Mini hamburgers on Christmas Eve!
We are perfectly normal and have no strange Christmas traditions!
These are wonderful! I would love to win.
Oops! I pushed send before I put down our tradition! We got to a Winter Wonderland light show at a park where you ride on a horse-drawn carriage. Our kids love it!
We never have Turkey (or ham) on Thanksgiving. Instead we try out a new recipe/special dish each year.
Every Thanksgiving, when we our with my side of the family we go bowling:)
We eat spaghetti and meatballs every Christmas to pay homage to my dearly departed Italian grandmother. Sometimes we add fried eggs to mix it up.
I grew up in South Africa, and since it’s hot hot summer there for the holidays, we swam on Christmas Eve! We then had an appetizer dinner, which we all loved as kids, and opened presents.
we leave a plate of cookies for santa and a plate of carrots for the reindeer
Maybe not unusual, but we have a family cookie exchange every year. Since there are so many of us, each person usually ends up with 8-10 dozen different cookies!
Our family Christmas tradition is drinking champagne (or mimosas if one prefers) on Christmas morning while opening presents. It starts the day off right and it is definitely a tradition I will always keep!
Ok, I may be a day late and a dollar short but I have a good one (and I could really use some free holiday cards since Jared hates sending out Christmas cards. He says we might as well just drive around and put $5 dollars in everyone’s mailbox! Ha.) Our very terrible and seemingly very regular and extremely unwelcomed family holiday tradition….we contract the stomach bug. It is just plain awful. I mean I have childhood memories of my brother opening a present and then my mouth running over to him with a black garbage bag to throw up in. And for whatever reason we are still contracting it as grown adults. It is just plain horrid. Seriously, the last couple of years we have declined holiday party requests and carry hand sanitizer in our pockets. Ok, it hasn’t gotten that bad, but it does make you want to crawl under a rock and hide so we aren’t running to the bathroom on Christmas morning in between opening gifts. My Dad affectionately calls the Christmas stomach bug, the “Ghost of Christmas Past.”
Merry Merry!
Meg
What a beautiful collection of cards!! We celebrate with a Swedish smorgasbord every Christmas Eve. Someone dresses as “tomten” (Santa) and comes with a present for each child. My kids love it because they have Swedish Christmas on the 24th and Christmas again on the 25th!!
We have Tamales on Christmas eve for dinner. I think it is a Texas thing, because anyone not from Texas thinks it sounds crazy, but it’s so good!
PIzza and Olive Garden Salad for Christmas Eve Dinner, birthday cake and party for Jesus on Christmas- complete with balloons tied all over the Christmas tree!
Nothing too unusual. We drive around on Christmas eve looking at all the Christmas lights. We used to go out to dinner beforehand, but now with little ones we eat at home! After the kids go to bed on Christmas eve we hide the pickle – not nearly as bad as it sounds! It is a glass pickle ornament that is hidden on the tree. The first child to find it gets a special present – the pickle present! We also have a tradition of making sour cream coffee cake Christmas morning. I can’t wait to sneak a couple minutes (or hours) tonight to read through some of the other traditions submitted. Might come up with a couple we need to start!
Christmas Day calls for movies! We have different ones each year, but classics in our family (and likely millions of others) include Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life (it is!)
We always have a fish pond on Christmas eve and every person there, family or friends gets to fish for a present behind a sheet, using the same huge stick that has been used for probably 70 years. We start with the youngest person there. It’s a favorite tradition, although probably not that unusual.
The Christmas Eve Eve party with all the family and friends I have known since birth.
We have a present wrapped under the tree every year in the wrapping paper my Dad used to give my mom her fist Christmas gift….40 years ago!
He is gone now, but the tradition continues! I love that we can weave the history and love of our family into our present day celebration!
Gag gifts for my 80 year old grandparents which has included eadible underwear and a fake poo tree ornament. The kids always put on a small “Christmas Play” as well.
Our family make pork and bean soup every Christmas Eve. It certainly is not traditional holiday fare, but it reminds us of how far we’ve come.
We have a pre Christmas celebration on Dec. 5 which is called “Sinterklaas”- a Dutch tradition
Scrabble Christmas evening at my Parents’ home. We started about 10 years ago, just after I moved out. We now usually add cocktails and wine, and it has truly become one of the things I look most forward to
Just being together. Family is everything to me!!
Mostly normal, but my favorite is reading the “Night Before Christmas” every Christmas Eve. My dad used to read it to us every year until he passed away, and now the youngest dad in the family has taken over the honor.
Performing the Christmas pageant every year. Our Dad gets more technical each year. Last year he had a whole system hooked up that made the star light up!
Nothing unusual…Christmas Eve mass, a pasta dinner, and a quiche breakfast with presents on Christmas Day.
Bingo on Christmas morning instead of buying gifts for my family now that we are all grown up and married.
our strangest holiday tradition is dessert on christmas day…. this weird gelatin ring-mold thing that my great-grandma used to make! I think anyone besides our family would think it is disgusting, but to us it is the ONLY holiday dessert option!
My family has done chinese for Christmas eve dinner forever. Also, we hide a pickle ornament in the tree, the first to find it on Christmas morning wins money!
Every year for as long as I can remember my mom has got me a Hallmark ornament. We love ornaments around here and I started the same tradition with my daughter. Within our family of three, we decided on Christmas Eve to open one gift, well actually two….one being pjs and the other some type of game. We then put our pjs on and play the game that night before heading to bed. While it’s really hard to do this one, my friend gave me an idea that we’ve done the past three years…..We just give Ella three gifts from us. This represents the 3 gifts from the wise men. Hey, if it’s good enough for Jesus….Then, on Christmas morning she has a big gift from Santa and a stocking. Not to worry that she is deprived we later visit the grandparents and they make up for anything we left out:)
We don’t do anything unique or crazy. My husband does make a fantastic breakfast though! It’s one of the few times during the year that he cooks….so maybe that is unusual.
seafood gumbo, fried oysters and bacon wrapped backstrap with sweet family friends after a beautiful Christmas Eve service at church
Christmas Eve, at my in laws we play a dirty santa game…someone every year brings something sexual or inappropriate and it is a riot. I will never forget the year, my husbands aunt opened up a colt 45 and wax kit. It was too much…we are tamer now that everyone has kids that are staying up for the game. Too much though.
Take-out Chinese food on Christmas Eve!
We always play games into the night on Christmas Eve and eat waaaay too much. Not a strange tradition, but one that never changes!
On New Years Eve, when the clock strikes midnight, we run up and down the stairs shaking a can of coins.
We have an annual cookie exchange with all the girls in the fam – mother, aunt, sisters, cousins and now daughters. Last year we all came in our Christmas jammies and had a white elephant gift exchange. There’s always good food, drinks and laughs to kick off the holiday season, it’s so not about the cookies!?!
This isn’t necessarily unusual..but on Christmas morning, with all of the gift opening, my Mom always leaves out tons of different kinds of homemade cookies and sweets for us to snack on. Then, when all of the gifts are open, we have a big brunch. After brunch, she has us write down in a book what our favorite gift was, what we are thankful for (besides the gifts!) and something memorable from that year. She started that when we were babies and it is a great thing to look back on now after all of these years.
Oh boy, we might have a few. Nemo! On Christmas Eve we’ve had a helper from the north pole come talk to the kids and do all things like shaving, playing catch, brushing teeth…etc. It is someone’s hands and another person’s hands dressed as the legs, behind a curtain and it’s hard to explain, but funny.
One year we floated a Happy Birthday Jesus cake down my grandparents’ creek…. that’s pretty different!
we don’t really have anything different…last year we played the beatles on the wii as a family. that was fun, we all grew up loving the beatles, and my brother’s kids now love them too!
on Christmas Eve we always order chinese takeout and watch A Muppet Christmas Carol! its the best version!
We play dirty santa on New Year’s Eve but you are suppose to bring something you got for Christmas that you don’t want or like. It’s usually pretty funny. There is a planner from 2004 that keeps going round and round every year!
We never eat traditional food (hardly ever have turkey for Thanksgiving, etc.) but the untraditional tradition that has evolved over the years is that my mom always makes a huge pot of her delicious seafood gumbo at Christmas so she doesn’t have to cook when we are all lazy on Christmas night. We all look forward to that “tradition” – YUM!
My dad was born in Miami, so every Christmas Eve we have cuban food. The past two years by husband’s (boyfriend at the time) family would join us after the Christmas Eve service. It has been so wonderful to get our families together during the Christmas festivities. We got married on October 16th and I would LOVE use one of our wedding photos on the beautiful toast & laurel greeting cards!
hmmmmmm no unusual ones, but lots of “usual”: frying turkeys for thanksgiving, opening one present on christmas eve, christmas eve church service, dancing to manheim steamroller while decorating the christmas tree, with a fire in the fireplace even if its a balmy 65 degrees in alabama
No one is allowed to go into the living room until everyone wakes up! I am usually the one being dragged out of the bed!
Opening gifts then Strata, never enough bacon and too many mimosas!
Every year at Christmas when I was growing up, the Christmas Elf would visit us throughout the season. He would first come by the day after Thanksgiving, signaling the start of the Christmas season. The doorbell would ring, we would go running to the door and a brown paper sack would be sitting on our doorstep filled with Christmasy things.
Then, he would visit once a week or so until Christmas. He would bring things like a Christmas craft to make as a family or a Christmas movie to watch together. The gifts were always something small that would involve family time spent together.
The visits would culminate on Christmas Eve when the doorbell would ring one final time and the paper sack would contain special Christmas pajamas for each member of the family that we would sleep in that night and open presents in on Christmas morning. The Christmas Elf was one of my very favorite childhood traditions that will continue once I have little ones!
h’orderves on new year’s. including pickled herring
Mine is similar Lauren’s: my brother (21), me (24), and my husband (25), still put out milk and cookies for Santa at my parents’ house on Christmas Eve. I know it seems silly, but since we’re in town with my parents, I hate to see old traditions die. When we have children one day, I guess we’ll stop…
We really don’t have any big traditions that we do every year but this is my 6 month old daughter’s first Christmas and we look forward to starting some traditions this year!
this is perhaps not super unusual, but we never have a formal Christmas dinner…we just nosh all day on leftover apps and desserts from our Christmas Eve open house the night before.
Mom would always wake us up in the middle of the night (was prob like 9 pm- ha) and we would get to go drive around and see christmas lights and eat cookeis and milk while listening to christmas music! She said we could only go if we actually fell asleep… worked like a charm!
There are 8 children in my family and growing up my mom got us each a mug of Santas face. Each one was a lil different and we all knew which one was ours.We would line them up on a shelf in the living room at the beginning of December. I loved it!!! On Christmas morning my mom would make Hot Chocolate on the stove and we’d all have some in our mug. Over time, each one had to be glued back together (some more than once). I can still see those mugs lined up on the shelf in my parents home.
I was just telling my husband about this and he said “oh, you told them about your cookie bake”. I started this tradition when my son, who is now 11, was 2. I invite my nieces and nephew over to bake and decorate sugar cookies for Christmas Eve. I thought it was going to be a one time thing but by Thanksgiving the following year and every one after they ask if I’m doing it again. Now 9 years later, we do it every year. The kids love it- it’s like my Christmas party with my family before the BIG Christmas Eve Party. We all love it!!!! Makes Christmas feel a lil longer!!
Thanksgiving brings game night…. with a room full of competitive people – it never ends before 4am
My unusual holiday tradition would be puking…yup. Gross, I know. But every Christmas Eve as a kid I would SO excited and wound up that I would throw up. Thankfully as an adult it is no longer a tradition
A favorite (though not unusual) is going to the Christmas eve candlelight service followed by having dinner with family:)
To celebrate our 1st Christmas as a married couple, my husband and I spell out the word “CHRISTMAS” with gifts. For instance, our first year, our gifts started with the letter “C”. The next year, our gifts started with “H”. And so on……
This year, we are buying gifts that start with “T”. Any suggestions?
Hmmm . . . I’d have to say the gag gifts on Christmas eve. Particularly the pair of “jingle balls” underwear that have been circulating for YEARS!
My favorite tradition from my childhood was having to search for our special gifts at my grandparents house. My grandmother would always wait until everyone had opened their gifts and say, “Well there may be something else for you here, just look around.” Can’t wait to start the tradition with my kid(s).
Christmas Eve at Uncle Kenny’s & Aunt Patty’s house, big family party, lots of hugs, kisses and kids running all over the place. I wouldn’t miss it!!!
The host of Thanksgiving gives Christmas ornaments unique to each family member
We tend to go to the movies on Christmas or Thanksgiving Day, after all of the meals and presents (for Christmas). It’s a nice relaxing, no-pressure thing we can do as a family.
“Dirty Santa” Santa Bingo on Christmas Eve night in honor of our Grandmother, who loved to play bingo. In case you are wondering, Dirty Santa is the same as White Elephant.
Love the cards!
My family opens gifts one by one, each person taking a turn. With about 10 people and multiple gifts per person, it takes quite a while! It certainly stretches out the holiday!
Since our children are old enough, this year we are hosting a sandwich making assembly line at our house for kids and their families to make sandwiches for the homeless.
Chinese food on Christmas Eve…every year!
both my husbands family and mine have the same tradition of having to wait for our parents before going out to the tree…it lasted until we were married and we are passing it down to our family!
Every year on Christmas morning growing up we would get several cans of silly-string in our stockings and have a massive silly-string fight (including my parents) before opening the presents. Sometimes the fight would last 30 min. and go all over the house and outside. It was tons of fun!
We travel over Christmas and try to go somewhere new and Christmasy every year. This year we’re heading to Switzerland with my mom for the Christmas markets! We also collect Christmas ornaments all year from everywhere we travel to so when we decorate the tree we remember all the places we’ve been to.
we make home made tamales and have them xmas eve with the entire extended family…