Christmas in my family follows a fairly standard pattern, which can be said to constitute a tradition on our part. We used to spend Christmas at my grandma's place in Lapland where all or nearly all of that side of my family got together, but since grandma died some six years ago, every family tends to celebrate Christmas by themselves nowadays.
We begin at around 14:00 with cookies, pastries and glögi, which is the finnish christmas drink and our equivalent to the american eggnog. It is quite similar to the german Glühwein. It is accompanied with some light conversation while the sauna heats up.
After the sauna, me and dad sit down and discuss some real topics like politics, the economy, world events, or some such over a couple of sauna beers. This discussion usually establishes the main topics for conversation during the evening. Meanwhile, mom is slaving away in the kitchen, setting up the food and bringing us some more glögi. At some point when mom has time we have a Skype session with my sister, since she lives abroad.
Then comes the food, which is the highlight of my Christmas. A traditional Christmas dinner in my family consists of five principal courses. The first course is salad, soup, and various breads. The second is the fish course, which consists of a selection of cold seafood dishes that are part of a traditional finnish Christmas dinner. A special mention goes to the herring dishes, as they are both plentiful and my favorite part. The third course is made up of cold cuts and the cheese course. Both of them feature the traditional items, as well as foreign ones any of us might have taken a liking to, particularly in the cheese course. For me, it's too bad we don't get decent parma ham here in Finland, but the replacement suffices. Foie gras is also served here, as my sister lives in France and always makes sure to send mom the good stuff for Christmas.
After this there is a break, as we let the food settle a bit before the main course. The main course is very traditional, featuring ham with potatoes (in Finland we have ham instead of turkey as the main dish for Christmas), plus the usual casseroles and stuff. Many people in Finland consider the ham as the best part of Christmas dinner, but none in my family are particularly fond of it, so there is usually plenty of it left. Truth be told, in my opinion this is the course of our Christmas dinner which consists of the foods one doesn't really like but has to eat given that it's Christmas.
After this we hand out the presents.
At some point after this comes the last dinner course, the dessert. It consists of a christmas cake and coffee, plus assorted sweets and confectionary (which are freely available throughout the day). The Christmas cake/log is not a finnish tradition, but rather a thing mom picked up from my sister. It is sort of a chocolate cake made like a swiss roll, only bigger. After this, my dad and I finish off any open bottles there might be.
So that is our Christmas. Quite standardised in both program and content, with a few different dishes mom wants to try out thrown in for variety's sake each year. And that's just the way I like it.
