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Kind-of a spin-off to LittleSin 's "Favorite Holiday song" thread. Where we talk about the holiday traditions we partake in around this time of year.

Me personally? Pinky and the Brain Christmas Special, Robinson Christmas party, and cookies up the wazoo! Especially oat-meal chocolate chip, thems is good.

Using the Steam Christmas Sale to justify spending money on stuff I really shouldn't.

Leaving the TV on the Christmas Story marathon all day/night as I go though my daily routine Xmas Eve/Day.

Yoshimickster said:

cookies up the wazoo! Especially oat-meal chocolate chip, thems is good.

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Putting the Xtreme in x-mas!

28 years of 2nd degree burns!

Ditto on watching the 24 hour marathon of A Christmas Story

Also, Die Hard

The Mexican side of my family always gets together on Christmas Eve night to have a gift exchange. Then the next morning is just the immediate family gifts, followed by a Christmas brunch.

Our traditions span most of the month, not just Christmas Eve/Day. We go around to look at all of the lights in the neighborhoods around us, I bake tons of cookies, we watch all the classic Christmas specials with our kids, have some homemade eggnog while wrapping gifts, while we were in CA we would go to my in-laws house for tamales and champurrado, and make some crafts including gifts for friends (this year was hazelnut hot chocolate mix).

Turkey. I don't know why, but Turkey just tastes even more delicious on Christmas or Thanksgiving time.

Because my brother goes to his in-laws for Christmas Eve, we always have a Festivus celebration a week prior.

I mean, we do every Festivus tradition aside from the feats of strength. We have a Festivus pole and everything.

I'm in tradition transition right now, coming off of 7 really just piss poor Christmases and one really stressful one.

• 2004, had just broken up with long-term, live-in girlfriend and had to move home. Also, my mother was still recovering from having had an ulcer let go on her and being rushed to the hospital where she clung to life by a thread for a few days... while I was driving home on my move.
• 2005, had only 3 days to spend with family including transit, had flight problems both ways, wound up spending about 13 hours at home and having to spend $300+ on a second return ticket on a separate airline because United failed to schedule enough pilots. Also, arrived at my parents' house just in time to learn that one of my uncles had just died.
• 2006, laid off 7 days before Christmas. Hadn't had any plans to travel that year, because I didn't have any paid time off banked up yet, and by the time I was laid off tickets were too expensive to get.
• 2007, slipped off the bottom stair of a staircase on my way down the stairs, fell onto tile and broke my elbow. Also, hadn't had time to get additional plane ticket for my wife (then girlfriend) and she had to stay home and was incredibly ill the entire day. Like, first white Christmas in her lifetime and she had to stay in bed the entire time, sick.
• 2008, parents were supposed to come visit for Christmas, mom was laid off 7 days before Christmas and they couldn't afford to come out, then my car died two or three days before Christmas and I had to replace it.
• 2009, my wife, then fiancee, was incredibly ill in a bleeding-uncontrollably-from-somewhere-internal sense of the word and we were both unemployed meaning no money for Christmas presents.
• 2010, no major events, but the entire experience was kind of spoiled because my mother-in-law decided at Thanksgiving that we should draw names and only give gifts to the people whose names we drew. This, she explained after the fact, was because she knew we were short on funds and didn't want us to feel bad if we couldn't buy everyone presents. However, we (being my wife, then fiancee, and I) were the only ones she told of this name-drawing thing (she apparently drew names for everyone as to who would give gifts to whom), and were therefor the only ones who didn't have gifts for everyone, making us feel incredibly guilty for not getting everyone gifts. Oh, and the money shortage thing? Yeah... we were giving home-made presents that year (candles, cookies, jams, pickles, soap), so it didn't matter. But, my MIL is a special, special woman; well skilled at making everyone around her feel horrible, especially during holidays, and making herself feel wonderful. She may be one of the state's leading authorities on developmental child psychology, but she does a horrible job of applying any of that wisdom to her own family.
• 2011, honorable mention. This one really should have been great - both of our families were present, we weren't completely and totally broke, etc. - but the stress of having gotten married just 2 days before Christmas (and of having to have changed our plans from a small elopement to a family wedding, and fly my parents out from Wisconsin, etc.), just completely overwhelmed the holiday itself.

Also, this is the first year that my wife and I really get to start defining what we want our Christmas traditions to be going forward. Do we open gifts from friends and family on Christmas Eve and reserve Christmas Day for gifts from "Santa" and stockings, like her family does; or do we open all gifts on Christmas morning like my family has always done? Do we stay home by ourselves the whole day and just enjoy a quiet day to ourselves, and a good meal; or do we go visit her family, since they're local? Is the TV banned for the day, like her family's tradition, or are Christmas movies (especially the classics, like Miracle on 34th Street and It's A Wonderful Life) and football (if there's any on) acceptable, like in my family?
So far all we've managed to do is buy a Christmas tree (yesterday, during the first few vestiges of a massive winter storm) which is, frankly, way too big, and which is heavy enough that I may have hurt my back a little as I lugged the it up to our third floor apartment. I haven't even started my baking yet.

I always bake pecan pie. My cousins and I do Secret Santa. On Christmas Eve Eve we get together at my aunt's house and party and play board games. On Christmas day, almost my entire family goes to my mom and dad's house for lunch, drinks, and catching up on the year. It's the best day ever.

This year will start a new tradition, Mother, Father and I will drive to Shreveport and have lunch at a casino buffet... then play some nickel slots.

sixpackshaker said:

This year will start a new tradition, Mother, Father and I will drive to Shreveport and have lunch at a casino buffet... then play some nickel slots.

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On a similar topic, this Christmas my family is driving down to Myrtle Beach! Haven't done that on Christmas in years.

We started our traditions when our daughter was born, we spend Christmas (at some time during a week or so span) with both our families, and gift exchanges with them at separate times. Christmas morning is just immediate family, the 3 of us. 3 years ago we added to our routine, we go and volunteer on Christmas Eve night at the nearby State Supported Living Center (used to be called the State School) for mentally challenged people, we play Santa for them. We sort and distribute presents to all the dormitories and it's really fun. The people that live there are still very child-like even at 50-60 years old, and it's fun seeing them trying to pretend to be asleep or just trying to be sneaky and peek at what is being put around the tree. It's been a great addition to our tradition.

My family's tradition was always to open presents all day long...

Wake up
Open Stocking and 'Santa' gift (it was normally the one big present we got)
Breakfast
A few more gifts (taking turns opening, starting with the youngest) - if we got a movie or game, we would watch/play it
Lunch
Open more gifts, saving 4 for the evening
Dinner
Last of the presents

And I've always loved it that we do it that way. Now that I'm married things have had to change, but I really still enjoy the idea. Now we do it: In the morning it's just the two of us, we open our gifts to each other. Go have lunch with my family and do our gift exchange with them. And then end the day with dinner at my in-law's, including a gift exchange with them. I feel very lucky that both of our families are pretty low-key and we don't feel pulled in any direction.

The 'side' tradition that Nate and I decided to carry on from his family is, every year that we're married, we buy an ornament and when we decorate the tree we talk about the highlights of that year. His parents have done that all the 29 years they have been married and it's fun to listen to them talk about each year. So, yeah, woo! Traditions!

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.

My brother and I like to secretly rearrange the nativity scene so the that everyone's worshiping/ praising one of the manger animals.

Eggs Benny and pancakes Christmas morning.

Timmus said:

My brother and I like to secretly rearrange the nativity scene so the that everyone's worshiping/ praising one of the manger animals.

Eggs Benny and pancakes Christmas morning.

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Ha! My brother and I respell my Mom's NOEL blocks to spell LEON.