<p>My dad once asked if anyone wanted to try something besides In-N-Out for Christmas Eve dinner. My grandpa looked at him like he wanted t disown him. It’s never been mentioned since.</p>
<p>We’ve never had the huge gathering…it’s always just been family. I can’t imagine having a stressful Christmas.</p>
<p>Oh, I forgot about this one.</p>
<p>When my sister and I were younger (my brother is much older than both of us and moved out when we were both very young), we had a pull-out couch in the house, in the room on the opposite end of the house to the tree. My bedroom was (and still is) right off of the family room, where the tree is. On Christmas Eve, my sister and I either slept on the pull-out couch or (after my mom got rid of said couch) so that Santa wouldn’t disturb me when he came down the chimney. :)</p>
<p>We also had a tape for the LONGEST time that had not only Claymation Christmas (still my favorite Christmas special, despite it’s about 10 years older than I am), Garfield Christmas Special, Winnie the Pooh, and a ton of others. We don’t have that tape anymore (mom got sick of watching it year-round and either hid it somewhere or chucked it…to this day she denies it), but we have Claymation Xmas on DVD and we have the Charlie Brown Christmas special on VHS.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine having a stressful Christmas</p>
<p>thats good- but as the mom- it has been less stressful for me, since we started going away- even with the 7 hr drive from hell.</p>
<p>( my H is an aggressive driver- in that he curses the other drivers the whole way- technically he is an OK driver- but it makes me long for qualudes. I have driven there many times- but while I am a good driver & I think better than H,- my vision is not so great especially in dark & I am a lot more nervous than I use to be- I think because the amount of traffic, especially big rigs has increased. )
If I drive the whole way, I am just exhausted when I arrive and it takes me days to recover, which defeats the purpose of a vacation. </p>
<p>The plus is- I don’t have to cook, I don’t have to shop, I don’t have to answer the phone or even set the table.
I don’t have to answer a lot of questions from snippy relatives, and there are little kids to play with- that I don’t have to take home with me.</p>
<p>The bad thing is, they added wi-fi a few years ago.</p>
<p>Helen- I promise myself I will follow my parent’s example and never put any demands on the kids- my DH and I and all our kids love to spend time with my folks, there is a genuinely close relationship, no duty at all. Even though there were years where we were not together for Christmas, my mum understood I had to do the right thing for my little family and my mum never puts significance on a day on a calendar but rather on having good days together any time.</p>
<p>My in laws are all about checking the boxes- Christmas dinner w/ the kids, check, got the kids for all holidays, check, but not about enjoying the actual time spent. No one wants to spend time with them, we all do, out of duty, but no one, esp DH enjoys it or looks forward to it.</p>
<p>I WILL NOT do that to my kids or to myself!</p>
<p>Thanks, somemom! It’s good to know it can work.</p>
<p>EmeraldKity4–I feel your pain, as I often say to my husband that he drives like he thinks he’s in a video game. I have taken to driving more often because I’m not sure my heart can take the terror. Overall, he doesn’t have a bad track record, but it sure isn’t relaxing. </p>
<p>I think you’ll appreciate this story my 12 year old told me. He said, “Dad is kind of a scary driver.” I agreed with that. Then he went on to say, “The other day he had me hold the wheel and steer while he wrote checks.” That definitely qualifies as scary.</p>
<p>It is interesting how traditions evolve in a marriage when the two parties came from very different places. Growing up, we never saw the tree decorated until Christmas morning. Not only did Santa bring presents, he did the tree, too. My H’s family had it up weeks early. So we have wrestled with that tension for over 30 years. Now that the kids are passed the Santa stuff, I still tend to want to get the tree late, and we always cut our own, but so many places around us let people tag a tree after Thanksgiving and then cut it later, so it is hard to find an untagged tree. </p>
<p>We do the seven fishes dinner Christmas Eve, then travel to my Mom’s for Christmas Day where my brothers live. There everyone brings a present, wrapped, we all draw one and then exchange it for something someone else got. The exchange can take all afternoon.</p>
<p>I’m a hyper-decorator for Christmas and am now starting to get ready. We used to put up the tree the second week of December but because of work schedules, it’s evolved back to Thanksgiving weekend. I’m somewhat ambivalent about that, but this past weekend, we moved the furniture around in the living room to plan for the tree. We’re having a few friends over to trim the tree, which should be fun if I can restrain myself from being too controlling. I do not yet have a plan for my ribbons. I’m running a little slow on that. My birth family always opened presents on Christmas Eve. The extended family would get together for an early dinner, then go to the 7:00 candlelight service, and back to my mom’s house for a buffet of her super-duper cookies and finally open presents and depart to our homes. On Christmas Day, my inlaws would always come in the morning for brunch, which I always griped about but I can’t remember why, bearing massive piles of presents, then we’d spend the rest of the day with just hubby and the kids enjoying each other and the presents. We always have filet mignon on Christmas Day because it seems so fancy and special! </p>
<p>My inlaws are gone now, so no more brunch and piles of presents. I wish I could remember why that bothered me because boy do I miss it. My sister and I had a falling out and I’ll never see her or her children again, and my oldest brother will spend Christmas with his daughter and grandchildren down south because her husband is in Iraq. We’ll miss them. My mom isn’t well, so this year will be the first with no blowout-baking-Saturday and no cookie buffet. Funny how time gets away from you isn’t it? We always are aware of the first of everything, but the last doesn’t make its arrival known until you’ve traveled down the road a bit.</p>
<p>We aren’t actually Christian, but do celebrate Christmas. Another fan of Julie Vigas’s Nativity BTW. One thing we do is have a creche, the baby Jesus doesn’t appear till Christmas morning and the wise men walk around the room until they get there on January 6th. </p>
<p>My brother’s family stretches Christmas out over the twelve days of Christmas opening only one present a day. We loathed it when we visited - so now if we visit we come after Christmas and get to see our presents opened when we arrive. (No need to send them before Christmas since we know they won’t get opened.) </p>
<p>We usually have a party on Boxing Day - the day after Christmas. The house is decorated, there is extra food hanging around the house. There’s no longer all that running around worrying about getting ready for Christmas. For many years we would make lanterns out of wax paper and tissue paper and we’d march around the neighborhood singing songs like “This little light of mine”.</p>
<p>My parents had a sweet 19040s creche, all of us grew up playing with the figures, they were chipped and well worn, but well loved. A few years ago my mother got into house cleaning; without talking to any one she sent it to my brother as the man of the family- it was so worn that his wife tossed it :eek: My sisters and I are still disgruntled- not with SIL so much, she di not know, but with the way mom just gets a bug you know where and starts giving away stuff without asking any one else if they have any interest. Grrr.</p>
<p>I have done a special annual ornament for each of my girls since they were born with the idea that when they get their first home, home, not transient place, I will give the ornaments to them for their tree. Should work out perfectly as I have had 25 years of gorgeous trees and by the time I pass them on, I will be ready for one of those fake ones!!!</p>
<p>I hope zoosermomm that you and your sister can someday reconcile your differences. I had a fallout with one of my sisters years ago ( she alienated herself from all of us,one by one ) Not gonna hijack this happy thread, but thankfully, we did manage to get it together and it was and is a good thing for our entire family. I won’t even guess the difficulties that brought you to a rift , but I hope you too can get it back.</p>
<p>First Christmas without my dad, who died in March. As is our tradition, my family and I will travel to my hometown in Northern Minnesota and go to church, have a big dinner, and then exchange gifts on Christmas Eve with my mom, my sister and her family, and my brother and his family. </p>
<p>I am glad we can all be with my mom this year on Christmas Eve. My kids love this tradition, and love being spoiled by Grandma and spending time with cousins, aunts and uncles. Ice fishing? Snowmobiles? Sounds great.</p>
<p>We have so many Christmas traditions that I don’t really know if they’re traditions or bondage. I did finally do away with one “beloved” tradition. The day after Thanksgiving, we’d go to a tree farm and cut down the largest tree we could find (12-15 feet), eat turkey sandwiches, then decorate the rest of the weekend. Once we painted the inside of the house and got new carpeting, I hated having the real tree. PLUS, Daughter and I are allergic, so we’d sneeze for the first week. This year, Husband ordered a 12’ pre-lit tree.</p>
<p>I am quite into “theme” trees, most of them small. Besides the giant tree, I have:
Kitchen tree-ginergerbread people/houses
Kitchen tree - other kitchen/food
three bird themed trees
authentic 8’ silver tree from the 50s, with solid balls (red tones and green tones)
my favorite: Shiny Brite - fabulous 50s ornaments. Started with the inlaw’s collection, but I bought a lot from eBay last year
American Girl
Two Disney trees
Each kid has a tree in his/her room - Daughter has two: normal ornaments, and flamingo/dance ornaments
Tree in master bedroom
Bottlebrush tree (bought from Starbucks a few years back)
So that’s 17 or 18.</p>
<p>I also have a great collection of Santa/Mrs. Santa salt & Pepper shakers. And quite a few cheap plastic creches from the 60s. And some of those Peruvian creches.</p>
<p>Then there are the plastic santas from the 50s that Husband collects. And the Christmas beanie babies. And the animatronic santas and such that dance around.</p>
<p>We don’t claim to be tasteful, but it’s fun.</p>
<p>As for traditions…for some reason, I crave Mexican food at Chrstmas time, so on Christmas eve, we have a huge lunch at a Mexican restaurant. We are a family of church musicians, so we attend 3-4 services on Christmas eve.</p>
<p>We have a great way to draw out Christmas morning:
Toys (now, electronics) are left in Santa’s sack, which my husband opens (and distirbutes.)
Then I put the finishing touches on a big Christmas breakfast.
After breakfast, we open stockings.
Finally, the wrapped presents. We take turns, so that only one person at a time is opening a present.
With this method, we manage to draw out “Christmas morning” until 11 am or later. The kids have a tradition of staying in their jammies all day, but I can’t stand to do that.</p>
<p>We used to start our Christmas on St. Nicholas’ Day (Dec. 6), since he would fill the children’s stockings on the eve of his feast. Some family birthdays followed, then Christmas Eve meant a buche de Noel cake and the first big feast. Once our children were old enough, we went to midnight Mass, otherwise we’d attend the last Mass on Christmas morning (having been up since 5 a.m. or so.) We also celebrated the 12 days of Christmas, ending on Epiphany. The children received a small gift each day, sometimes shared or sometimes requiring a hunt with many riddles, until their big gift on January 6th. The feast of the three kings also marked our first King Cake of the season. Dh, sometimes with the children’s help, would make our King Cake on the 5th so that he could bake it first thing on the 6th and we’d have it for breakfast. Decorations went up in time for St. Nicholas and did not come down until after Epiphany.</p>
<p>Since the college experience began, things have been different.</p>
<p>We always buy a real tree. When H was in the hospital one Christmas season, I bought a smaller tree than usual (after all, I had to heft that thing around!). WHOOO! You’d think I had instituted Baal worship while H was away!</p>
<p>Everyone each chooses one ornament to put on the tree and we always relive the stories behind those ornaments. We have an ornament from my 22 year old’s pre-school days…a portion of a toilet paper roll covered with glued on glitter. I kid you not, there is not one speckle of glitter missing, even after 17 years. We figure that the teacher must have used some industrial grade epoxy.</p>
<p>We always read the Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve. We always put on special Santa flannel sheets and pillow cases on the beds on Christmas Eve. [kids only] </p>
<p>And for Christmas–we all go out to the movies in the afternoon. Best time to see that blockbuster movie.</p>
<p>We always have a real tree too…when I was a kid, my mother stopped buying them , much to our dismay. She had one of the first artificial trees…the ones that looked like a green toilet brush. It really made my sisters and I sad to make that switch.
Ever since I could have my own tree, it has been real. Last year was our first year in our new home, so we got a tall one to go in our open ceiling living room. I never knew a tree could be so heavy !!
I also got a little tree for the front, un-named room with some antiques in there.
I have always waned to have a tree that was decorated with entirely edible decorations…from cranberries to popcorn to cookies. Maybe when my kids are all grown and I give them all of their own ornaments !</p>
<p>Many years ago, stressed with the day-before stuff of making a holiday meal, we ordered pizza for Christmas Eve. Twenty-something years later, we still do.<br>
We read “The Night Before Christmas” at bedtime - mind you my youngest is 19… but they still want to do it. Including making gagging noises at “…and threw up the sash…”
Fortunately for making our own memories, we have lived too far to be able to go to parent’s houses most of the time. The tradition became that one set of parents came to our house for Thanksgiving and the other at Christmas.<br>
We tried one time to haul all three kids 1500 miles for Christmas. It was a disaster - competing demands on our time and upset families and all of us stressed. Never again until our kids were adults.</p>
<p>Back on the Scandianavian traditions - Seattle is big on lefse, abelskiver and even luttefisk. (I learned not to go to my best freind’s house on the holiday luttefiske night…and I love fish!)</p>
<p>Do you know how many years it’s been since I’ve had abelskiver?</p>
<p>Decades, though it seems like eons. Got to be early 1980’s, when my father’s mother was still mobile and capable enough to make them. But even she couldn’t make them like her mother could. I remember my great grandmother doing them every Sunday on the coal stove in her kitchen. Her apple ones were fantastic… but I’d sell my children for one more taste of her currant filled ones.</p>
<p>I have tried to make them. Multiple times, and have gotten results from dismal failure to barely edible. I have three abelskiver pans, my great grandmother’s, my grandmother’s and the pan my father bought when he tried his hand at it. </p>
<p>I have tried to describe these to my d, a real foodie. My description of the almost orgasmic delight of these little round, filled conconctions leaves her salivating copiously. As a child, she would beg me to try making them again. I did my best. I tried. I really did.</p>
<p>Each time, I failed. She may still respect me as a mere cook, but as a baker, as a purveyor of culinary tradition she sees me as an abject failure.</p>
<p>Can’t vouch for any of the recipes, but an informative site for the curious. It’s really all in the pan, a GOOD cast aluminum one will work, but you can’t beat a cast iron pan for this. Lodge makes one, the only one still produced domestically as a cast iron pan. My greatgrandmother’s pan is cast iron, the one she brought from Denmark. It’s so nicely seasoned I can make out the Danish markings of the manufacturer, but it’s impossible to read it all, as the casting is encrusted and filled from many years of use.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure my grandmother’s pan is a cast iron Griswold, also made in USA, but they are no longer available. My father’s pan is a heavy Nordicware aluminum, but it dates from late 1950’s-early 60’s, and is significantly different than the current model.</p>
<p>The right pan temperature is critical. Recipes call for “med-high” heat. Alas, I’ve tried repeatly and can’t adequately control the heat on any electric stovetop I’ve used. The batches I did achieve a minimum level of success were done years ago, on the little apartment 3 burner gas stove I had in college.</p>
<p>You’ve got me wanting to try these, too. Here’s a highly rated recipe for “aebleskivers” from one of my favorite recipe websites. Could you describe the pan as being “half-spheres”?</p>