The Christmas thread

[Carygon Nijax]

Ok.. Now I shall tell you a story. a real life story:

I live in Argentina, I lived almost my entire life here, and we celebrate Christmas in a particular way. Since Christmas here is in summer, we don't have the christmas sweters, nor the snow or the "frostys"... even. oour christmas dinner is actually a christmas eve dinner, where the entire family sits on a large table talking and eating!, while the youngest members of the family runs around playing and yelling, because that's the only night they can do that untill late, like 2:00 AM without being punished.
Families on christmas eve dinner are large ones, you meet with familiars you might have not seen in the entire year, but there you are, all together, cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces. nephews, grandparents, anyway.. everybody with at least 4 degrees of sparation with the host -friends inclluded- are invited!
The idea of a christmas eve dinner is to hae everyone you care at least one bit close to you, in order to be the first one to tell them "Merry Christmas", that occurs once the day "changes"- yeah.. between 23:59 of December 24th, and 00:01 of December 25th, and around that time everybody is watching the clocks and watches in order to be the first one on having the exact time -which we manage to find out by having the TV on-
Our meals are kind of traditional, we have this thing every christmas called "ensalada rusa" -but we don't know if it is russian at all-, which has potatoes in small cubes, carrots, peas, adn mayonnaise, nobody likes that, but it is always in the chirstmas table, and on the after table we have several sweet stuff that I don't know if the rest of the world eats, or even know!! but it is the best thing ever!
And after wishing "Merry Chrisntmas" to everyone around the house -neighbors included- we close our celebration with fireworks, but not big ones used by the City, no.. small kind, each house gets their own -bought alone- arsenal of fireworks, it is kind of embarrasing watching your family fight against all the block's neighbor to see who has the best fireworks.. but when you win, it is awesome!!
And that's not the end.. after that, everybody gets back to their place to sleep 4 hours,, get a shower and get reunited again to have a big christmas lunch with meat and what was left of the "ensalada rusa".. ughh!


So.. anyway.. how does your family celebrate Christmas? and if they don't, what do you do?

[Muhandes]

On Xmas we wake up, send the kids to school and go to work.
Except this year it was a Friday so we woke up, send the kids to school, had our usual Friday coffee and then went to buy some food and clothes. Like every Friday.

[Ryme]

Deleted a bunch of stuff because, c'mon, it's Cristmas. Don't make me moderate you on Christmas.

Other than the presents in the morning, we don't really have any set traditions. Unfortunately my family is fairly splintered (lots of people in very distant places, plus some divorces), so there's no such thing as getting everyone together. Also we've got about five or six different religions represented (several diverse branches of Christianity, plus some others), so it's a mixed bag. Most of what we've learned from the experience is to celebrate the holiday with each other whenever we get the chance. I've had "Christmas" with family over Thanksgiving weekend, because a month early was when we would get to see them, or in January because that's how it worked out.

My Texan wife is determined to make having tamales for breakfast a holiday tradition, and that's one I'm perfectly happy to accept.

[Carygon Nijax]

Nice! Finally somw answers to my question!!

Anyway.

We are now close to say "happy new year"

And we do exactly the same thing as in christmas.. except for the presents.. what do you do?

[Muhandes]

On new years we do exactly the same as we did on Christmas.
That is, it is just a normal day like any other day.

[Cristiona]

I believe I am being drug off to a party of some sort.

[Avenger]

Our New Year is our Christmas.

The present-giving part anyway.
And the feast part too.

Yeah...

[Carygon Nijax]

I would