Christmas Traditions

Not really, we mostly just stress out. We decorate the tree with our weird ornaments, and we would go to lots of parties. We almost never got a chance to decorate the house very much or do anything special in our place because we had no spare time. Maybe that is changing now.
This year we kept our tree on the front porch for a few days. It got decorated by cats so we had to trim allot of it off. I hope this doesn’t become a tradition.
What are your traditions?

On Christmas Eve my brother and I would get to pick out one present to open. We’d get up early on Christmas Day, open our gifts, watch the parade and then eat the rock cornish game hens that had been cooking all morning long. After lunch I would often go ahead and get started on my thank you notes because Mom said we couldn’t “play with it, wear it or spend it” until the note was mailed.

Now that I have a family and a home of my own I have to figure out what all the new traditions will be. Right now we have a wreath on the door, our tree in the corner of the living room and the stockings are hung on off the backside of the kitchen counter (we could put bar stools under it) since we have no fireplace/mantle. My In-Laws will be coming over on Christmas Eve since my BIL has to work Christmas Day (oh the joy of working in the Correctional field) and my future SIL will be doing Christmas with her mom’s family on Christmas day as well. We’ll likely exchange and open those gifts, but leave the ones just for us until Christmas morning.When I was a kid , we didn’t have a fireplace either, so we made one out of paper with crayon colored bricks. It was a step up for us to actually purchase a pre-made cardboard one with a real cardboard fire with a light behind it! Sounds terrible, but we all loved that thing! We set up a little surreal village on the mantle with little houses, various sea creatures, large carnivorous animals and caroling children. Santa’s sleigh was replaced by the starship Enterprize soaring in the night sky overhead.

We used to have the “Ugly Ornament” Tradition in my family. We would all try and find the most hideous X-mas ornament for the tree and who ever had the gawdiest, most awful ornament won either a prize or whatever we could think of fun for a gag gift.

Needless to say once we gathered enough ornaments to have the most disgusting tree in town it kind of died! LOL! We should revive the tradition though 😀 My mother hated it since it was her tree we would decorate with them.

We never do anything… can’t even put up a tree cause the cats’ll tear it apart in seconds. XD

We’re not doing Christmas at all this year… can’t afford it. We put lights up outside, that’s it. ^^;

Our Christmas runs as follows:

On Christmas Eve in the evening we have a church service, and then get to dig into our stockings and open whatever gifts are in there.
On Christmas Day we have church in the morning, the annoying but obligatory family photo, and then Mom spends several hours preparing dinner while the rest of us are outside. For the past few years we’ve aerated one of Opa’s building sites in that interval, but this year we might just go for a walk or something.
After dinner we all gather in the living room and I pass out gifts, one at a time in a youngest-to-oldest circle, and we take our sweet time opening and oohing and aahing over everything while Mom keeps track.
It’s all very orderly, as you can tell.

We decorate the outside around my birthday, 12/5, the tree goes up about a week later, and the presents start appearing shortly afterward. We tend to not put bows on anything since anything too crinkly is a major cat toy, and any bow that survives the initial attacks looks like it’s been hit by one of those fangy-looking staple removers. We use antique ornaments from my grandparents that go way up high, ornaments we’ve hand made, and new ornaments that look like each pet we’ve had over the years, so there are horses, cats, dogs…and the unbreakable ornaments go down low…..
There are presents for every single critter, from a 20lb bag of carrots for the horses, to huge boxes of biscuits for the dog, and catnip, treats and toys for the cats. I do a Christmas Eve bran mash for the horses as soon as I get home from work, then we head off to my sister-in-laws on Christmas Eve. Talk about mass chaos?
Then Christmas Morning, we open our gifts and help the critters with theirs. Then it’s off to MY family’s to open gifts and have a prime rib roast done with my mom’s secret recipe for an early dinner. :yum:
The tree comes down on my husband’s birthday, 1/9.
Did I mention that we secure the tree to the wall with very heavy gauge fishing line due to the 20lb cat? We’re talking line you could haul in Moby Dick with. 😉 Monster Kitty has gotten better about not assaulting the tree, thankfully. But I keep the feline riot control handy. (AKA Mr. Squirtbottle) 😀

We’ve never worried about cats, dogs ‘possums, or what-ever attacking the tree. They can go ahead and do their worst. We can always stand the thing back up again and put it back together, no big deal. We have almost 100% unbreakable ornaments, and we don’t use tinsel, so the cats won’t choke!