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Jasmine wrote:
Hi Ms. Mel. So do you and your family have any specific holiday 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?Melody wrote:What are your traditions?
When I was growing up we would put the artificial tree up sometime after Thanksgiving. We’d spend a few hours putting the ornaments on it – a good chunk of them being decorated eggs that my grandmother made. My parents never did many outside decorations, though when we lived in the two-story house they hung a homemade light star from the window in the attic.
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 dining 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.
pegasi1978 wrote:Melody wrote:What are your traditions?
When I was growing up we would put the artifical tree up sometime after Thanksgiving. We’d spend a few hours putting the ornaments on it – a good chunk of them being decorated eggs that my grandmother made. My parents never did many outside decorations, though when we lived in the two-story house they hung a homemade light star from the window in the attic.
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.
The paper/cardboard fireplace sounds like fun. I may see about doing that with Gavin next year (he’s not to big into coloring right now). Having the Starship Enterpise rather than Santa’s sleigh would fit in at my house. I also forgot to mention that my mom gives us all a new ornament each year at Thanksgiving. Since I’m a Star Wars fan there is a number of those ornaments on the tree. My husband likes comic book characters so we are starting to get a few of those now. Our son is a Pixar fiend so we have an ornament for darn near every Pixar movie they have made so far. The ornaments on are tree are interesting to say the least.
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.
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Dreamscape, Orion, Poison Dart, Fireberry, Spangler + Tigerberry DragonsWell as a kid my sister and I did the open 1 gift thing. It started out that we could only open eachothers gifts then turned into any gift.
For many years I have now participated in the White Elephant Gift Exchange for the regular members one of the charity groups I belong to. Everyone that is going to participate brings a gift some good, some not so good. you draw numbers and #1 of course goes first and shows everyone what they got. #2 can steal that gift or open a new one. Each gift can only exchange 3 times before it’s retired and off the choping block. After the paerson decides they want a new gift the round ends. The first person, at the end, gets to go thru all the NON retired gifts since they did not get the chance to steal anything in the beginning.
We will be doing it the 2nd Thursday of January this year.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. ^^;
I have the cat issue too and have not had a tree up or even close since I have had them.
I’d prefer their LOVE anywayOur 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.The hubby’s mom’s birthday is on Christmas Eve, so we go to see her then. We have dinner and open presents from her family. It used to be orderly; now we just tear in.
In the past, we would go visit my mom on Christmas Day and do the same thing there, after hubby and I exchanged gifts. This year, however, we are having Christmas Day at our house for my side of the family, so they will be coming to us. Hubby and I will probably wait and exchange gifts when my family is here. Hubby is making a turkey for a lunch-time dinner on Christmas.
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) 😀I wish I could see that tree that was decorated by your cats Melody… 😀
Hmm..well we always get our cmas tree put up on December 1sta dn we have to have a real tree…. 🙂
My family on my side is Polish Catholic all the way…so we cannot eat meat on cmas eve and thats also when we open all of our gifts and my spouses family has the traditional cmas on cmas day… 🙂
I like the traditional cmas better and thats what we do at home…I mean we open our gifts at home on cmas day… 🙂
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