Share with all your holiday family traditions.
What is your Christmas morning breakfast tradition?
What are your traditions for New Years?
And so on....I would love to hear them all :)
Traditions
I don't consider my father to be a traditionalist, but the one tradition I know he brought with him from Ireland was the placing of a lit candle in the window on Chirstmas Eve and I continue this tradition:
"Many homes in Ireland still today will show a lighted candle...in the window of their home on Christmas Eve. This stems from the custom that to show a light in the window lighted the way of a stranger out after dark. It goes back to most ancient times, when the laws of hospitality were stronger and not abused. To have a light in your window on Christmas Eve to welcome the stranger meant that you were welcoming the Holy Family too".
And with dad in town this year I'm sure we'll be pulling out some traditional Irish music as well.
As for Richard and me, each new year's eve we celebrate the first time we actually met in person and began this great adventure!
Our best wishes to you and yours!
That's great Kate. I never new the candle in the window had such meaning. I will always see them in a different light now.
Oh, that's cool. How many years have y'all been together now?
Best wishes to y'all as well :)
When we stay home for Christmas and New Year's, Mark and I don't really have any traditions other than to sleep in and have a relaxing day.
When we go visit my family, we had a big family gathering on Christmas Eve with lots of food, laughter, loudness, and gift exchanging. On Christmas Day we gather again at my Dad's house for a nice dinner. I'm not sure for how much longer my dad's going to be able to host the gathering, though. He doesn't get around as well as he used to and can't do as much as he used to. My brother goes over to help him, though.
Well we used to have a loud, argumentative (for fun of course) and somewhat drunken Christmas and I do miss that living here now. My best memories are of the family members who always drank a lot and carried on. Sounds bad when I write it but they were fun and funny.
C
We had arguments of the non alcohol induced kind in my family, especially on my mom's side! LOL
I think ours would best be characterized as heated debates that sometimes got out of hand. Bluntness and sarcasm ruled.
Catzgalore ~ what about your traditions? I know you and your boys must share some...
DH & I are alone as our families live in the frozen tundra. No way that I want to go where it is cold and white for Christmas and we own a small retail business so it doesn't allow the free time at Christmas to travel.
We spend a quiet Christmas day at home and usually only Christmas day. This Christmas falls where I will enjoy three days off in a row! I don't even take time to decorate the house for the holidays.
For Christmas day, I cook and we eat till miserable. Not a year around habit for us. I do cook but we don't glut.
We also do not exchange gifts as at our age, we select what we really want and purchase it when able. Our shopping consists of mailing checks to the kids. I get most enjoyment from letters received from friends and family. Sadly that is becoming a thing of the past as no one writes letters or sends cards any longer.
Since we left MN fourty years ago, our tradition has been to invite friends, neighbors and acquaintances to New Years Day dinner. We started doing that for folks that had no family or friends nearby. It has grown over the years.
We enjoy visiting, eating and starting the new year off with warm and caring folks.
For now, we have feasted and DH is taking a nap in front of the fireplace. I am reading a good book, have a new Texas Gardener magazine and seed catalogues so I am off to join him in front of the fire with my reading literature.
Merry Christmas to all of you with best wishes for the New Year ahead!
Well...
When I was very young we would go to NM and spend Christmas with all our family. 95 percent of my family still live there. As my sister and I got older we would go less often, not by our choice but by that of our parents. When I was 17 my grandfather passed and I did not go back until after I had Josh. I wanted him to know his greatgrandmother. He took his first steps in their house. She passed 3 years ago and I haven't been back there since. My x-husband has the boys for a couple days before Christmas. They are always home with me for Christmas morning. As far as my boys and I, I suppose the only tradition we have together is picking out angels from the trees and the boys picking out what to get for them. They love doing this.
13 years, and counting :)
A XMAS shrimp tray. We didnt get one this year for the first time in about 10 years.
My Dad would always bring it. We would always make fun of the shrimp tray but it was almost always eaten.
My sister in law and I alternate hosting Thanksgiving and Christmas. We go to midnight mass on Christmas eve and have a fancy diner in Christmas day.
I used to put up a big tree, but this year I opted for a smaller one, although we always put up the Nativity set and sing carols.
I have cut back on gifts since the kids are grown and I hate to go shopping, but we still do the chinese gift thing which is a lot of fun.
Josephine.
The Chinese gift exchange is fun. When I worked we did that at work and one wife of a co-worker attended our party for the first time and said...."I had the hardest time finding gifts in that price range that were from China". Needless to say we all had a laugh afterward on that one.
When I was 12-14 my sister still believed in Santa and Mom (single mother) would announce Christmas eve that we were going to drive around and see the Christmas lights and we might spot Santa's sleigh while we were out. We would leave the house and get in the car.....but Mom always forgot her purse or gloves....then back in the house she would quickly drink milk, eat cookies and play Santa. Out she would come and off we would go to get a look at all the decorations in the neighborhood. When we arrived back home...Santa had been there!!
Now days I share holidays with my sister and she has three grandkids. This year I had Thanksgiving and she did Christmas. So with no company I didn't decorate at all. It was a boring depressing month....so next year I will decorate even if I don't get to do Christmas here.
That was sweet of your Mom, Sheila funny how we all go about doing things.
I hear you about the decorating. Since I really don't get together with family anymore I don't decorate and it is sort of depressing. Regardless of where we met or what we ate, Christmas was always just about spending time together. I had a big family as I kid and so these days it just never seems the same to me. My husband and I have gone on trips at Christmas the last 3 years and that sort of makes this time of year better for me. Right now we are on a cruise to cental america. But, I still had to log in and see what was going on here LOL.
C
Oh! that is so sweet Cheryl, our friends here really do mean a lot, don't they?
How exciting for you Cheryl! We have always talked about going on the senic train trip to Alaska or at least to Oregon / Wa area one year. Something always comes up and we don't. Enjoy your cruise...and we will expect pictures when you return!
As a kid we never really had much of a tradition I guess... now here in Texas every Christmas Eve Ralph & I play at 2 church (candlelight) services. I play in the hand bell choir & Ralph plays clarinet in the church orchestra. So.. we usually are resting the next 2 days after since we are so tired! I sometimes decorate depending on my mood.. since I am the one putting up/taking down!! This year I did not put up a tree as I was just too busy!
We cook up a few cornish hens for our Christmas dinner & for New Year's day we usually order in Chinese food. We do not go out for NY's ..we are not the party type! lol
Working retail really takes the Christmas spirit out of me. Things are so hectic from Thanksgiving to Christmas that it's really hard to get into the spirit of things and I come home really exhausted. Some nights it's all I can do to make dinner and get the dishes cleaned. So, I take off some part of the week after Christmas or the first week of January just to recoup, relax, reflect, and recharge. I've done that for the past several years. It's also when I really get to enjoy Christmas.
I can understand that Stephanie... Ralph has this week off also...actually it's a first for his work that the university library is also shut down. This year my Christmas spirit seemed absent as a lot of my friends were & still are having a lot of problems, whether is be financial or health, etc so it brought me down too! I am starting to feel better though... as I was also busy with a lot of concerts etc. I am looking forward to relaxing also. lol
I understand the retail at Christmas ruining your holiday spirit Stephanie. I used to work as a meat wrapper at a large supermarket in Houston. I hated Thanksgiving and Christmas. I can't tell you how many turkeys and hams we had to lift up and weigh. Then when we had a sale, we had to pull them back out and weigh them again!! Plus back then we had to hand wrap the hams since they didn't shrink wrap them back then. Ugh....! My Christmas was afterwards too.
sheila i guess you were meat wrapper not butcher but i have a question-what ham do i get to come closest to the fancy ones sold by honey baked hams? -i know spiral but i haven't had a spiral as good as the honey baked and i am too thrifty to buy the honey baked--
We baked a bone-in ham this year and put our own glaze on it. I think it tasted soooooooo good!
what kind of ham? what cut? what glaze?
It was a Cook's ham, bone in half ham. I don't know what kind of cut it was, other than it was good! LOL I'll post the recipe when I get home tonight from work.
The Honey Baked hams are the most tender portions of the ham thus the more expensive costs. ....but ham is ham as far as I am concerned. I do cook mine in foil in the oven with water beneath a rack. I use the spiral hams but don't like the sauce, too sweet. I wait until just before serving to use the electric knife around the bone and to trim fat.
That said....I didn't have to cook one this year since sister had the dinner at her house this year. Now for New Years we are planning a standing rib roast. I lather the outside with table mustard then roll the roast in ice cream salt....no other seasonings. It makes a hard crust when cooked in the oven uncovered. To serve I rake off the crust and slice....yummmy!
I am going to Sheila's for New Year's!!!! hahahahaha.... hang on while I go get a paper towel to wipe up the drool on my keyboard!!! hahahahaha
Sorry I kinda disappeared for a while. I love hearing all this since I don't have any traditions to speak of. I wonder....Do y'all think, for you, traditions are mostly passed down in your families or are they something that has developed over your lifetime time? Are traditions different for each generation in your family? For Kate it seems like both of these.
Sheila...Why ice cream salt? Flavor?
I LOVE spiral cut hams..mmmmmmm. I make my own glaze with honey and brown sugar..mmmmm
Cat.. I would say traditions are all of what you mentioned... I am not from the U.S. & my mother was born & raised in England so I grew up with several traditions... now, being here I have a few that I have had since leaving home & some from childhood.
I prefer my own, of course, but some from childhood are fun to remember.
This is the recipe I used: http://thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/recipes/holidays/southern-honey-baked-ham/
Since DH got the whole ham (unsliced), we cut "X"s on it and then brushed the glaze on it. We placed it in a roaster pan, added about 1 C of water to the bottom, and put the ham on a rack. We had to cook the ham for about 4 hours, so about every 45 mins or so, I basted the ham with the glaze. The last time, we poured the remainder of the glaze on the ham. The last 15 mins or so, we left the foil off so it could brown. The ham turned out nice and moist and tasted yummy.
Cindy...LOL!
Catz....I don't think what we used to do as kids were necessarily traditions...but more memories that we wanted our kids to have that we had.
As for the salt on the rib roast.... I was in Reno once at a dinner/concert and had the best prime rib I ever tasted. I asked the waiter if he would let me know how it was cooked. That is what he told me the chef said. Since I was a meat wrapper and ex-husband a butcher....I had to try it for myself and have been cooking it that way ever since. It is definately not for those on a salt free diet. The outside does have a taste there especially if you don't get the coating off. But mainly I think it was to harden and hold in the juices.
Sheila, I used the same method on a fresh ham one year and it was yummy! Course, I love salt...
Mary
I use Kosher Salt on my roast when I cook it in the crock pot. It always comes out tasting yummy.
Never cooked a fresh ham...but with a cured one, it is already a bit salty to me.
No special Christmas traditions but a very special New Years one ..My parents were wed on New Years day around 1915 (would have to get out the family book to be certain) for their wedding they had Ham ,Black-eyed peas ,potato salad,cornbread,and Banana pudding and to this day every surviving member carries on this tradition
That is a wonderful tradition, I hope it goes on forever.
Grits....Just your id shows you are from the south and here in TX we always have blackeyed peas on New Year's. I don't drink now, but when I used to and we threw a new year's eve party, we would put BE peas in a crock pot and serve them after midnight.
My current husband is from Atlanta GA and grew up having greens and BE peas. They said the greens represent the dollars and the peas the coins of prosperity the New Year will bring. So we eat both....why take a chance? LOL!
I've also heard cabbage was in there somewhere in the New Years tradition wasn't it?
Don't remember hearing that...but sounds good!
I think that cabbage is a more northern thing, but I'm not sure. I'm not a fan of cabbage anyway, so I wouldn't eat it no matter what kind of luck or prosperity it was supposed to bring me! LOL
As a family, we used to all gather at my aunt's house on NYD and have a big feast of lasagna, salad, garlic bread, and BE peas! What a combination!