It’s liberating (and a bit sad, in some situations) to grow up and realize that you don’t have to continue the same family traditions you grew up with—so you invent your own. In last week’s newsletter, I loved reading about one witch’s tradition of Sibling Night, wherein her kids order their preferred takeout food, watch their preferred movie and are sequestered in the basement. They bond while the parents get a break. Genius. What’s a family tradition that you came up with on your own (either for holidays or ‘ordinary time’)?
This is very tiny but we have Nutella Fridays. I don’t remember how it started—maybe I just wanted to put some structure around our Nutella usage. But it’s like morning happy hour, a way of saying it’s the freakin’ weekend, baby.
When the kids were littler, my husband used to do "Sprinkle Bagels" on the weekends, which was literally just putting sprinkles on the cream cheese. But the kids loved it because it felt festive and off-script.
We do The Heaving of the Gourds every Thanksgiving. It’s where we collect all our decorative gourds outside from Halloween and heave them into the woods behind our house to decompose. The little kids do the tiny ones and we do the big ones. Cathartic for everyone, can be performed drunk or sober.
I love this. My parents have a tiny balcony on their second floor and back when they got real trees we’d un-decorate the tree and throw it over and watch it roll down the front yard hill. Same vibes—smell ya later, Christmas!
We do something similar with the Christmas gingerbread houses, but without a cool name like you have. Maybe I'll start calling it the House Smash or something for added interest.
Yes! On a random, warm-ish day in January, the kids get to take the toy hammers, rolling pins, and drum sticks outside and smash the gingerbread house down to crumbs.
I found another family who are willing to be as ridiculous as I am around the holidays, and we have doubled down. Last year, we started "Christmas Camp." We got a place in the mountains (hot tub required) and we do all the things I always wanted to do, but never seemed to have time in the "before times." Gingerbread houses, handmade tree decorations, puzzles, watching every single bad xmas movie, etc. Last year, we tie dyed sweatshirts and had a kitchen dance party to pre-approved holiday pop jams. This year, we are going snow tubing. Next year, we are thinking of doing Christmas Camp in NYC. My kids LOVE this, but that's just a bonus, because it's really for me.
I got a nativity set from my Grandma, but we're not religious and the cats kept knocking the figures down. A couple of years ago we got a Marvel figurine advent calendar and started putting the figurines in the empty manger as they came out. We'd take turns setting up a scene with the figures and change it up all the time. Then we added a Christmas tree and Santa brought an ornament for the Marvel characters for Christmas that year. Now we do it every year. It's our version of elf on the shelf, but way less creepy and more interactive as the kids can set up scenes too. And we just put the figures randomly back in the advent calendar for next year.
With no one believing in Santa any more, this year we started "shop for your sibling's stocking" and it is the freaking best. I take them, and they actually show some compassion and thought and love toward their sibling (which doesn't happen in real life for us). I think I bought more for their stockings than normal, but it was so fun to do it all secretive.
Also we do Cereal for Dinner or Waffles or Dutch Baby Pancakes. All 3 are easy (obviously cereal is the easiest), but it just is so nice to have one night where I am not begging my daughter to eat.
Exactly. Luckily for us I could give two shits about Santa (in fact I have a special hatred for him because I do all of the shopping and I can't help it, I want the credit). I will say that this has made our Christmas this year SO much more enjoyable. I have loved partnering with my kids on stealth shopping missions for each other.
My husband's job (firefighter) has an atypical schedule, so his days off around Christmas vary each year. My side of the family, five hours away, has embraced "Joemas" which basically takes the closest weekend to Christmas and turns it into our celebration. It allows everyone to do Christmas proper on their own terms in their house, and by the time we travel down for Joemas, it's purely fun and games. I'm very grateful for a family, specifically a mother, who isn't clutching her pearls because we're not there for church on the 24th and a ham dinner on the 25th.
We get doughnuts on New Year's day, to balance out all the folks starting new Year's resolutions about not eating doughnuts. Tough to keep going when we were living in a doughnut desert (actually had to make them ourselves once or twice) but we're back in a quality doughnut zone this year
I realized that Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday, but I don't like to spend it with my family. So I host a Friendsgiving dinner where I joyfully cook all of the food, take time off work to bake, and invite my friends to just show up. It's usually the day after their family meals, with no expectation of making anything or dressing up. it's always low key and relaxing and it makes me feel so loved. It's my way of thanking my friends for being my chosen family. Last year's COVID edition meal was outdoors across three tables and we broke a patio heater from overuse and still, it was perfect!
Pizza picnics! This started when my husband had to start travelling for work again; on Friday nights when he was away, I'd order a pizza at like 5 pm on the dot, and my toddler and I would sit on the living room floor and have our pizza picnic while watching a film of his choice (Cars 3 for the five billionth time, usually). Now we have pizza picnics about once a month, with all three of us sharing in the fun (while watching Cars 3... again).
We do this every Monday with our kids rotating with us for the movie choice. It helped alleviate the watching the same movie every week (For us it was Mary Poppins that we watched a billion times before we instituted mommy and daddy having a say). It was a fun way to introduce them to new movies as well.
I love the idea of a Monday tradition--that's a whole lot more fun than my former "tradition" of manicure Mondays (just cutting their nails.) Takes the stink off the start of the week.
We have birthday cereal... the kid gets to pick any box of cereal they want. It started when my daughter was little and *needed* some sugar bomb cereal while at the store. I told her she could have it for her birthday (six months later). Now, each kid gets their box and I decorate it (even if it's just a stick-on bow) and it makes everyone happy.
We started a family tradition of breakfast in bed on your birthday, starting as young as 2yo. Our kids look forward to this all year: they get a breakfast tray with a soft boiled egg, pastry, fruit salad, hot chocolate, and of course a muffin with a candle in it, brought straight to their bed with the rest of the family singing happy birthday in chorus. Starts the birthday celebrations off on the right foot!
We do something called Choose Your Own Adventure Dinner - we'll all ransack the freezer/fridge, or if we're feeling REALLY kicky, go to the grocery store, and everyone picks out a frozen/prepared dish they want. You can share, you can keep it all for yourself, you can eat pizza for the 400th time - YOUR adventure!
We inherited these somewhat creepy baseball-sized, fabric, disembodied heads of Santa and Mrs. Claus out of my parents decoration stash, and my partner and I take turns hiding it for the other to find. It makes us laugh super hard and is our low budget version of adult elf on the shelf, but without magic/lies or expectations if the other doesn’t find it for a few days.
My husband once purchased a pickled sausage at a convenience store while we were on a road trip that I forbade him to eat in my, at the time brand new, and of course very small, MINI Cooper. He didn't but he hid it in one of my purses for me to find later and to this day we take turns hiding it for the other to stumble upon. The sausage itself is fossilized at this point, (and still in the wrapper, it's important to note) but we still crack up whenever it re-surfaces.
That is hilarious. That reminds me of an old BF of mine whose mom put out a decoration of these letters spelling S-A-N-T-A and her sons would rearrange them to say S-A-T-A-N
I invented Christmas Christmas, on December 26 each year. When my parents got divorced it became impossible to fit all of Christmas in on the 25th. And that’s even more true now with in-laws and kids… so on the 26th we sing “We wish you a merry Christmas Christmas” and basically stay joyful but also remove all the burdens and expectations from Christmas Day. See people you love, open more presents, eat whatever, relax. It’s Christmas Christmas!
My kid wanted to open a present on xmas eve (beyond the traditional pyjamas, which is what I grew up with). He begged to be allowed to at least open "the smallest gift." Now it's a tradition that I get him something stupid but small! Mini magic 8 ball, moustache wax, you name it...
I love that. Secretly I enjoy Christmas Eve more than Christmas (in my family we did "family" presents after a fancy dinner, which may be a Polish thing, then "Santa" presents Xmas Day.) I usually feel so burned out on actual Xmas.
We do family presents with Grandma and Grandpa on Christmas Eve and just one present "from Santa" on Christmas morning (even though it's been years since they believed in Santa.) This mainly started because of my kid's Christmas birthday. It's how we separate the two occasions. Christmas ends and birthday begins by around lunch time.
Also, my husband will sometimes institute cocktail hour on Friday nights. Our 10 year-old loves it; his dad makes him a "special drink," we get out some snacks and drink while making dinner. It's primarily a summer activity, but it makes a good winter pick-me-up, too.
This just reminded me that last year my kids asked for SunChips for Christmas, which is so weird but guess what they got in their stockings? SunChips. In a variety of flavors, no less!
The variety of stocking stuffers family to family could be its own anthology. Every year we get AA batteries and decorative SNIFF tissues (which, between you and me, are not great when it comes to tissues but what can you do, it's tradition.)
Our stockings always have toothpaste, a toothbrush, Fannie May trinidads and stamps, plus whatever caught Mom's eye in some catalog. Mind you, I'm on my 50s, so that translates into a lot of trinidads over the years. The stockings have long since been replaced by Christmas bags that we dutifully fold and return to Mom for the next year.
Ha, yeah those tissues have the absorbancy of sandpaper. I think the real tradition here is completely forgetting about stockings and then sometime around Dec 23 going CRAP, STOCKINGS and seeing what items from the grocery store can pass as stocking stuffers.
When I was a kid, my mom started celebrating the first day of December. It was her way of bringing a little joy into a bleak time (with both of her parents gone, the holidays always made her sad). Gifts are exchanged for Merry December, but nothing big -- just something to kick off the season. When I was a kid, I would have a friend spend the night and she would give us matching nightgowns. In college, she sent Christmas lights for my dorm room and the *NSYNC Christmas CD (still my fave). This year she got me a fat little bird in winter clothing from Target to go with all my other fat little birds in clothing from Target. My gift to her was all of us going out to see Christmas lights. This year, I extended the tradition to about 15 women I dearly love, some best friends, other whom I'm just getting to know. I gave them all some locally made candles and a little note. Making those deliveries is going to be my happiest memory from this year.
Get yourself to Target! They're, like, $6 and Target releases a new batch each year. Now, I have strict rules about what the birds wear (I don't want a bird dressed like a tree, thanks) and I have a bunch already, so I'm kind of choosy. But they come with little name tags that have the year on them and they're adorable. We have garland on our staircase and most of my birds are nestled in there. The others are on the piano. In general, Christmas decorations make me inexplicably sad, so I decided last year that I was going to do my own thing and pass over some of our hand-me-downs in favor of a "fat animals wearing clothes" theme. I got to buy Squishmallows! And a mouse holding a candy cane! Who has since been christened Joel and lives in a cardboard/pretzel container Habitrail, but that's another story.
That’s so fun. I have a few of those birds from last year. I’m going to have to see if I can find the new ones. I don’t decorate for Christmas specifically. Instead I have a bunch of snowmen. They are cute and cheerful. In January I put them away and put out Winter decorations. Lots of white. That’s when my birds come out.
We celebrate the feast of St Nicholas (6 December) with big slow-roast pork dinner. I started this (with my catholic roots) because I wanted to explain to my kids that 'santa' is based on a real person who did nice things (I'm not anti-santa per say, just not super pro this holiday tradition foisted upon parents). It's evolved over the years, and for me is more of the Christmas I want than actual Christmas day because: no gift giving, no family members you don't want to have to see, no kids crying from high expectations, no burn out from too much build-up-to-christmas. Just good food served on fancy plates.
We have a traditional Japanese Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, by which I mean KFC. I’m serious. Somehow some wires got crossed during the occupation of Japan and the Japanese thought chicken and not turkey was the traditional American Christmas meal, and then in the 1970s Colonel Sanders took it and ran with it there, so even though only like 2% of Japanese are Christians, they celebrate Christmas in a big, bizarre way and they all get KFC. We found this out while there on our honeymoon Christmas 2014, decided “when in Rome,” and WERE GIVEN A STANDING OVATION AND SHOUTS OF “AMERICANS! MERRY CHRISTMAS!” from extremely chipper Kyoto KFC employees dressed like elves. We were also pointed at and wished “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” by many people as we carried our bucket of chicken back through the thousands of people in Kyoto Station (we were the only non-Japanese in the crowd).
“You realize we are enforcing an entirely incorrect stereotype of Americans, right?” my amused husband asked.
Yes, but it’s a charming one, so we went with it. And decided then and there to do it every year, even while back in the States (we returned to Japan for Christmas 2019).
KFC of course isn’t open here on Christmas Day, which is why we do it on Christmas Eve when we’re here.
Years ago, friends were in town for NYE and the next day we realized we had not at all planned for the fact that most/all restaurants would be closed on New Year's Day. So I started a tradition of having a crockpot full of chili and fixings for grilled cheese ready by lunch and available for kind of all-day grazing. I don't leave the house and stay in pajamas all day. (It should be noted that after the year that instigated this tradition, I don't think we've ever had friends in town the day after NYE!) And I know it's supposed to be black-eyed peas, but we prefer chili!
My kids are very small so I'm in the process of stealing all the traditions I can get. A favorite new one is from my friend Kathleen, who saves all the christmas cards they receive and folds and cuts them into hearts to make Valentines Day decorations. The kids can help, its easy, its a nice re-use, and at Valentines Day you get to look at all your friends' families faces again. And then you pitch it all and you don't feel guilty or weird!
I started a Christmas card photo album a few years ago. I realized, we put all this work into nice cards (by which I mean me) and I should get to look back on the years of effort. My husband and I started sending them our first Christmas together (the benefits of using Minted/Shutterfly etc for your cards--they save the old files). So now I can look forward to being an old lady and looking back at them and sobbing over how the years fly by and the kids enter and exit the cards, etc etc
This is a great idea! I had a very similar thought last year and saved all our cards to turn into paper wreaths this year... unfortunately my 3-yo doesn't yet quite have the patience required for the project (getting him to do 30 cards for the kids in his nursery this year was a real test of my project-management skills, and all he had to do was hit them with a rubber stamp). Hopefully next year!
This is very tiny but we have Nutella Fridays. I don’t remember how it started—maybe I just wanted to put some structure around our Nutella usage. But it’s like morning happy hour, a way of saying it’s the freakin’ weekend, baby.
When the kids were littler, my husband used to do "Sprinkle Bagels" on the weekends, which was literally just putting sprinkles on the cream cheese. But the kids loved it because it felt festive and off-script.
Similarly, in my house we did French toast Fridays (w/ challah) for over a year.
I love that! Often it’s the little things you remember the best anyway :)
This is brilliant and I need to implement ASAP. Our Nutella usage is out of control 😳
It’s been a rough few years. We all have to medicate ourselves the best we can. At least it’s not meth. Well, not full blown meth.
😂🤣😂
We do The Heaving of the Gourds every Thanksgiving. It’s where we collect all our decorative gourds outside from Halloween and heave them into the woods behind our house to decompose. The little kids do the tiny ones and we do the big ones. Cathartic for everyone, can be performed drunk or sober.
I love this. My parents have a tiny balcony on their second floor and back when they got real trees we’d un-decorate the tree and throw it over and watch it roll down the front yard hill. Same vibes—smell ya later, Christmas!
We do something similar with the Christmas gingerbread houses, but without a cool name like you have. Maybe I'll start calling it the House Smash or something for added interest.
Yes! On a random, warm-ish day in January, the kids get to take the toy hammers, rolling pins, and drum sticks outside and smash the gingerbread house down to crumbs.
I found another family who are willing to be as ridiculous as I am around the holidays, and we have doubled down. Last year, we started "Christmas Camp." We got a place in the mountains (hot tub required) and we do all the things I always wanted to do, but never seemed to have time in the "before times." Gingerbread houses, handmade tree decorations, puzzles, watching every single bad xmas movie, etc. Last year, we tie dyed sweatshirts and had a kitchen dance party to pre-approved holiday pop jams. This year, we are going snow tubing. Next year, we are thinking of doing Christmas Camp in NYC. My kids LOVE this, but that's just a bonus, because it's really for me.
I got a nativity set from my Grandma, but we're not religious and the cats kept knocking the figures down. A couple of years ago we got a Marvel figurine advent calendar and started putting the figurines in the empty manger as they came out. We'd take turns setting up a scene with the figures and change it up all the time. Then we added a Christmas tree and Santa brought an ornament for the Marvel characters for Christmas that year. Now we do it every year. It's our version of elf on the shelf, but way less creepy and more interactive as the kids can set up scenes too. And we just put the figures randomly back in the advent calendar for next year.
I love this. It takes the piss out of ... everything, which needs to happen more.
💯
With no one believing in Santa any more, this year we started "shop for your sibling's stocking" and it is the freaking best. I take them, and they actually show some compassion and thought and love toward their sibling (which doesn't happen in real life for us). I think I bought more for their stockings than normal, but it was so fun to do it all secretive.
Also we do Cereal for Dinner or Waffles or Dutch Baby Pancakes. All 3 are easy (obviously cereal is the easiest), but it just is so nice to have one night where I am not begging my daughter to eat.
This is brilliant! And once people get over the initial terror of losing their faith in Santa you realize you can still enjoy Santa anyway
Exactly. Luckily for us I could give two shits about Santa (in fact I have a special hatred for him because I do all of the shopping and I can't help it, I want the credit). I will say that this has made our Christmas this year SO much more enjoyable. I have loved partnering with my kids on stealth shopping missions for each other.
Oh i LOVE THIS
Breakfast-for-dinner night is a classic in our house!
My son gets to stay home from school and play video games all day in his underwear on his birthday
Mother of the year!!
My husband's job (firefighter) has an atypical schedule, so his days off around Christmas vary each year. My side of the family, five hours away, has embraced "Joemas" which basically takes the closest weekend to Christmas and turns it into our celebration. It allows everyone to do Christmas proper on their own terms in their house, and by the time we travel down for Joemas, it's purely fun and games. I'm very grateful for a family, specifically a mother, who isn't clutching her pearls because we're not there for church on the 24th and a ham dinner on the 25th.
Very merry Joemas to you and yours!
We get doughnuts on New Year's day, to balance out all the folks starting new Year's resolutions about not eating doughnuts. Tough to keep going when we were living in a doughnut desert (actually had to make them ourselves once or twice) but we're back in a quality doughnut zone this year
MAKING YOUR OWN DOUGHNUTS!!! I bow. Damn.
I realized that Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday, but I don't like to spend it with my family. So I host a Friendsgiving dinner where I joyfully cook all of the food, take time off work to bake, and invite my friends to just show up. It's usually the day after their family meals, with no expectation of making anything or dressing up. it's always low key and relaxing and it makes me feel so loved. It's my way of thanking my friends for being my chosen family. Last year's COVID edition meal was outdoors across three tables and we broke a patio heater from overuse and still, it was perfect!
Pizza picnics! This started when my husband had to start travelling for work again; on Friday nights when he was away, I'd order a pizza at like 5 pm on the dot, and my toddler and I would sit on the living room floor and have our pizza picnic while watching a film of his choice (Cars 3 for the five billionth time, usually). Now we have pizza picnics about once a month, with all three of us sharing in the fun (while watching Cars 3... again).
We do this every Monday with our kids rotating with us for the movie choice. It helped alleviate the watching the same movie every week (For us it was Mary Poppins that we watched a billion times before we instituted mommy and daddy having a say). It was a fun way to introduce them to new movies as well.
I love the idea of a Monday tradition--that's a whole lot more fun than my former "tradition" of manicure Mondays (just cutting their nails.) Takes the stink off the start of the week.
We have birthday cereal... the kid gets to pick any box of cereal they want. It started when my daughter was little and *needed* some sugar bomb cereal while at the store. I told her she could have it for her birthday (six months later). Now, each kid gets their box and I decorate it (even if it's just a stick-on bow) and it makes everyone happy.
We started a family tradition of breakfast in bed on your birthday, starting as young as 2yo. Our kids look forward to this all year: they get a breakfast tray with a soft boiled egg, pastry, fruit salad, hot chocolate, and of course a muffin with a candle in it, brought straight to their bed with the rest of the family singing happy birthday in chorus. Starts the birthday celebrations off on the right foot!
this is so special and civilized!
We do something called Choose Your Own Adventure Dinner - we'll all ransack the freezer/fridge, or if we're feeling REALLY kicky, go to the grocery store, and everyone picks out a frozen/prepared dish they want. You can share, you can keep it all for yourself, you can eat pizza for the 400th time - YOUR adventure!
I am adopting this tradition right now!
I didn't think it was so crazy fun, but then was driving carpool and when my daughter explained it the neighbor kid's head exploded.
We inherited these somewhat creepy baseball-sized, fabric, disembodied heads of Santa and Mrs. Claus out of my parents decoration stash, and my partner and I take turns hiding it for the other to find. It makes us laugh super hard and is our low budget version of adult elf on the shelf, but without magic/lies or expectations if the other doesn’t find it for a few days.
My husband once purchased a pickled sausage at a convenience store while we were on a road trip that I forbade him to eat in my, at the time brand new, and of course very small, MINI Cooper. He didn't but he hid it in one of my purses for me to find later and to this day we take turns hiding it for the other to stumble upon. The sausage itself is fossilized at this point, (and still in the wrapper, it's important to note) but we still crack up whenever it re-surfaces.
That is hilarious. That reminds me of an old BF of mine whose mom put out a decoration of these letters spelling S-A-N-T-A and her sons would rearrange them to say S-A-T-A-N
I invented Christmas Christmas, on December 26 each year. When my parents got divorced it became impossible to fit all of Christmas in on the 25th. And that’s even more true now with in-laws and kids… so on the 26th we sing “We wish you a merry Christmas Christmas” and basically stay joyful but also remove all the burdens and expectations from Christmas Day. See people you love, open more presents, eat whatever, relax. It’s Christmas Christmas!
That's a great way to beat the post-holiday doldrums!
My kid wanted to open a present on xmas eve (beyond the traditional pyjamas, which is what I grew up with). He begged to be allowed to at least open "the smallest gift." Now it's a tradition that I get him something stupid but small! Mini magic 8 ball, moustache wax, you name it...
I love that. Secretly I enjoy Christmas Eve more than Christmas (in my family we did "family" presents after a fancy dinner, which may be a Polish thing, then "Santa" presents Xmas Day.) I usually feel so burned out on actual Xmas.
We do family presents with Grandma and Grandpa on Christmas Eve and just one present "from Santa" on Christmas morning (even though it's been years since they believed in Santa.) This mainly started because of my kid's Christmas birthday. It's how we separate the two occasions. Christmas ends and birthday begins by around lunch time.
Also, my husband will sometimes institute cocktail hour on Friday nights. Our 10 year-old loves it; his dad makes him a "special drink," we get out some snacks and drink while making dinner. It's primarily a summer activity, but it makes a good winter pick-me-up, too.
kids love special drinks so much, no matter what the drink is. We sometimes wrap up bottles of Gatorade for my kids for Christmas.
This just reminded me that last year my kids asked for SunChips for Christmas, which is so weird but guess what they got in their stockings? SunChips. In a variety of flavors, no less!
The variety of stocking stuffers family to family could be its own anthology. Every year we get AA batteries and decorative SNIFF tissues (which, between you and me, are not great when it comes to tissues but what can you do, it's tradition.)
Our stockings always have toothpaste, a toothbrush, Fannie May trinidads and stamps, plus whatever caught Mom's eye in some catalog. Mind you, I'm on my 50s, so that translates into a lot of trinidads over the years. The stockings have long since been replaced by Christmas bags that we dutifully fold and return to Mom for the next year.
Ha, yeah those tissues have the absorbancy of sandpaper. I think the real tradition here is completely forgetting about stockings and then sometime around Dec 23 going CRAP, STOCKINGS and seeing what items from the grocery store can pass as stocking stuffers.
When I was a kid, my mom started celebrating the first day of December. It was her way of bringing a little joy into a bleak time (with both of her parents gone, the holidays always made her sad). Gifts are exchanged for Merry December, but nothing big -- just something to kick off the season. When I was a kid, I would have a friend spend the night and she would give us matching nightgowns. In college, she sent Christmas lights for my dorm room and the *NSYNC Christmas CD (still my fave). This year she got me a fat little bird in winter clothing from Target to go with all my other fat little birds in clothing from Target. My gift to her was all of us going out to see Christmas lights. This year, I extended the tradition to about 15 women I dearly love, some best friends, other whom I'm just getting to know. I gave them all some locally made candles and a little note. Making those deliveries is going to be my happiest memory from this year.
this is so lovely and why are there not any fat little birds in my house right now???
Get yourself to Target! They're, like, $6 and Target releases a new batch each year. Now, I have strict rules about what the birds wear (I don't want a bird dressed like a tree, thanks) and I have a bunch already, so I'm kind of choosy. But they come with little name tags that have the year on them and they're adorable. We have garland on our staircase and most of my birds are nestled in there. The others are on the piano. In general, Christmas decorations make me inexplicably sad, so I decided last year that I was going to do my own thing and pass over some of our hand-me-downs in favor of a "fat animals wearing clothes" theme. I got to buy Squishmallows! And a mouse holding a candy cane! Who has since been christened Joel and lives in a cardboard/pretzel container Habitrail, but that's another story.
That’s so fun. I have a few of those birds from last year. I’m going to have to see if I can find the new ones. I don’t decorate for Christmas specifically. Instead I have a bunch of snowmen. They are cute and cheerful. In January I put them away and put out Winter decorations. Lots of white. That’s when my birds come out.
We celebrate the feast of St Nicholas (6 December) with big slow-roast pork dinner. I started this (with my catholic roots) because I wanted to explain to my kids that 'santa' is based on a real person who did nice things (I'm not anti-santa per say, just not super pro this holiday tradition foisted upon parents). It's evolved over the years, and for me is more of the Christmas I want than actual Christmas day because: no gift giving, no family members you don't want to have to see, no kids crying from high expectations, no burn out from too much build-up-to-christmas. Just good food served on fancy plates.
We have a traditional Japanese Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, by which I mean KFC. I’m serious. Somehow some wires got crossed during the occupation of Japan and the Japanese thought chicken and not turkey was the traditional American Christmas meal, and then in the 1970s Colonel Sanders took it and ran with it there, so even though only like 2% of Japanese are Christians, they celebrate Christmas in a big, bizarre way and they all get KFC. We found this out while there on our honeymoon Christmas 2014, decided “when in Rome,” and WERE GIVEN A STANDING OVATION AND SHOUTS OF “AMERICANS! MERRY CHRISTMAS!” from extremely chipper Kyoto KFC employees dressed like elves. We were also pointed at and wished “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” by many people as we carried our bucket of chicken back through the thousands of people in Kyoto Station (we were the only non-Japanese in the crowd).
“You realize we are enforcing an entirely incorrect stereotype of Americans, right?” my amused husband asked.
Yes, but it’s a charming one, so we went with it. And decided then and there to do it every year, even while back in the States (we returned to Japan for Christmas 2019).
KFC of course isn’t open here on Christmas Day, which is why we do it on Christmas Eve when we’re here.
Years ago, friends were in town for NYE and the next day we realized we had not at all planned for the fact that most/all restaurants would be closed on New Year's Day. So I started a tradition of having a crockpot full of chili and fixings for grilled cheese ready by lunch and available for kind of all-day grazing. I don't leave the house and stay in pajamas all day. (It should be noted that after the year that instigated this tradition, I don't think we've ever had friends in town the day after NYE!) And I know it's supposed to be black-eyed peas, but we prefer chili!
My kids are very small so I'm in the process of stealing all the traditions I can get. A favorite new one is from my friend Kathleen, who saves all the christmas cards they receive and folds and cuts them into hearts to make Valentines Day decorations. The kids can help, its easy, its a nice re-use, and at Valentines Day you get to look at all your friends' families faces again. And then you pitch it all and you don't feel guilty or weird!
That's lovely!
I started a Christmas card photo album a few years ago. I realized, we put all this work into nice cards (by which I mean me) and I should get to look back on the years of effort. My husband and I started sending them our first Christmas together (the benefits of using Minted/Shutterfly etc for your cards--they save the old files). So now I can look forward to being an old lady and looking back at them and sobbing over how the years fly by and the kids enter and exit the cards, etc etc
This is a great idea! I had a very similar thought last year and saved all our cards to turn into paper wreaths this year... unfortunately my 3-yo doesn't yet quite have the patience required for the project (getting him to do 30 cards for the kids in his nursery this year was a real test of my project-management skills, and all he had to do was hit them with a rubber stamp). Hopefully next year!