With the holidays here and people from all over as part of our TR family I thought it would be fun to share our holiday traditions. What is your tradition?
My family celebrates Christmas. We always go to church Christmas Eve no matter where we are. If we are up in OH we go visiting various family members after church and end up back to my parents-in-law's house with all of my hubby's family where we exchange presents. Everyone buys for all the kids high school age an younger and everyone else except his parents are in the gift exchange. When all of our kids were younger this took HOURS! Now there are only 3 "kids" so if we are lucky everyone gets to bed by 2 AM.
If we are home the NC part of the family comes to our house Christmas Eve. Some of you know that our family has hosted high school exchage students from around the world. One tradition we have adopted from our Mexican son is luminarios on Christmas Eve. This year we are home but, due to the drought, we are not allowed to have them. Our European children have introduced us to St. Nicholas Day on 12/6 where the children put their shoes out and receive gifts. The 12 Days of Christmas start on Christmas and go to Three Kings Day on January 6th. So we always leave our tree up until then.
Growing up in NE Ohio for New Years Day we eat sauerkraut and pork. Our Chinese son introduced us to the traditions of Chinese New Year which is celebrated Feb 18 this year. Like Americans they have good luck traditions one of which is eating candy to ensure a sweet year.
We don't really have too much in the way of tradition. We're not a religious family, so we don't do much Christmas eve until my wife's extended family comes over for dinner after they go to church. My wife's mom passed away a few years ago, and her dad has been out of the picture since she was 9, so her grandmother, aunt, uncle and a boatload of cousins is all she has left. We all buy presents for the kids, and draw names out of a hat to see which adult each of us buys for. Late Christmas eve, my wife make cookies with the kids to leave out for Santa. Christmas morning, we open presents with the kids, and go see my dad and step-mom in the afternoon.
Besides that, the only real tradition we have is taking the kids to the mall in November and have each of them pick a child from the Angel Tree to buy presents for. It's very important to us to teach them to appreciate how lucky they are, and to help those who are less fortunate.
you know Pearson, somethimes i think we are long lost brothers or something !! we do the same thing, but with only one kid (we still get a couple from the angel tree though).
so i guess that we do the same thing as Pearson and his family. guess i am gonna have to come up with a bit a new tradition for us. lol
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"I FORMERLY glued animals to rocks" NO TANK RIGHT NOW, but you never know when I might throw one together !! I have everything I need but the time!!
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Although I was raised a strict Catholic (church every sunday where I was an altar boy), my wife and I dont do the religion thing anymore. Christmas for us is a hassle spread all over town. Heres the timeline...
Christmas eve - dinner and gifts @ my mother-in-laws,
Christmas morning
8:00 AM -go to my parents to open gifts with my siblings and have breakfast.
10:00AM- go to my wifes sisters place to open gifts with that side of family and have lunch.
1:00 PM- return with wife to my parents so she can open gifts and then have lunch again
3:00 PM - bring all the gifts we got home and try to figure what to do with it all.
4:00 PM -take nap
I realized this year that I get no enjoyment from this time of year any more so next year we are going to treat this holiday different. Since my wife and I dont have any children yet, the "magic of Christmas" is kind of lost. I would much rather spend the money on we would spend normally on someone who really needs it. I have lived the good life and I have always gotten practically everything I've ever wanted. I would much rather see a person who has not been as fortunate get something they want for once.
so i guess that we do the same thing as Pearson and his family. guess i am gonna have to come up with a bit a new tradition for us. lol
I think your new tradition should be to send a handful of frags to Virginia every year
poppin_fresh, if it weren't for our kids, I would feel the same. My wife and I haven't even gotten each other anything the past several years (except a couple of years ago when she bought me a pickup truck while we were renovating our house). That's how we decide how much to spend on our adopted "Angels", whatever we would have spent on each other typically.
marooned back on a deserted island some years back, God & myself completely ate all the animal populations to extinction within a few months. I made the passing comment of why with all his cosmic revelance he cant just create more so we dont starve to death, & he took offense this & threatened to turn me into a volleyball instead. So i ate him with a clear Conscious & for a dual purpose.
Abracadabra- Now every time a fart a new universe is born. muhahahaha
Just some Scottish home cooking, watch the kids open presents that could pull a small country out of debt & drink a few coldies for me!
"Human subtelty will never devise an invention more beautiful,
more simple or more direct than does nature"
- Leonardo Da Vinci
"I am made of the dust of the stars, and the oceans flow in my veins"
-Neil Peart
"The strenuous and dogmatic are the moral enemy of the good. They demand that we believe the impossible and practice the unfeasible" - Christopher Hitchens
Well now, all those traditions sound great. Each his own. I am a Southern Baptist, oh yeah, and I dance, bump and grind. Our entire neighborhood has a tradition of each family lining the street beside their yard with white paper bags with candles in it. It is awesome to see! Looks like a mini airport runway. Then about 7pm we have the parade of decorated golf carts with throwing out candy and stopping and serving out cups of hot cocoa. It is a hoot. I just love this neighborhood!
With the holidays here and people from all over as part of our TR family I thought it would be fun to share our holiday traditions. What is your tradition?
I was raised Catholic, but never have pursued religion with even remote fervor. My wife is Jewish, which meant (before we had kids) that on Christmas we would go to a Laker game or to the Cinema and invariably find an open pizza joint (along with the other Jewish folk here in L.A.) for lunch.
As the Jewish tradition flows down through the mother, we are raising our kids to be reformed-reformed Jews (my term ). For the holidays this means the kids rake up because there are 8 crazy nights and the flip-side presents from my folks. Trust me, our house now looks like a toy bomb went off.
I have not been to my parents house for Christmas is over ten years, but I call my family every Christmas to wish them the best and to see how they liked the presents we sent. My mom is still trying to figure out how and which holiday we celebrate more. The truth is that my wife celebrates both holidays (in the spirit of giving and togetherness) with more emphasis than I do.
With that said, Happy Holidays & New Year Everyone!
Funny I didn't make the connection. Festival of lights / Torch coral. Nice one Carmie
(BTW this year for the holidays, we had latkas & jelly donuts for hannukah a few weeks back. Kids got presents ... we had to encourage a great deal of restraint amongst the grandparents, last year they went nuts!. On X-mas day, we went to a chinese buffet.)
"Human subtelty will never devise an invention more beautiful,
more simple or more direct than does nature"
- Leonardo Da Vinci
"I am made of the dust of the stars, and the oceans flow in my veins"
-Neil Peart
"The strenuous and dogmatic are the moral enemy of the good. They demand that we believe the impossible and practice the unfeasible" - Christopher Hitchens
Our European children have introduced us to St. Nicholas Day on 12/6 where the children put their shoes out and receive gifts. The 12 Days of Christmas start on Christmas and go to Three Kings Day on January 6th. So we always leave our tree up until then. 
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So i ate him with a clear Conscious & for a dual purpose.
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Then about 7pm we have the parade of decorated golf carts with throwing out candy and stopping and serving out cups of 
). For the holidays this means the kids rake up because there are 8 crazy nights and the flip-side presents from my folks. Trust me, our house now looks like a toy bomb went off.