I would love to know some of your family traditions and favorite foods for the holiday season. We always open our presents at my parents home on Christmas eve ever since we stoped believing. We always go Christmas light looking 2 weekends before Christmas. Yes, it's getting harder with all the new additions to the family, this year we are going in 2 cars

-- Sandy(FL.) (MANDARINHILLBILLYS@prodigy.net), November 26, 2000

Answers

Sandy, What a fun idea! I look forward to reading this thread as it goes on. We have a strange tradition in our family that we started just a few years ago. On Christmas Eve, we make our own pizzas, with the kids doing all of the sauce and toppings themselves. I can't even remember how this started, but they'd have a fit if we didn't do it. : ) Also, the children each get a coloring book and crayons and a pair of "christmas-y" pajamas to open on Christmas Eve. Then we color together, and read The Night Before Christmas. They usually leave cookies and milk for Santa, and cereal for the reindeer. My husband always volunteers to take care of "cleaning up" the cookies and milk after the little ones are asleep. lol The coloring book/crayons/pajamas were started by my mom when I was 2, and I'm sure my children will still be doing it with their children. Have a great week!

-- Kristin, in C. Alabama (positivekharma@aol.com), November 26, 2000.

Every year we drag the dog into the house and duct tape antlers to his head. Than we look on the gps locater to find whoville, which we have never sucessfully located. However, if we do than we plan to steal their whole x-mas right down to the roast beast ! Can anyone locate whoville for us ?

-- Mr. Grinch (Joel681@webtv.net), November 26, 2000.

We like to go see the Christmas Light Floatillas on the Tennessee River in Decatur and Huntsville.

-- Jay Blair (jayblair678@yahoo.com), November 26, 2000.

We always used to open one gift Christmas Eve night, probably to keep us kids from bursting more than anything else, and then open the rest on Christmas morning. Over the years, as my husband and I have been on our own, we have changed this routine into opening the gifts sent in from our families on Christmas Eve night (so that when they call the next morning we can share in the oohing and ahhing), and we save our own gifts for that night, as we both hated that Christmas culiminated right off the bat and seemed to be over with before noon.

We spend a lot of our Christmas money on memories anymore, rather than gifts, as we have both gotten to the point that we have so much of what we ever needed and wanted that its hard for us to come up with more than one or two things we want (praise Whomever). So we go to shows and musical concerts, go Christmas-light "shopping" around town, go out to eat, buy for charity, and generally try to "do" rather than "get". Some may say that we're just to easy to please as we are so satisfied, yet have no big screen TV, no hothouse SUV, no roomful of high-end electronics or other "needs" of my generation, but we can't honestly work up any real appetite for these things. Oh well, I guess we'll just take our poor, under"thinged" carcasses out to see the Nutcracker and ponder on the mysteries of life that brought two such well-matched individuals together in the same time and space. Gotta do my cookie-ingredient shopping, too. Can't have Christmas without cookies!

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), November 26, 2000.

We don't have but one christmas tradition that is done every year. The night we put up the tree we always have homemade cookies and eggnog ( like theres anything else but homemade ) . haha This is done more for my hubby than the kids, but they love it too.

-- sherry (Calfarm@msn.com), November 26, 2000.

We have a Christmas Eve meal that my mother always served: salad, clam chowder and cheese souffle. For dessert, we alternate years between a yule log (kids' favorite) and plum pudding, served flaming with hard sauce (my favorite). Every year for the last 17 at least, I've given each child a new ornament. We open these on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day's meal comes from my mother-in-law: BBQ brisket, corn pudding, twice-baked potatoes, plus a few odds and ends tossed in. I think traditions are the neatest gifts for our kids - gives stability and continuity to their lives, especially when they get away from home and can look forward to coming back to the familiar rhythms. Can't wait to hear others' traditions.

-- glynnis in KY (gabbycab@msn.com), November 26, 2000.

Christmas Eve we open one gift and have cookies and milk. Santa STILL comes after the kids(21,23& 26) go to bed! On Christmas Morning we open gifts and have a small breakfast and then it's off to my husband's mother's house (only 10 miles away). My mom and all of his brother and sisters and their families are there too! This year we have started a new tradition! We put money in an envelope, sealed it and placed it in a box. No one knows how much money you have put in your envelope! You put what you can afford or want to give--then the first week in Dec. my mother in law will give the box to a family who needs the money for food. No other gifts will be exchanged!

Merry Christmas!

-- Debbie T in N.C. (rdtyner@mindspring.com), November 26, 2000.

We have boiled shrimp, all you can stuff in your tummy every Christmas eve. I can't really remember when it started, except the girls had moved away from home and my mom really loved shrimp. Husband always cooks the shrimp (he thinks he has a "secret recipe") and we usually have a bottle of wine, sit around the kitchen table and eat and giggle and have fun. The girls will not give it up even though one is now married and has another family to visit. The other plans her arrival from Maryland to be sure she's rested and ready to eat. Our Christmas is pretty low key, some gifts but I would rather give gifts during the year, when least expected and when its something special. We, like so many others, have few wants or needs and knowing what a struggle it was for the girls to come up with the money when they first started supporting themselves, have kinda downplayed gifts. What's Christmas about anyway, being at WalMart to get some goofy gift that ends up in the closet in two weeks, NOT!

P.S. THIS MAY CHANGE WITH FIRST GRANDCHILD HOWEVER, IF EVER.

-- Betsy K (betsyk@pathwaynet.com), November 26, 2000.

I guess we don't have any "must-do"s anymore. No little kids left in the family. When I and my sibs were young, one tradition that was never allowed to forgotten was making the "paintbrush" cookies. A roll-out sugar cookie dough was made by Mom, who was in charge of rolling out the dough, cutting out the cookies, and putting them on the cookie sheets. These she would bring to the "art dept" (the kitchen table with the 3 "artists" gathered around it).

We would then decorate the cookies with "paint" made from an egg yolk and a little water mixed up well in a cup and colored with food coloring. You can make blue "paint" by using egg white, but for yellow, red, and green, use the yolks. We had new, clean paint brushes to paint the cookies with the egg glaze. We also would use colored sugar, sprinkles, red hots, and the little gold & silver BB's, maybe even bits of dried fruits (as we got older and more creative). The cookies were then baked by the Chief Cook (Mom). We would make special ones for Santa and for the Chief Taster (Dad) and for our Grandparents and Aunt and Uncle. I'd still like to decorate them, if someone wants to make the dough and be in charge of cutting them out . . . . .

Even though we got the little fairy lights when they became popular, we usually have gone back to using the larger lights that were all we had when we were young. Somehow, the tree doesn't look right without those lights!

We always waited until Christmas morning to open presents. No pinching and prodding presents either. The elves used to bring us new winter slippers every year, which were waiting for us to slip our feet into first thing out of bed.

Another tradition was watching the "magic" Christmas movie. One year my folks got it all on film -- Santa filling our stockings (only see a red & white arm putting things in the stockings -- and every year the folks apologizing for only getting his arm), and then the tree becoming magically decorated and all the presents appearing, one by one, under the tree. This never failed to enthrall us. Anyone with a camcorder can do the same. Set the camera up on something steady (a table or a tripod). Turn on and film for about 5 seconds, turn off, put another ornament on the tree, film again about 5 seconds, turn off, etc. Don't move the camera! It comes out great. Confuse your children today!

-- Joy Froelich (dragnfly@chorus.net), November 26, 2000.

Joel I do not know where WHOVILLE is but I sure know a few people who need a reality check come X-mas morning!

-- renee oneill{md.} (oneillsr@home.com), November 27, 2000.

When I was little, every year my mother would blow a bunch of eggs in the months before Christmas, and just before time to put the tree up, my brothers and I (and later my little sisters) would paint the eggs and glue strings to them. We actually did more than just paint the eggs, as some had scraps of ric-rac, or glitter, or little pictures cut out from old Christmas cards, glued to them. Oh, and sometimes we had walnut shells, ones that had broken neatly in half and were glued back together, but there weren't ever very many of those. I don't know if Mom still has any of those home-made Christmas tree ornaments, but I still remember how much fun we had making them, and how pretty our tree always was!

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), November 27, 2000.

We get together at my sisters house and eat mexican pot luck supper and lots of rich luscious desserts that we don't fix at any other time, open gifts, we draw names and do lots of homemade, and visit, visit, visit. My sis videotapes the food and the gift opening for my son in Japan. Oh. yes we have a lot of gag gifts, too. Loads of fun and we all look forward to it each year.

-- Barb Fischer (bfischer42@hotmail.com), November 28, 2000.

When my mother and I first moved to New Mexico, we started making tamales on Christmas Day. Between chopping, mixing, wrapping and cooking, it took a big part of the afternoon...and of course, there was the eternal large-vs.-small debate! (Mom's philosophy was that making the biggest tamales you could get a corn husk around meant that they'd be finished quicker, and that you'd be able to make a meal off just one. I'm at the other end of the spectrum, so we'd end up with platters full of a Mutt-and-Jeff assortment.) We always had a great time, and having lots of tamales in the freezer afterwards to eat and give away was a bonus.

Mom passed away thirteen months ago, and I think that making those tamales again a few weeks later made me feel better than any grief counselor could have. I'll do it again this year...and like last time, I'll probably find myself wrapping up a few meal-sized specimens. The batch just doesn't look right otherwise!

Happy holidays!

-- Christine (cytrowbridge@zianet.com), November 30, 2000.