Christmas Plans and Traditions Poll/Discussion
Ith has a Christmas poll for you. Whether you go out for Chinese and a movie on Christmas, or traverse lots of rivers and woods to get to Grandma’s house, she’s looking for your answers in her comments or in a post of your own.
This is one such post.
I traditionally spend the day somewhere else. This year will be a mix of here, obviously, where we have actual presents and an actual family to open them here, and the usual going elsewhere. Lately that has been my sister’s most years. In the past it had been my grandmother’s. It has changed over the years. For my sister it has gotten hard, with the MS (for which the drugs are $1500 a month, so the new insurance company has started jerking her around), so a lot of the cooking will be done by my mother and grandmother. But she has more room for a bunch of us. As in at least twelve.
When we have more kids and they are enough older to make it matter, we may stay home, have dinner at home, or someday actually host dinner for the multitudes that are my family.
I am not sure what’s on the menu. Probably turkey and something, which will most likely be ham. Sometimes there’s roast beef or pork as one of two meats. If there’s one, it’s usually turkey and sometimes ham. One of the most wonderful things ever is ham with my late grandfather’s raisin sauce.
For dessert, which is the main thing my sister is making, there will probably be pumpkin pie, another kind or two, including likely lemon meringue that one of her kids is crazy about, and date nut bars for me because I mentioned how much I liked them last Sunday. My mother always made them and I haven’t had them for years. Want the recipe. We will probably bring the cobbler-like cranberry pie, which will be something different.
We will probably eat about 1:00, which means probably by 2:00. Which means “early,” to folks who have evening dinners.
Favorite gift when I was a child? I can’t remember offhand. Is that sad or what? Not sure I remember or if one stands out as an adult either. There are gifts I could expound upon as memorable, or praise in some way or another, but favorite… well, as an adult perhaps the pocket computer I got in 1983 would count. As opposed to the winter coat I got in 1982 and am still wearing 22 years later, which was an excellent gift, but notable more for its longevity and extended usefulness.
I have nothing intensely specific on my wish list. I wouldn’t mind Spiderman, Spiderman 2, and some other videos, but I hadn’t given it much thought, and gifts from relatives this year will be for the baby, now that I have one. And that is gift enough for me.
Unique tradition? Not really. Until my uncle moved to Maine, it was traditional to go to his place on Christmas eve. We tend to be into stockings even for adults. It hasn’t been that long since my mother last did one for me, and around the time I was in my teens we started doing a stocking for her, which lasted many years.
Deb and I are at the start of making new traditions and Sadie’s memories. We’ve declared Christmas eve to be “ours” to balance the running off elsewhere on Christmas itself.
We recently talked about when to open presents, and a tradition her family had of opening a single present the night before, which for the kids took the edge off waiting. Maybe I’ll let Deb open one of hers tomorrow night. In a sense we got that by going to my uncle’s and getting a present from him, and some years we’d get to open something else too. I always thought it was weird to open everything before morning. Unless maybe there’s a practical reason, like traveling on Christmas itself.
Anyway, help Ith out; go comment, or write a post on the topic and link her Christmas post.
You follow instructions so well!
Posted by Ith on 12/23 at 04:28 PM
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