As we move more deeply into the holiday weekend, I want to open up the board to talking -- not debating, talking -- about Christmas and New Year's traditions. What are yours? How did they develop? Here are a few of my family's.
1. Listening to the Irving Berlin Songbook on Christmas Day. Christmas 1998 was Julie's and my first Christmas as a married couple. I bought her a boxed set of Irving Berlin songs that year. We spent Christmas Day in our tiny apartment on E. 58th Street in Manhattan, cooking and spooning and listening to those three discs. Funny, but it became a tradition to bring it out on Christmas day, if only to recall that first Christmas together.
2. Listening to the Roches Christmas album, "We Three Kings", because of this.
3. Driving through Highland Park to see the lights, with the kids in the backseat.
4. The hejira to the Ka-Dee tree farm, to hunt down and cut down our own fambly tree.
OK, those are three short ones for me; I'm sure I'll think of more later, but I'm about to fall asleep. Give your traditions, and where they came from...
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A newish tradition for my family is watching "The Sound of Music" on Christmas night. Don't know when that became perennial Christmas viewing, or on. I third the motion for Handel's Messiah, and yes, "Unto to Us a Child is Born" is tops, followed by "And the Glory of the Lord (shall be revealed)." A Charlie Brown Christmas is a must-see, along with the animated "Grinch" (no Jim Carrey, please!). The old, old "A Christmas Carol" with Alistair Sim is my favorite. My church choir always sings a Lessons and Carols service, which is wonderful. My favorite carol we did this year was "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming," sung in many parts, a capella. Very Renaissance-y sounding. Also, I gotta hear the Christmas story read from Luke, King James version...
I'm currently headed to my sister's for our annual Christmas party. (I'm visiting my family in Alabama...) Lots of friends I see only once a year... THAT tradition has been going for over thirty years...
Here in Australia we have outdoor carol services in the warm weather usually called Carols by Candelight I usually attend at least one or two personally and watch one of the country's biggest ones from Melbourne which is telecast Australiawide and heard on radio worldwide (our troops like to listen to it) on Christmas Eve. Another tradition is to open the presents on Christmas Eve while watching it (not sure why my late mum and I started that but I believe that Queen Elizabeth also opens her presents on Christmas Eve).
Merry Christmas from Sydney Rod and everyone
Jo
We have lived 400 miles from family for about 10 years now, so we have done some hit-and-miss at creating new Christmas traditions for our family. A couple that have stuck is we have a candle light crab leg dinner on Christmas Eve. It's the only time we eat by candle light which the kids think is cool and it's a fancy meal which requires nothing more complicated on my part than boiling water. There have been some years when it's been a real stretch to afford the crab legs, but the kids start talking about it around Thanksgiving, so we do it anyways.
Christmas is also when I make my once-a-year homemade cinnamon roles with real danish pastry. For those of you who haven't done it by hand, this is a very involved process where you repeatedly roll out, fold, roll out, refrigerate, fold, roll out, etc, etc, to get the many layers you need in danish pastries. The first year I did it, I mis-read the recipe and ended up staying up until the middle of the night making the darn things! I make enough to have a pan for Christmas morning and put another pan in the freezer to have on New Year's morning.
We usually try to make a batch of home made ornaments for the tree.
This year we had a family Christmas cookie day and spread out across the kitchen to make hundreds of Christmas cookies for Santa. My kids have asked to make this a family tradition.
We've also been trying to find creative ways to celebrate Christmas without spending money (we spent under $50 on each of our kids this year). One of our ideas which I think is destined to become tradition is to have Santa plan a sledding party for the kids and their friends. It's going to happen on the 27th on the sled hill in our back yard. For the cost of hot chocolate and those Christmas cookies we spent our day making, we think it's going to be a hit!
So there's my familie's myriad of traditions. Feel free to steal :)
I always go to the Do-It-Yourself performance of Handel's Messiah, and go out to dinner with friends beforehand. It's been 30+ years now.
Paste on a smile and take a ham over to my mother's house, where the extended family (around 25 people, including babies) gathers to eat, open presents, and be heartily civil to each other. If I had the guts, I'd skip it.
Afterwards my darling husband and I will come home to the quiet, pray, go out to look at the lights, and have an early night.
Mrs. Pringle
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