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For example, you can be able to play a specific game on during the tradition.
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#1
Every Christmas we have what we call Table Presents. These are little gifts all for under €10 we buy as a little extra gift for each other. My Great Grandmother on my mother's side started it off in the 1920s and as a family we've been doing it every year since. My Mother kept the tradition alive for us in our family as did her sister, my aunt did for hers.
Final score:
7points
#2
So I'm a Canadian with a Ukrainian heritage (my great grandparents came here from the Ukraine). On Easter Sunday, we're not allowed to eat anything until we've eaten a blessed hard boiled egg. The eggs have been put in a basket along with bread, candles, sometimes chocolate, taken to the church and blessed by a priest the day before. The egg is supposed to be a symbol of re-birth and it must be the first thing you eat that day.
I have no idea whether this is something they actually do in the Ukraine or not, or if it's just a weird "Ukrainian" tradition we do here.
Final score:
6points
#3
Our family gatherings usually start with somebody getting blamed for forgetting to bring something for the dinner. That escalates to arguing over the proper ingredients for stuffing the turkey, until it ends with at least one person crying and several slamming the door as they leave.
Final score:
6points
#4
Every Christmas, the eldest member of the family gives a speech before we eat.
Final score:
5points
#5
My family has one tablecloth that is used for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everyone signs it.
Final score:
5points
#6
Enchiladas on Thanksgiving/Christmas. My dads Puerto Rican, moms American. Grew up having enchiladas & pastalles & beans with every holiday meal. Fast forward to my 1st holiday with the in laws. I brought a try of enchiladas and they all thought I was crazy. Now, 20 years later, if I dont bring them its an up roar!
Final score:
5points
#7
My dad started leading communion for the family at Easter Dinner. I miss him and this tradition now that he has passed.
Final score:
4points
#8
Every new years we each have 12 grapes to represent the months. Each time you eat a grape you make a wish for that month. My mom also does the black eyed peas thing.
Final score:
4points
#9
Our family tradition is tamales on Christmas eve. Everyone helps, everyone eats, great times.
Final score:
3points
#10
I celebrate my family's tradition by eating rice with tofu on Christmas for good luck before the New Year's.
Final score:
2points
#11
Since we have Ukrainian on my mom's side, our Christmas dinners consist of perogies, borscht and cabbage rolls. It's usually just a few of us, so nothing too big.
I know it sounds so common, but since this is an international site I shall share.
Every Christmas we put up a pine or fir tree in the main living space and cram it with breakable decorations. Christmas Eve night we pile gifts underneath and tell the kids Christmas morning some of them are from jolly St. Nick, to keep the magic alive.
We watch Christmas themed movies and play board games.
In Canada we have our Thanksgiving on the 2nd Monday of October. This is when we have our honey glazed ham and turkey, with sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and a soft, buttered dinner roll. Apple pie with ice cream, or pumpkin pie with Cool Whip for dessert. Cooking and eating is pretty much what we do for that day with the whole family over.
That's pretty much it. My family just does their own thing mostly.
Final score:
2points
#12
This is easy. I don't
Final score:
2points
Miguel justino C 3 years ago
Why would someone downvote this. It’s homies life and family, we don’t know the story. Ups all the way
#13
Growing up we never celebrated Christmas and we didn’t get presents, we got presents on New Year’s, that was the only day when we could stay up until midnight. My mother always found a way to trick me into leaving the decorated tree for a second and my father smuggled the presents while I wasn’t looking. I opened them, enjoyed them for a little while and then went to bed. The first Christmas celebration dinner I had was with my future husband and his mother, we invited her over for the holidays (she lived in another city). It felt great and as the first real family celebration ever. She died the next year. Since that day I started going over the top with the holiday (compared to my mother’s way of my childhood). I put Christmas hats to decorate the chairs, i put a nice table cloth traditional for my country, I use traditional colourful clay plates and cook the traditional odd number of dishes. And I invite my mother to join us for dinner. The biggest tradition is to use the same plastic tree we’ve been using with my now husband, it has spent all of our Christmases with us.
Final score:
2points
#14
My daughter and I do a Christmas Eve Box.
It contains Christmas pjs, hot cocoa, microwave popcorn, and a movie or book. I started it when they were little to give them something to open on Christmas Eve. Last year, I got my first Christmas Eve Box. My daughter is 16 now, and I’m so proud to be this amazing person’s mom.
Final score:
2points
#15
Since our family is spread out, traditions have waned but I won’t ever forget my ex husband’s father. He would wrap gifts so you absolutely would not guess what they were. He would use larger boxes, things that rolled around, cinder blocks, 2-liters of Coke. You’d get a pair of socks in a gigantic box that weighed 100 lbs! He passed in 1999 and I’m convinced the world is less of a place without him.
Final score:
2points
#16
We always have black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. They have to be the first thing you eat. They bring good luck, supposedly.
Final score:
1point
#18
The Gift: At Christmas someone always gets 'the gift'. It is generally given to a new family member (BF, GF, Spouse) or it can be someone who became a close friend over the past year who will be sharing the day with us. If there is no one new in the family someone will get 'the gift'. It is generally a small gift, sometimes expensive, most times not. It is wrapped and wrapped, and you guessed it, WRAPPED. I use different items for the wrapping layers, Xmas paper, of course, then there is tin foil, paper towels, wax paper, even toilet paper and tissues. Last years gift, as it grew ended up in a large prescription bottle, to be wrapped and wrapped even more. It is a gift that has been given with love that everyone groans if they are the one who gets it, and those who did not, enjoy the unwrapping. Well over 30 years now and we all still do have fun with it! LOL
Final score:
1point
#19
My dad brought home a 'Charlie Brown' type Christmas tree when I was young kid. My mom saw it
Final score:
0points
#20
My mom lets coffeecake rise overnight on the night before Christmas, then on Christmas morning she starts baking it, then everyone opens their stockings and we have coffeecake before the rest of the presents. Also often we have single family members come over on Christmas morning if they want to so they're not alone :)
Final score:
0points
#21
We play Christmas Monopoly. Every Christmas Eve we play with our family, including my husband’s brother’s family. Whoever wins gets their name written in the box with the year next to it. My 11-year-old is champ three years running!
Final score:
0points
#22
We Started a few years back to buy an early family gift for Christmas eve being a new board game and then to play it with the kids until they fall asleep for Christmas! It is our very own newish tradition but we kept to it and we always have a very festive games night on Christmas eve together.
Final score:
0points
#23
My children and I always have chocolate fondue for New Year's Eve. They look forward to it every year and it keeps them home and safe.
Final score:
0points
#24
My parents owned a restaurant, and on Christmas Eve they'd close early and host a big party for the employees and for any customers who wanted to come. They'd set out lots of food, other people also brought food if they wanted to, and dad made many steaming batches of Swedish glögg, which is a spicy mulled wine in which you'd find boozy little raisins and almonds at the bottom of your cup. There was a gift exchange among employees, and many plates of homemade treats were passed around. A lot of people in town still have fun memories of those parties.
Final score:
0points
#25
Birthday Cake. Usually the cake is given to the newest member of the family having a birthday, so this does not happen every year. It is great because everyone has forgotten about 'the cake' until it next happens. It is a small sheet cake that is made out of Styrofoam, nicely decorated, candles, singing Happy Birthday, the full deal, then they struggle to cut it. Of course there is always a real cake waiting in the background with candles that won't blow out. The look on the poor recipients face is priceless!
Final score:
0points
What do you think ?
GenericPanda09 3 years ago
First, let me caveat this with 'I don't wanna bring the mood down in here'.. not why i'm telling it. That said, it's a rough time of the year coming up because my daughter passed away 3 years ago aged 18 but we'd always had the xmas tradition of me spending xmas eve making santa footprints from the fireplace to the tree in fake snow... sweeping up the 'reindeer food' she'd scattered outside on the path to attract santa's sleigh pullers...getting everything right for morning... (excited some years cause i knew i'd nailed it.. nervous some.. especially when ill health meant i had to take early retirement and my income plummeted and I was hoping I'd at least managed her expectations a bit so she knew that some of the things may not be 'new' new) then getting up/staying up so I could make us bacon butties (sandwiches) for breakfast for when she woke up...and then once we'd sat and eaten them i'd say... 'shall we go and see if santa has been?' (cont. on next)
GenericPanda09 3 years ago (edited)
and then we'd open the living room door and she'd get so excited about the footprints.. even if she was faking it past the age of 8....... the first year i knew she no longer believed was when she picked a bit of snow from a footprint and said 'hmmm... feels like fake snow... then looked at me and said 'he probably did that because it's not really been snowing here'..... every year we had that special routine... every year she was genuinely grateful for what santa had brought.. and f**k i miss her to bits. please don't comment or owt....... after a day of seeing the question and a day of thinking about those times i just needed to get that out of mouth and have a moment and remember . One of the things i like best about those memories is that she never rushed the bacon butties.. that tradition to us was as important as whatever was under the tree.
Load More Replies... GenericPanda09 3 years ago
First, let me caveat this with 'I don't wanna bring the mood down in here'.. not why i'm telling it. That said, it's a rough time of the year coming up because my daughter passed away 3 years ago aged 18 but we'd always had the xmas tradition of me spending xmas eve making santa footprints from the fireplace to the tree in fake snow... sweeping up the 'reindeer food' she'd scattered outside on the path to attract santa's sleigh pullers...getting everything right for morning... (excited some years cause i knew i'd nailed it.. nervous some.. especially when ill health meant i had to take early retirement and my income plummeted and I was hoping I'd at least managed her expectations a bit so she knew that some of the things may not be 'new' new) then getting up/staying up so I could make us bacon butties (sandwiches) for breakfast for when she woke up...and then once we'd sat and eaten them i'd say... 'shall we go and see if santa has been?' (cont. on next)
GenericPanda09 3 years ago (edited)
and then we'd open the living room door and she'd get so excited about the footprints.. even if she was faking it past the age of 8....... the first year i knew she no longer believed was when she picked a bit of snow from a footprint and said 'hmmm... feels like fake snow... then looked at me and said 'he probably did that because it's not really been snowing here'..... every year we had that special routine... every year she was genuinely grateful for what santa had brought.. and f**k i miss her to bits. please don't comment or owt....... after a day of seeing the question and a day of thinking about those times i just needed to get that out of mouth and have a moment and remember . One of the things i like best about those memories is that she never rushed the bacon butties.. that tradition to us was as important as whatever was under the tree.
Load More Replies...
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