We need your Christmas customs and family traditions

Oh and I also buy them a special outfit each tht they wear on Xmas Day and then I babywipe it clean and they wear it agian on Boxing Day. (I spend more than i should on said outfits)

They also have their own minature xmas tree each and each year since they were born I buy them a special xmas decoration each.

Family traditions:

• The poorly disguised look of disappointment on inlaws faces when they realise we yet again failed to buy them 5 carat diamonds for christmas
• The cat pissing on the christmas tree while everyone eats christmas dinner
• The repair bill from fixing a new catflap to the back door when said cat attempts to drag large turkey carcass out the catflap
• DD eating too much chocolate (for breakfast ) and vomiting down her top as we lift her into the high chair at lunchtime.
• Me heating up the wrong part of the double oven and wondering why the turkey is just sweating a bit but otherwise totally raw four hours after putting it in
• Elderly relatives getting completely blotto on wine despite insisting 'I'll only have half a glass' (refilled often) and passing out in the sprouts

I bloody hate christmas.

Xmas Eve - my mum, step-dad and sister rock up around 3pm. We exchange presents to each other over a glass of something chilled. Then we all eat together. Girls then open their xmas eve presents from me, - pj's a new xmas book and a new dvd. They wear new pj's, watch new dvd, get Santa's mince pie and glass of wine ready and then go to bed and i read them their new book and also the Xmas Story pop up book to them.
Have another drink with family downstairs and they tottle off. DP and I tidy up, leave behind mince pie crumbs and a thank you note, we drink more wine and fall into bed.

Xmas Day - girls open stockings and DP makes scrambled egg & smoked salmon. We watch xmas tv, and get dressed. I leave to pick up my dad and drop him at my PIL. Then come home, collect DP and the girls and go up to DP's mum & Dads. We drink kia royales and eat pigs in blankets etc. Dinner is served, we have frois gras to start. Then turkey and all the trimmings. DP's mum is an amazing cook. We then get the sticky drinks out and put the girls in front of the TV while we drink said stickys and pick and eat more than we should.
Then we retire, divvy up the pressies and watch girls play. We steal some turkey for a late night sarnis, call a cab for my dad, bundle girls into warm clothes and shove them into buggys with blankets and hats and scarves and walk home. Put them to bed and fall onto sofa with a turkey sarnie and some more booze and the TV.

Boxing Day - , let girls slob and play, as do we, then we go back up to DP's parents have bubble & squeak. Then we drive to my mums and join in the family party, my aunts, uncles, cousins, their kids, close friends of family etc. Kids get more presents and eat nibbly food under the dining table while we pick, chat and drink.

Then it's back home again where we stay for at least the next 36 hours!

When DD was 3 she named a favourite toy bunny "Baby Jeezers".

So now Baby Jeezers site at the head of the table on Christmas day and we all sing Happy Birthday.

Christmas Eve, candlelit midnight mass

Christmas Day, Stockings from Father Christmas, off to SIL to give presents. Meet MIL and FIL there.

Off to my parents at 12 noon for christmas lunch followed by Queens Speech whilst consuming copious amounts of alcohol.

Then we gather around the Christmas Tree and open presents (this can take a while)

TV and 40 winks

Okay x-mas tree ( i'm in the mood now LOL)

one week before christmas day.. we go out.. led by me.. to find THE BIGGEST perfectly shaped beautiful christmas tree going. This can take a while!
DC's get excited then a bit bored.. DH starts to say all of the trees are fantastic and perfect.. but there not.

I eventually find the tree.. yippee.. DH tells me it's too big.. I insist it is just right.

lug said tree to car.. which is a small 1.2 punto..realise that dc's and to adults are not going to fit in said car with said tree.
said tree is too big to go on the roof..

dc's pile out of car.. dh shoves tree into car.. with much panting and groaning.. forces the door shut.. and drives tree home.

Dc's and I stay at said garden tree type place and look about until dh arrives back to pick us up..

get back home.. put tree in tree stand.. and undo the netty type stuff.. tree springs out.. and Fills the room.. the top is bend over on the ceiling .. dh adjusts the tree to fit in room muttering all the time that it was in FACT too bloody big!

then there is much drink and folly and dancing to xmas music whilst decorating goes on with all.

( sorry)

One present on christmas eve, the rest on christmas morning.

Cats get turkey too.

Traditional fight with inlaws must be carried out AFTER lunch since we've all made an effort to cook it and we will SODDING WELL ENJOY IT before we start the 'he said, she said' argument we've had every year for the past decade FFS

Christmas is very special for me, and it has followed the same pattern since I was little (with the exception of the Christmas spent in Kerala)

We decorate the three on 23rd December. We have a rice pudding like porridge for dinner which is absolutely delicious, with melted butter on top, a generous sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon. There is ONE almond in the porridge, and the lucky recipient gets the treasure: a marzipan pig.

Christmas is synonymous with Marzipan pigs here, some are covered in chocolate, some in chocolate and hundreds and thousands, but I prefer them with no coating at all.

The main day of Christmas is 24th December. We wake up around 9, have breakfast as usual, and rush up to see morning tv with Mickey Mouse, and Donald Duck, Bambi on ice, it is the same on tv every year here... Around is shown a Czeck production of Cinderella, made in the sixties I think, which is absolutely beatiful, it is in original language, but with a narrator! We eat a sweet bread with jellied fruits in, with real butter on top. Then I put ALL the presents under the tree.

I help my mum cook Christmas Dinner, which is a massive rack of pork. Real home made sauerkraut, and cabbage stewed in cream, potatoes, softly cooked apricots and prunes, and home made cranberry jam. Normally this is enjoyed with a Faustion V. We are too full for pudding.

Then we head up to the cemetary. It takes us a while to dress up in thermals, I can tell you, and normally we have to go in two cars. We have candles, seasonal decorations, a bottle of water to make the candles freeze stuck in the snow, and a spade. The Churchbells are normally ringing as we enter the cemetary. It is still, and serene, totally dark except thousands of candles on decorated graves. We decorate, light the candles, give thoughts to the year that has passed, we remember our ancestors, and head home. Around that time, the airforce is having an airdisplay of fighters flying in formatin over town.

It is time to eat when we get in, as my mum will have laid the table while we are gone. After the meal my mum goes to have a lie down, while my sister and I clean the dishes and finnish the wine. Time for coffee and christmas cake, and THEN: PRESENTS!!!!

Seeing as we're (or at least I am) always ill over Christmas and one year we were waiting and waiting for a new baby... we spend Christmas Day in our pyjamas.

oh and the xmas tree is a whole other post so won't go into that LOL

christmas eve
bake all baked things.. mince pies, sausage rolls, orange and spice mini cakes.. make the non christmas pud pud a steam spong pud which involves a lot of orange brandy and syrup ( for thos who hate xmas pud).. Dh drinks surplus brandy.

Cook ham, beef and pork joint.
prepare veg pick up turkey from butcher and prep that too.

put family pressies under tree.
all done with christmas classical music on.
put FC pressies out.. sprinkle table confetti stars around pressies and leading to fire place.. bite mince pie and carrot left out for FC.

christmas day.
hear dc's whispered voices and padding of feet into each others bedrooms.
tell them to put on slippers and wait for mum, whist dh sneaks downstairs to put treelights on to show fc has been.. he then comes back upstairs. ( it's the glow under the door).
whispered hysteria from dc's cos
they are looking under the door through the gap to see if the lights really are on.

open door. each dc finds their pressies.. we watch them open them.. then we have brekkie.. smoked salmon, scrambled eggs or boiled eggs and asparagas. buck fizz..

we play. make calls... have dinner about 1 ish.. play with dc's family come over and we start again!

I think posting this will make everyone else snigger but never mind; v.traditional Christmas is -

Put tree up about a week before Christmas with NO help from anyone, just me, my glass baubles and Allegri's Miserere on CD, Preceded by lots of men twirling trees for me at local market.

Pantomimme in Canterbury for ALL dc's (even the 17 yr old still wants to come

Christmas sacks made of hessian that even the non believers believe passionately in come Christmas Eve. DD2 says that the smell of hessian instantly reminds her of Christmas!

Midnight Mass by candlelight.

Sausage rolls.Huge bowl of Quality Street.

Long walk on Camber Sands on Boxing Day.

After 2 years living with DP I still find it strange having xmas dinner in the evening (we've been spending the day from lunchtime with them). My mum always did it for 2pm as she liked watching telly in the evening!

So ours is: Me, DP and Tom get up, have breakfast open a present each (well I open any from friends and Tom has one), then we goto the PIL and open more presents, go for a walk, eat dinner and if no one has fallen out, play a game. Boxing day, Tom opens the rest of his pressies from us and we go over to the PIL again. New years day we do our own turkey dinner.

The first xmas together, we took Tom to see santa at a dodgy grotto on xmas eve, lol.

LOL @rubyrubyruby's Dad

Always midnight mass.

Stockings then breakfast.

Animals fed and walked.

Then main presents which are in a locked sitting room, everyone has a different place/chair, and youngest goes in first, we are all lined up.

Lunch

Presents from under christmas tree from Father Christmas which covers pressie for lunch guests.

scrambled eggs and ham in evening.

sometime before that we will attend a carols by candlelight - usually held in a park or something and sing christmas carols.

our girls get new pyjamas to wear christmas night.

On christmas eve our extended family gets together to have a christmas dinner and exchange presents. Aunts/ uncles cousins.

I always read the girls - the night before christmas at bedtime on christmas eve - only we have the Australian version!!!

We have scrambled eggs, smoke salmon and bucks fizz for breakfast and then off to my mother's for lunch with my brothers and nieces/nephew. Seafood - fresh prawns some salads - slowly converting my mother away from roast dinner for lunch here in AUS!!! Always huge leg ham that needs to be carved though.

Christmas eve is also spent putting together presents that needed to be assembled - usually before we go to aunt's house.

Everyone gets a stocking and that can be opened first. Then breakfast and then open other presents.

1. Up, hungover and needing chocolate for breakfast.
2. Small tipple.
3. Minor spat.
4. Groaning and tripping over Stuff.
5. Proper drink.
6. Fight. Preferably someone very old bringing up a disagreement from 1945 with someone who is now dead.
7. Big glass of wine and hide bottle strategically in tree for own use.
8. Fight, turkey involved and possibly gravy.
9. Things quite fuzzy, locate someone's brandy in tree by mistake but don't notice it's not my wine.

They're plastic, not china!

we'd break ours [pragmatic answer to sensible suggestion]

I do a photo bauble Xmas tree ornament thingummy of each boy each year. [sensible suggestion]