Tell me about your overseas Christmas

[CeciliaMcFlange]

I'd like to hear how global MNs are spending Christmas, where will you be? What will you eat? Who will be there? Who will you miss?

I'm in South Australia, in a small town in the Adelaide Hills, it will be 35 degrees and we'll have lunch with my husbands family. We all bring something for the lunch, I'll do salads and dessert - probably a choc cheesecake for the kids and thinking about Prosecco Jelly with Aperol Granita for the grown ups.

We eat outside, the kids play and much wine will be drunk (dh in the wine biz). Hopefully the local Koala will make an appearance. Then off to friends for the evening where the kids can swim. After 15 years of living here I am now used to, and love, a hot Christmas.

However, all my family are in the UK, I will miss them horribly. Would love to be home for a cold Christmas one year and my children are desperate to be somewhere snowy!

Also, we had Christmas Eve when we were in BKK with a family from Bulgaria. On Xmas Eve they did a big meal that had to be completely vegetarian and had to be an odd number of dishes. It was brilliant!

We’re back in good ol’ Blighty now but just back from the UAE. We had 6 Christmas’s over there and each one was slightly different but usually included lots of Christmas markets and fayres over the weeks leading up to Christmas, carols in the desert, soirée at the Ambassadors house, Christmas do’s at various hotels and malls. Most of the malls were decorated to the nines for Christmas with Santa’s grottos and animated displays etc. We’d go down one of the marinas and play in the ‘snow’ there (also the water fountains) and attend various Christmas church services.

Christmas Eve was usually hosted at various friends houses ( ours one year and different friends other years). Everyone would bring food ( for the bbq and the table) and drink to share ( and if we ran out then a phone call to the local shop and a delivery would bring some more.) We’d spend the day and evening enjoying peoples company, swimming, playing cricket or football, listening to music and generally chilling.

Christmas Day the kids would come into us to open the stockings that Father Christmas had bought them and then downstairs where Christmas music would go on and we’d have bacon butties for breakfast and then open presents. Then everyone showered and dressed ready for the day.

We had different days over the years. The first was at home with roast duck and all the trimmings and a nice Christmas pudding from M&S, followed by Christmas movies and playing with toys in the afternoon and hot chocolate stollen around a friends in the afternoon.

Another after unwrapping presents we went to the beach for a Christmas bbq with friends and swam, kayaked and SUPed with singing carols around the fire and marshmallow roasting in the evening.

Another we had my parents visiting so after presents we went to church and picked up full Christmas dinner fully prepared and cooked for us to eat at home followed by an evening at our local golf club club house for Christmas festivities and food with friends.

The last Christmas we were there after presents we went to a hotel and had a Christmas brunch with music from a harpist and a quartet, a visit from Father Christmas the works. Followed by an afternoon in the hotel pool and then back home in the evening for bacon butties, hot chocolate and Christmas movies.

We‘re in Germany but keeping the UK traditions! Our neighbours all open their gifts on the 24th, we‘ll be doing ours on the 25th as usual, then hosting our usual “waifs and strays” dinner with turkey, Christmas pudding and crackers! Today I’m in the middle of all the food prep. We had snow a week ago but it’s all gone now, sadly no white Christmas for us.

We are in Brisbane, Australia - and we have been gifted with a cool change. Soooooo happy. It is only 21 degrees tonight which means the locals are shivering in their cardigans and my dog and I are comfortable. Tomorrow will be 28, which is still hot and gross, but it’s been hanging around ten degrees higher than that lately, so it could be worse. We had friends around for dinner tonight. We had wine and oysters and the kids had pizza and watched Home Alone. Tomorrow they will be up at Sparrow’s Fart (early) to try and convince us to let them open their presents. We have 12 y/o twins and a 14 y/o, so Santa’s delivering elsewhere. They will have to wait until after dog walk and breakfast. (It is our long, summer holidays from school, so early morning is the time to enforce exercise before it’s too hot.) Pancakes and fresh berries so they have something healthy, as I know the rest of the day will go to crap. My FIL & SMIL are coming to lunch and will bring beige 80’s processed crap that he will eat. (Think fried rice from a packet or a salad containing grated carrot but none of the ingredients must touch.) I am going all out making exotic salads with fruit and beetroot and nuts and spices and goats cheese so SMIL doesn’t die of boredom. Then when they leave, packing up and visiting relatives who live on an island not far from here. Will be fun as haven’t seen them all together in over 20 years. There will be wine and seafood and laughing. Hopefully dolphins at dusk, too!

We're struggling to feel festive here in the US. Our visa renewal was denied so we've had less than three weeks notice to leave the country. The packers on Boxing Day and we fly home on the 28th. We're having to leave our dog here as they can't ship him over Christmas so he is going into kennels for two weeks which he will hate.

We're trying to eat up the contents of freezer and cupboards without buying any new food but I have got a turkey breast for tomorrow. I bought a jar of mincemeat when I saw it in Walmart weeks ago but have not had time to make mince pies with trying to sort out the move. The children keep moaning that Christmas is ruined and are upset about leaving their friends and all I can do is promise them it will be better next year!

We're in Germany and do things sort of the German way (presents appear after lunch on Christmas eve) which I prefer. I don't really have fond memories of British Christmases as my mother used to get so stressed, and everything was over structured and regimented with a lot of compulsory church attendance and ceremonial present opening tightly controlled and regulated and very drawn out, and lunch being very, very late but with no snacking before and at least 33 tantrums about ungratefulness timetabled in...

So we don't do it that way :o

We watch a film of the kids choice on the evening of the 23rd, though I was working and it turned out the kids and DH had binge watched 3 films through the day!

We usually bring the tree in and put it up and decorate it on Christmas eve, but this year the kids put it up (with permission) on the 22nd, so nothing much happened Christmas eve morning. Kids are old enough not to need distracting from over excitement though.

Our traditions grew up around going to the PIL on the 25th - so we have an English Christmas dinner on 24th at 1pm (Germany normally just have something simple like sausages and potato salad on 24th). Then presents after lunch (kids all watch a film upstairs on the portable TV/DVD player we have for sleepover use while "The Christkind" puts the presents under the tree).

Present opening - totally unregulated and joyful but they are touchingly grateful for everything and only usually get 4 or 5 presents. All afternoon playing with presents.

Brotzeit in the evening - bread and cheese and chopped apple essentially :o

25th we used to go to PIL for a big family meal with BILs and their partners if they had them at the time, MIL would do a roast - pork or duck usually, with dumplings and Rotkraut. She decorated her tree the traditional German way with real candles until DC2 was a mobile baby, when she switched to electric ones, and always had a full crib scene under the tree and lots of presents for the kids.

MIL died last year though and FIL and BILs have gone to a hotel for the Christmas season - we were invited but it wasn't really child friendly and clashed with my work shifts, as I only have 3 days off. DH didn't really want the hassle anyway, tbh neither did I, and whilst the kids aren't tiny they are young enough to get bored with several days in a hotel over Christmas and nowhere to play with their presents.

So we've had a full English breakfast and are having a slob out day, more like British Boxing Day.

I've opened the laptop to work actually, but appear not to be... Kids are all on screens except DC1 who's engrossed in a book...

This suits me - I far prefer it to the stress and tension and timetabling of my childhood Christmas season, but perhaps my kids will grow up to want to make more of a big deal of Christmas, who knows...

DumpTrump sorry about your visa situation - was that totally unexpected? Is it a Trump anti immigrant regime policy change?

On the east coast of US here and a little disappointed not to have a white Christmas. After many years on the west coast and very warm holidays, which never felt right to me, I was hoping for snow and for it to be a little colder. Maybe next year. We had a traditional Christmas turkey dinner at Thanksgiving, so today we will have a ham with a hashbrown casserole, carrots and green beans. For dessert we have cookies, apple pie and pumpkin pie. Leftovers will make a lovely ham and bean soup on boxing day.

In KSA here. It's been fairly shite tbh. Not doing another Xmas here. It's lonely, pointless and miserable.

France here with a french DH. So we do French style food the 24th evening, then stockings and traditional British Christmas lunch on the 25th. Though we had guinea fowl rather than turkey cos it's delicious.

Fortunately we're in Paris so there's M&S for stuffing, Christmas pudding and cake etc.

We're in Spain and do a meal on the evening of 24th, often fish but not necessarily. Then I do a sort of Xmas Day dinner, but much simpler, basically roast potatoes and sausages and vegetables and gravy just.

Here the 5th/6th Jan is a bigger deal than Xmas and it's when the 3 kings (wise men) bring the presents.

Caribbean here - we went for the full turkey and the trimmings! Except that we couldn't get sprouts and the choice of (frozen) turkey was either a tiny rolled breast joint or a huge bird....so we will be eating turkey until the middle of 2019... We did almost everything the same as if we were at home in terms of stockings, tree presents and lunch - but the kids played int he pool while DH and I cooked, and after we ate we hit the beach for some sunshine and cocktails

New Year's Eve is very different here - lots of firecrackers being set off throughout the day, with far less importance attached to the countdown to midnight (which is great for those of us who like to be tucked up in bed by 9pm )

Our first Christmas in the UAE and also the first without DC, so doubly strange. I'm off but DH had to book annual leave. We had a hotel brunch, where my only option for vegetarian main course was palak paneer, so that wasn't festive at all. They did have stollen though, and the most amazing gingerbread house that was over 7ft tall (I didn't eat that, though).

It was about 25C. We went for a stroll after brunch then came home and chilled out. We have UK tv programmes so are re-watching the Bond films.

We spoke to our parents and DH's DD but my DD was busy with her father and his partner's family and the timing just didn't work

Kikipost Are Brussels sprouts only really considered a Christmas veg in the Uk?

Brussels sprouts are definitely a Christmas thing in the Chicago area (and also in Kansas City) - maybe for the benefit of people of Irish heritage.

Proper Irish ham is not possible to find, sadly.

We do a sort of a hybrid German and Irish Christmas here. A festive Christmas Eve meal is followed by opening of presents from friends and family, and overnight Santa leaves presents under the tree that are opened on Christmas morning. Big breakfast/brunch, stuff to nibble during the afternoon (smoked salmon, crackers, brie) and dinner in the evening - a few of my DCs hate turkey so I only do one at Thanksgiving. We have roast beef, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, sweet potatoes (no marshmallows), sprouts, green beans, carrots, gravy. Dessert is pumpkin pie, tiramisu (they hate proper trifle and this is the next best thing) and buche de Noel.

DumpTrump Hope 2019 goes much better for you and your family.

I hate Brussels unless hidden in Bubble and squeak with the Xmas ham. When I first moved to Cyprus we had to go to every supermarket on the island to find them. Now even my rural village supermarkets sell fresh ones. Bizarrely I think people have developed a taste for them.

Very late to the party....
I left DH in Saudi, as Xmas day (and all the rest) are working days, and went back to my Mums for a British Xmas. So, pigs in blankets and alcohol abound, while DHs alarm clock went off at 0530 and he sat infront of his computer, alcohol and pork free.