We need your Christmas customs and family traditions

[CatherineMumsnet]

We're after all your customs and traditions - stockings, leaving stuff out for santa, dressing the tree, when you open presents, what you eat, carol singing and anything else that makes Christmas in your home.
Thanks everyone

Can't open presents on Christmas morning until street lights have been switched off (santa not guaranteed to have been until then we were told - obv to keep kiddies away from pressies until parents up)

Decorating the tree is always one of those moments which SHOULD be lovely and special, children's eyes shining etc but always ends up as a bickerfest. So you feel pissed off but also guilty for being pissed off that you re an antiXmas miseryguts.

Glad to realise, reading this, I m not alone.

My friend's tradition, when her DC were small, was to tell her DC the wrong date, so they went to bed on Christmas Eve, not knowing what night it was. Then they'd wake up and find stockings on their bed. Cue gasps of wonder and creeping downstairs to find half-eaten carrots and snowy footprints, and of course, presents heaped under the tree

Christmas eve we let the kids have one present from under the tree, which is always their new pjamas ! we watch christmassy tv and read christmasssy stories, then put them to put not too late but a bit later than usual.
Christmas morning their stockings are all at the bottam of their beds, we let them wake up and find them and bring them into our bed to open. I usually video this bit cos it is so sweet, they LOVE their stockings.

Once thats over its traipse downstairs for more presents, saving some for later. Have breakfast, usually anything, we haven't started a tradition yet, but think we now should !!

Lazy morning, not getting dressed too early etc, phone family members, visits from whoever is not coming for dinner, more presents.

Joint parental effort on christmas dinner, usually for my mum plus fil and bil as well some years, drinks, crackers, photos etc ! Presents from dinner guests not till after dinner, so then can have a good play and chill out, watch tv, nap etc, guests to help wash up !

Usually a nice walk later afternoon, then home for more play, tv, food etc, plus cheese and crackers, salad, ham and the like all put out on the table so you can help yourself.

On reflection, this sounds rather dull and we dpn't have nearly as many set traditions and family customs as others do ! Hmm, must steal some methinks..........

Tree goes up on the evening of the day school breaks up (DH and I both teachers) - we decorate after DS has gone to bed and then he discovers it all Christmassy the next morning.

Visit to Santa sometime in the week before Xmas - this year on a steam train

Pantomime - Birmingham Hipppodrome (John Barrowman ) - as close to Xmas as poss.

Christmas Eve - carols from Kings - Christmas Eve party with Secret Santa pressies. Christmassy stories round the tree before hanging up stockings (we all have one)

Christmas Day: stockings at about 7 am round tree. Breakfast, walk, lunch. Presents after lunch. Xmas TV and buffet tea. Once DS is in bed, crappy TV and wine and chocs for me and DH!

DH is a chimney sweep so working right up to Christmas Eve making sure all chimneys are nice and clean for Father Christmas.
Ridiculously overexcited me during Christmas eve working children up to a state of hysteria that can't be calmed down. DD1 anxious to be in bed however so can hang up stocking. DH stays in room with her and looks out of window whilst I sneak into garden and ring jingle bells so we can pretend the reindeers are passing overhead!
Christmas sex in new negligee!
Christmas day....champagne, presents, a lovely walk, church if I can remember the service time. Enormous and jolly dinner, homemade crackers. Raising a glass to absent friends, phone calls with family miles apart, enormous feeling of how exceptionally blessed we are. LOVE IT. LOVE IT LOVE IT

we do the german thing and have a family christmas meal on christmas eve and open some presents then.

Thinking back to when we were kids, some traditions I'd like to carry on with DD when she is older...

We used to write a list to Santa, never a massive list but our ideal pressie and a few stocking fillers

We used to make signs for where Santa was to leave our pressies - each year we'd take turns on who got the sofa / 2 seater or chair (and therefore sitting on floor to open pressies!)

We were not allowed downstairs until we were showed and dressed properly, in a new dress usually, whilst dad was downstairs wondering loudly if Santa had come

If it had snowed the night before, back in the good old days, mum and dad would be excited about the tracks that were showing in the snow (which made us sob one year as we realised we'd missed santa!)

Me and my sisters would open our pressies.

Then Dad would go to the cemetary to put flowers on his mum, dad and brothers graves.

We'd move our pressies to our room while Dad was gone (and I for some reason would always look out the window waiting for him to get home, fearing something bad would happen) and when he got back, mum and dad would open their pressies.

Big dinner, we were never allowed any brekkie on Xmas day to ensure we had enough room for dinner! In the good old days, it was mum dad me my two sisters my step sister and step brother, their partners, my uncle

Afterwards dad would go for a sleep.

Everybody would dive in and tidy up then we'd retire to the living room to watch one of the new dvd's and eat the sweets (I always ear marked myself a box of matchmakers and then refused to eat anything else)

Dad would get up and we'd go for a walk around the block and then come back home for turkey sandwiches.

Boxing day was also fab, we'd have the same people for dinner plus another aunt and uncle and grandparents etc as it is my dad's birthday. We used to have a massive table in the dining room and then people sitting on the chairs around the room as there was not enough room.

Since I (and my sisters) have moved into my own place, with exception of last year, it has meant that we all moved back into the home for xmas eve so we all got up at the same time.

Last year DH said we should have xmas by ourselves as a family, so we did and after dinner went to my mum and dad's, was lovely.

The Bullerby children dance around the tree in their chrismas festivities in their little Swedish village.

I wasn't sure if this was based on reality or rather idealised. Am pleased to hear it really happens.

our traditions, slightly german marked (as I am german )....
we have old fashioned wooden decoration on the tree,like red wooden apples, little wooden figures, natural things like pinecones and nuts....

baking biskuits....iced and not iced, but baking lots

on x-mas eve we have a nice festive special dinner at home and then kids get a few presents (the german presents)....all get a pyjama and we also open up a dvd for the family to watch that night....

than c-mas morning etc...normal...but might change this year...because last x-mas went kinda very wrog, and not sure we risk that

1. Tree and decs go up the weekend before Christmas.
2. Litsen to Carols from Kings on New Years Eve.
3. We track Santa using the NORAD site, DN lives in NZ so DD likes to check that Santa has visted her and where he get is / how long it will be till he gets to the UK.
4. Carrot, mince pie and a glass of whiskey left out for Santa and reindeers. All eaten / drunk by morning with crumbs etc as evidence.
5. Presents appear under the tree during the night including a stocking for DD.
6. Present opening in PJs.
7. Lovely Xmas turkey with all trimmings.
8. Soundtrack cheesy Christmas CDs picked by DD.

Tree presents - we have the main big presents in the morning and then to keep the fun going we do tree presents in the afternoon. These are smaller silly presents often got from charity shops. My favourite tree present was a book on using your microwave to dry flowers.

We have always spent Christmas with my parents and brother and sister-in-law - either our house or theirs.

Every year, we put stockings at the fire place for every person in the house (currently 9, 6 adults, 3 children!). Then, magically, with not too much banging of toes on furniture, throughout the night, person by person the stockings are filled (tiny pressies for the adults from everyone). It is really lovely as the children are excited that the adults have also been visited by Santa and no-one quite knows what has come from where so it feels a little like magic!

Our main food tradition relates to the meat - there has to be turkey, ham, sausage meat stuffing and spiced beef. It is not Christmas for our family without the smell of spiced beef boiling on Christmas Eve.

We are hosting Christmas this year and all the family are coming from IReland so it is very exciting and I am v. smug - cake and puddings already made!

Our's is a truly Swedish and Bullerbyesque affair! Festivities begin at Xmas eve lunch with glogg and cold ham as we watch the snow fall outside in Kent. Polar Express goes on the DVD in the afternoon for children while grown ups prepare the evening meal. A bit a of a variation on Swedish Xmas dinner is served at about 6.30pm: Morfar (grandad) signals the start of dinner by putting John Lennon's "So this is Christmas" on the CD player - rather gloomy but a long standing family joke from 1982 - and we tuck into pickled herring and shnapps, fillet steak and Delia's choc log. Santa arrives in person after dinner making our place in the UK the first port of call once he has delivered pressies to all children in Sweden and leaves gifts for the youngest and oldest member of the extended family to distribute to those who have been good. We open presents but don't dance around the tree as living room isn't big enough. We then fall into bed or Midnight Mass and do trad UK Xmas on Christmas Day with stockings and a few pressies for children so they aren't completely overwhelmed on Xmas eve. Boxing day is double hangover.

DH takes the children out to choose a tree a week or so before Xmas

Lots of baking - biscuits, cake etc

Xmas eve - crib service at church, new xmas pj's, might include a dvd to sit and watch this year

Leave cake and a drink for Father Xmas and a carrot for Rudolf

Up Xmas morning to find all the presents have arrived including a stocking for everyone

Xmas dinner around 2pm - traditional turkey with all the trimings

This year we are back in the UK for the first time in 3 years and we will be having Xmas at our own house. Used to go to my parents. Not sure if anyone will join us or if it will just be the 4 of us and a very big bump!!!

No trsaditions here

am at those that have traditions they sound delish.

We have a ix of cultures, english and spanish, so we open one pressie on Xmas eve and have a family dinner. ds goes to bed and dh and I put up the tree, although this year ds is old enough to help without "helping"!! so I think we'll do it together. We put out carrots, a glass of milk and some bickies that ds and I made earlier that day specially for father christmas. The bickies need to have silvery sparkles on.
Then on Xmas morning it's back to english and ds finds his stocking and runs around squeaking while dh and I scrape ourselves out of bed (6am ish), we snuggle up in dressing gowns and go downstairs to find the Xmas tree all lit up (mummy sneaks downstairs to switch on!) and pressies underneath. We have a present-fest while daddy opens the bucks fizz, then ad-hoc breakfast when we're ready.
Subsequent food is retrieved from the fridge as and when anyone is hungry - there's usually some prawns, dips, lots of crusty bread and a mountain of little silver trays all full of takeaway curry that Daddy collected on Xmas eve It's open house, and people keep popping round, so it's much easier this way and there's always something ready for a hungry visitor!

We go to bed when we're all ready and all the fizz is gone.

We have a 2nd celebration on 12th night, "kings night". Traditionally villages choose 3 men from the community who dress up as the 3 kings. Parents then give their children's presents to them in advance, and on kings night there's a knock at the front door and your children answer to find a fully costumed glittery king bearing gifts. Often with a horse and cart if your village is in the countryside. Cool huh.

Tree goes up 12 days before, christmas music on in background. The whole of downstairs gets fully kitted out and it takes all day.

Stocking in dd's room once shes sleeping (even though shes too young to open it by herslef). We all get up really early, christmas music goes back on and presents get opened.

Then my dh goes to pick my mum up and once shes arrived and opened her presents its bacon/sausage sandwhiches with bucks fizz.

Then its dinner. A nice joint with all the trimmings. Plenty of wine and a nice bottle of chamapgne. christmas pud. to follow and then we pop the crackers.

After dinner its rest and relaxation time. We have an open house so friends come round and I lay out a buffet of sandwhiches, nibbles etc.

Then we drink and party until the early hours when everyone leaves and we collapse exhausted into bed.

drink loads

Just me that has inherited the maternal conditioning that forces me to hand out teeny nail scissors to anyone over 5 then?

So they can cut along the sellotape on their pressies v neatly, & I can salvage the paper to use for 'family' presents (ever smaller presents due to cutting off tatty sellotaped bits, obviously) for the next ten years?

Driving hundreds of miles. Arguing with those we have driven to see. Threatening not to do it again next year.

Christmas Eve - I get up at 4am to decorate the tree with hand-blown baubles and also a few ornaments that the kids have made over the years .

We go carol-sinign to all the elderly folk who live nearby then eat a hearty lunch of soup and crusty bread.

In the eveneing the moppets open their new pyjamas and drink hot chocolate by flickering candle-light.

Dh & I are woken on Christmas morning by the squeals of delight as the moppets tumble adorably into our bed with the stockings. We tousle their golden curls as they exclaim with delight at their gifts.

Ach, no. Fuck it. DH is usually working, MIL winds me up and my middle sister ALWAYS fights with my foul-tempered Grandfather. My mum will lose the plot & start shrieking somewhere between doing the sprouts and basting the turkey while my dad gets ever quieter and more pissed. It's fab .

We decided in early 2002, after a particularly harrowing Christmas experience involving my family (mum, step dad, sisters), that we would stop feeling any obligation to spend Christmas with them.

So ever since it's just been me, dh, ds and dd and very lovely it's been too. No pressure or stress or arguments, just the four of us.

We don't even bother with a turkey, just cook roast whatever we feel like (it was duck last year iirc) and the children don't even have to join us if they've eaten too much chocolate to be bothered with real food.

So there aren't really any traditions other than the children get a stocking each and some other main presents and we all have a lovely time with none of that family shite stress. Best decision we made, that.

This thread is really interesting me.

I am this year having my first family xmas so can start creating our own traditions and not having to be tied to many i hated as a child.

I am deffo going to do the new pj's thing on xmas eve with mince pies and family dvd.

Also doing the carrot for riendeers and mince pie and milk for santa (not booze he has far to much already)

last year we tracked santa on the online radar tracker which was fun.

I am determined not to fight with dp this xmas day or when were putting dec's up like we did last year.

This thread has actually made me feel quite sad because we spend every Christmas with my parents or the in laws and so everything we do is actually someone elses tradition not mine. Come to that if mil had her way there would never have been stockings - she didn't do them for hers and expressed considerable surprise when I insisted on it. Dh also tried to put a spoke in it when I was expecting dd1 by saying that it was tantamount to telling your child lies and he wasn't going to do that. After I threatened to leave him he backed off! I long for a Christmas that doesn't involve loading the car and trying to fit everything in. For a Christmas morning when I can wake up in my own bed and go to my own church. We do have a nice time at relatives of course but I was hoping now we have a bit more space that we could stay put and them come to us - maybe next year?