so what are your plans for Christmas?

[Guest]

How do you celebrate?

 

[scheherazade_79]

I'm a last minute present-wrapper. Have been known to do it on Christmas morning

Usually spend Christmas eve driving around looking at decorations, before heading someplace scenic until I'm sure my parents are back from midnight mass and safely in bed so I don't get questions asked about my glazed expression.

Christmas morning starts with scrambled egg and smoked salmon on toast. Then there's the present opening... This year's going to be cool, cos my nephew's old enough to get hyped up and excited over Christmas.

Everyone apart from me ends up sleeping in the afternoon after the Queen's speech.

Christmas night is usually spent in a cave on one of my favourite beaches

 

[3113]

How do you celebrate?

Christmas Eve we celebrate with a big pot of cioppino (seafood stew with a stock of tomatoes, wine, saffron and leeks) which includes lobster, crab, scallops and salmon (visiting the fish market to get these ingredients is an experience in itself). Salad, garlic bread and some kind of desset. This year it will probably be chocolate chip gingerbread cookies. We usually invite over the neighbors.

Christmas day starts by dropping off some of the leftover cioppino to family members, and then we join friends for movie day. Friends of ours started this. They e-mail everyone a list of movies they'll be seeing throughout the day (3-4 movies). Anyone can join them at any movie. Usually they go for the big ones. They start around 10am, and take a break at around 7pm for dinner--which, again, is open for anyone to join them.

It's great fun to see these movies with 5-10 people, and then talk about them over dinner.

 

[fieryjen]

I'm not going home this year because my parents will be celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary in New Zealand, but my sister and my best friend will be coming over from Germany. I'm extremely happy about it, since that way, I won't be so homesick around Christmas. Instead, I'll be able to have a nice, German style Christmas with my boyfriend, my best friend and my sister, who are some of the most awesome people in my life.

Needless to say, I'm very much looking forward to it.

We will open our presents on the evening of the 24th, after spending the day decorating, baking cookies and doing last-minute wrapping. There will be a small lunch and a very early dinner, which will probably consist of mashed potatoes, sauerkraut and brats. Unfortunately, I won't be able to import the sausage we usually eat - and it's hard to find even in Germany.

On the 25th, we will (hopefully) have duck (also a family tradition). I haven't prepared it before, so I'm kind of nervous about it, but I've gotten plenty of advice from my dad on it. The rest is pretty much up to whatever everyone wants to do.

 

[Trinique_Fire]

Hm...I'll try to buy gifts for my buddies here (money's tight but I want everyone to have something), and that's about it. I'm not going home for the holiday and have no family here I can spend the day with, so I'll probably drink. A lot.

 

[Just-Legal]

Normally, Christmas is a bit of a disaster. Up until three years ago we *always* had my Grandfather around, then my mother got fed up of being asked to cope with a man who spent the whole day reminicing about his wife who had passed and reducing me to tears, so she told my Uncle and Aunt *they* could deal with him, and Christmas Day became a non-event.

Christmas Eve my dad always makes a bit of an effort, big meal with a HUGE peice of ham which has been slow-cooked all day. Lord do I love that ham.

This year, Mark's family and I are going for a pub dinner, which is just fine by all of us. We intend to eat too much, drink too much, come back and collapse on the sofa watching cheesy movies and see who falls asleep first - the pub is a regular venue of Mark's parents, so they're making Bandit (Mark's Staffie) a takeaway dinner

 

[RogueLurker]

We'll have my mom over for dinner after she's gone to mass on the 24th. It's going to be a bittersweet evening though, our friend (who was a witness for our wedding) who used to join us passed away two years ago and it's hard to do the things we used to without getting a little sad. We'll watch the Grinch and go to bed.

The 25th is a quiet day around here ... presents, dinner, relaxing.

 

[S-Des]

Have my daughter for Christmas Eve, so that will be a blast. Christmas day will be a total bust, so I'll either sleep in, or see if I can volunteer somewhere. I get my big Christmas 10 days later.

 

[rgraham666]

Christmas Day, my folks will pick me up and we'll drive to my sister's for Christmas dinner. That will be something traditional.

My other siblings, their spouses/lovers and their house apes will be there. We'll talk a lot. Every one stays over.

Boxing Day, someone drives me home.

I like to keep it simple and quiet.

 

[Fallenfromgrace]

Christmas is spent watching my sisters get excited about it all.
I'm getting older now so it doesnt hold that magic for me.
Also, my grandfather passed away days before christmas 2 years ago, and so it's just not a good time of year for me especially.

this year *I* will be woken up early by my middle sister (coz apparently im a parent!!??) and we will go down and open presents. my dad will be at work unfortunately- 7am till 7pm, pretty important job i guess *sigh*

 

[kendo1]

The kids are getting to an age where they don't get up at the crack of dawn, thank goodness. This is the first time in 25 years when I won't be working Christmas eve, Boxing day, New Year's eve, etc. till some ungodly hour.

So, I'll be relaxing, watching telly, eating a huge dinner and drinking to excess.
the mother-in-law will turn up at lunchtime and will be taken back to her lair about 7.

 

[Alessia Brio]

How do you celebrate?

I don't celebrate. I endure.

 

[Trombonus]

I'm going to England to spend the holidays with my family. To say I'm excited would be the biggest understatement in the history of understatements.

 

[cloudy]

I don't celebrate. I endure.

Usually that's me, as well. But this year, I'm really, really hoping to be somewhere where there's a white christmas - for the first time in my life.

 

[Alessia Brio]

Usually that's me, as well. But this year, I'm really, really hoping to be somewhere where there's a white christmas - for the first time in my life.

Hope it works out for you!

 

[cloudy]

Hope it works out for you!

Thanks, babe.

(You'll have to come visit next spring/summer - Lake Huron is gorgeous, and right on the rez)

 

[deliciously_naughty]

How do you celebrate?

Last year we went to a movie and then had a search for food that ended in vain as I'd forgotten to go grocery shopping and we had pathetically little food in the apartment.

This year we'll be in India. My husband's parents emmigrated from India (he was born and mostly raised here) and not everyone was able to make it to the wedding so we're doing a second reception there. I'm totally pysched b/c his mom is having a traditional outfit made for me (called a chanya choli-saris are a pain in the ass and this has a skirt, a sari blouse and a drape which is easier to wear). Then we're doing a week of bopping around to do some sightseeing as I've never been before.

Prior to meeting my husband I'd go to my parents house, unwrap presents (we've been lazy about trees since I was in high school) and have a meal then go back to my apartment and relax.

I'm not religious (and neither is my family or my in-laws) so it's not that big a deal in my family. On occasion I do miss the pageantry of midnight mass-I went to church when I was little and used to sing in the chorus-but as I got older organized religion began to creep me out and it doesn't have a place in my everyday life anymore.

 

[Nirvanadragones]

I have 7 siblings ranging in age from 47 to 20. Christmas is usually a huge event in our life as you can imagine. My family is in the wine making business in South Africa, and because most of the kids are spread out internationally, we go back home for Christmas with our families.

We generally have a huge "braai" (barbeque) on Christmas eve, which includes all the kids swimming in the river and having a tremendous amount of fun. (Keep in mind it is summer there right now) This can include up to 50 people.

Christmas morning we do the gift opening thing under the tree, and then usually have a picnic traditional Christmas lunch. Did I mention it takes us about 5 days to prepare the food for both occasions?

Personally, I took the decision a few years back not to fly back home for the holidays every year for various reasons. I try to take the week between Christmas and New year off and spend it exploring new territory. Last year we had 2 weeks in North and South Wales, the year before we did Scotland, the year before it was France. I prefer that tradition. It's something that I do for my family - our own tradition that we started - I like that idea.

As for this year . . . I have a strong need to go home. Then again, this will be the first Christmas being separated from my husband, and it will be the first Christmas in 11 years we do not spend together. I would not want to change it, but still there is a sadness to that.

I guess I have to book a flight.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I don't celebrate. I endure.

LOL - sounds familiar.

 

[Nirvanadragones]

LOL - sounds familiar.

Oh, both of you grab some mistletoe and get festive for goodness sake!

 

[McKenna]

Christmas night is usually spent in a cave on one of my favourite beaches

I like this.



The Christmas after my brother died, I didn't feel at all like celebrating. My husband and I stayed up late on Christmas Eve. I was trying not to get depressed, but failing. Finally, I asked him if he wanted to go for a drive. This was about 11:00 at night. After his initial shock, he went with me. We drove to the top of the mountain in a light snow storm. It was beautiful, and so, so quiet. We got out and listened to the silence and watched the storm. I felt peace for the first time in months. We stayed for a little while on the mountain alternately talking and listening and catching snowflakes on our tongues, and then we drove home in the wee hours of the morning. It's still one of my best Christmas memories.

This year I will be traveling to my parents house some 600 miles away. It's been a long time since I spent Christmas at my folks'. It will be nice to make new memories.

 

[Misty_Morning]

Deleted.

 

[Noor]

I don't really celebrate Christmas, when I was little and my christian grandmother was alive we did with her, but she died Dec. 24, 1968 so its been a long time, not to mention I assocaite the death of both she and my grandfather who died around the same time the previous year with Christmas.

The past few years I usually go to christmas eve at a friends house, they have a traditional lutefisk dinner and I get to see people I don't get to see much if at all throughout the year. I don't eat the lutefisk, but the rest of the dinner is great.
On Christmas day I like to see a movie with my brothers at the mall of america, if you go to the first showing, it nice and quiet, and you can watch them retune the dancing water in the amusement park. I also like to wash and dry yardage that day because there is usually no one else in my building using the dryer.

This year I hope to be traveling, I am not sure yet, I hope to be soon, so I have no idea where or what I will be doing.

 

[Dr_Strabismus]

I fight with my family over the toys in the crackers and tear the paper hat trying to fit it over my afro. I wear a mournful face during the meal.

 

[feeeriek]

spending it with mom and siblings and family. having the traditional cuban roast pig
feast. this year it will be only family, other years lots more people. games of dominoes. crashing on couches. sleeping in, wrapping presents christmas morning,
opening them christmas night. things have changed over the years. it is a bittersweet time. if it were up to me i would hide until it was over.