Christmas ritual

[Lullabelle]

This year Christmas day will be just the 2 of us. We have a particular ritual we like to observe. We have smart table mats, best cutlery and smart crockery which always come out at Christmas. We have 3 candle holders each with decorations at the base also set up home on the table, this year we have decided to use red candles instead of white. On the day itself we eat later in the evening so all lights out apart from the lamp at the far end of the lounge and all 3 candles lit. This is something we have done for a few years now.

Today lunch will be at 1.00 and all the smart stuff is set up so for us Christmas officially starts today.

Does anyone else have any rituals/traditions personal to themselves you would like to share?

 

[Morning Glory]

Well, I suppose the only ritual here is that its the only time we all sit round a table to eat. Everyone here (including me) eats meals at different times from each other, the rest of the year!

 

[Cinisajoy]

For the last several years we have gone to a Chinese restaurant.
Last Christmas due to him winning the day after Christmas off and the following day being Sunday, we went down to my mom's and took them out to Chinese. Though we wound up coming home on Saturday due to a storm coming in. It was the first Christmas we had ever spent with them.
They live 500 miles or 804 km away.

 

[Lullabelle]

For the last several years we have gone to a Chinese restaurant.
Last Christmas due to him winning the day after Christmas off and the following day being Sunday, we went down to my mom's and took them out to Chinese. Though we wound up coming home on Saturday due to a storm coming in. It was the first Christmas we had ever spent with them.
They live 500 miles or 804 km away.

That is a long way.

 

[Cinisajoy]

That is a long way.

And why we never spend Christmas with my mom.
But then my father when he was alive was less than 2 km from where we spent Christmas and we never saw him on that day. He preferred to spend it drinking in a "club". So no parental conflict.
When we all lived in same region we would spend Christmas with my mom's sister and dad's older brother and mom's mother.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

I guess the closest thing we had to a ritual would have been when I was growing up. we all would like over the my grannie's house after breakfast (?).she would have cooked and prepared a large meal as a buffet that everyone attended. I can clearly remember as a child walking over to her home when my mum and (ex)step father where younger. as they got older and much less fit, despite living closer, we would get a taxi or the car would be driven one way and left there overnight. when my Grannie and granddad moved into the bungalow because my Grannie could no longer manage, things changed but by then I was already at uni and had met my husband to be.

He and I started a tradition of not being at home for Christmas and new year. we would usual be found camping in the lake district but over time it became too busy and too wet and wild over that period. we did initially move to camping in the Scottish highlands, getting out mountaineering everyday but again before too long the weather was wet rather than snowy and we stopped. we were fortunate enough for a friend to offer us the opportunity to use her parents simmer house in Sweden so went there a few times before the ferry was discontinued. it was a long drive from esbjerg to Stockholm and then onto her parents summer gone but worth it when there. however since we upped and left to attempt to cycle around the world, Christmases have been spent together. we started cycling over to one family (65mile round trip) or the other (110 mile round trip) on Christmas day instead, starting only for Christmas lunch and an hour or so. but then my back went and life changed again. christmas at home alone has become the normal for us. just the two of us. we started making the same meal for lunch (a vegan version of Laksa Lemak) and have done the same here in Australia, but will concede this next Christmas that it is simply too hot for that here and settle for a nice salad instead!

 

[Cinisajoy]

When mom and dad were still together, we would have Christmas eve supper at mom's parents. And open presents. There were 4 of us grandkids. Granddad always worked Christmas day. Christmas day we would go over to dad's mom's house to pick up my brother's Christmas present. He was the only one of the 40 of us grandkids that got a present. If anyone complained, grandmother's response was you should have been born on my birthday. Couldn't argue with that logic. (My brother was 3rd youngest at the time of all the grandkids.) 2 more came 14 and 17 years later.

 

[Elawin]

The only Christmas ritual I have is to buy a duck, chicken, turkey breast, beef joint, pork joint, lamb joint, gammon joint, and a decent piece of ham. Said duck is cooked on Christmas Eve with any two of the others, and I work my way through everything by New Year's Day. Any meat which suffers the misfortune of being left over for longer than a day is frozen.