Celebration traditions
Find a Conversation
Celebration traditions
| Sun, 12-10-2006 - 11:31am |
Regardless of which of the December holidays are celebrated, it always seems to feel good to have traditions, things that you do year after year. Begun in childhood or created later on, do you do something every year that if you didn't, would feel like something was missing?
Bink
Not really into Siggees...
Not all who wander are lost.
(J.R.R. Tolkien)

Pages
I grew up in Switzerland where christmas is the big thing, while I'm not considering myself christian and really don't believe in Jesus and the bible, Christmas is VERY special to me as it always symbolised familly and friends getting together and eating a fancy meal and catch up with each other's life.
In my familly baking your own christmas cookies is also a MAJOR thing and one I really miss here. Now I got an oven this year, and I have a book full of baking reciepes. But I'm facing a big problem, no one around here seem to know what cookie cutters are, and you should see how DH helped the best he could finding some. I will try to turn the city upside down again next weekend and start baking ones that do not need cookie cutter this week. I feel home sick every year around Christmas while the rest of the year I'm 100% fine. Holidays whichever you celebrated all your life do have an impact on who you are. DH don't understand fully as he never spent a Diwali outside India, but he tries to be supportive.
Powered by CGISpy.com
My Adventures
You know the interesting thing is that in Switzerland you never open the gifts in the morning :-)
There is a controversy going on about when should the real party be, Swiss german consider Christmas eve more important than those living in the French part of the country. But in both cases gifts are opened at night in a room that is only lit by the tree (most hosehold still do lit real candles on their tree...but we also buy our cut tree one week or so before christmas) and kids must recite some poems and sing carols for the familly before opening their gifts. Everybody give and recieve at the same time, before or after the big dinner.
I grew up in a familly where my dad was Swiss german and my mom from the french region, so both my grand ma fought over when it should be celebrated and in the end we were going to my paternal grand parents place on the 24th and to the other grand parents the next day, plus the fact my parents wanted to be just the 4 of us so we had an additional party on the 23rd with our gift opening and fancy dinner so we had 3 christmas parties :-) I remember my sister and I hated the party thron on the 25th by my maternal grand ma because she made a lunch and then shut the blind to mimic night so we could open the present early and have a simpler dinner at 6pm and leave. Our familly being decent sized the 24th and the 25th parties was always done with quite a few cousins and uncles and aunt so I think having 2 parties was a good thing LOL
Powered by CGISpy.com
My Adventures
We have a dual holiday to celebrate, and luckily the decor matches both Christmas *AND* Yule/Winter Solstice, LOL! :D Yule is more spiritual for my DD and I, and we will be attending the Pagan Circle Sabbat celebration with the Pagan group from the UU church I've been attending. We save most of the gift giving for Christmas Day, as DH is Christian, and the rest of the family who comes over that day, but DD & I exchange a Yule gift, and always give DH a big can of flavored popcorn, to include him. :P We like to decorate and put up our tree late, around mid-December, before Yule, but not too far from Christmas Day, either. We leave things up until after New Year's Day. I love looking at all the ornaments as I unwrap them from their boxes, remembering the people who gifted them to us, or when we bought them. We have a collection of train ornaments because of DH's long time interest and membership in the historic rail operating museum he belongs to, that restores and operates old steam engines and rail cars for the public. I have a special ornament of a witch's hat and broom, and DD has a red unicorn one. And DH has all his train ones! :D
I have beautiful memories of my childhood Christmases, also. My other 8 cousins, their sets of parents, plus other assorted aunts & uncles, would all descend on my maternal grandmother's house for the holiday. She would be baking all kinds of yummies, from poppyseed roles (with icing in the middle), apple struedels, yeast rolls for the big dinner, etc. The house smelled wonderful! She would put the dough to rise on the "sideboard" shelf by the furnace floor register, and we would watch in fascination as she would punch down the dough periodically, and then we'd check to watch the mound grow and push up against the towel thrown over the bowl. The adults would shoo us kids upstairs to sleep, and they would sit up all night (not enough beds, LOL!) visiting and wrapping our gifts. Before that, the men would go to a local farmer's and cut down a tree and bring it home. We would all decorate. We kids would try to sneak down the stairs, but my Irish uncle was always the look-out and would play yell at us to get back to bed, LOL! We'd go just to get him to do this! :P Then Christmas morning, the adults, all asleep in their chairs in Grandma's living room, would be awaken by the thundering sound of all our feet running down the stairs! It was glorious! ;))
Gypsy
)O(
Blessings,
Gypsy
)O(
About 3 years ago it became evident that we needed some new traditions. Both my son and daughter were studying french and the class visited a french bakery in St. Louis. They were very excited about being introduced to the yule log -- a log shaped cake with christmas decorations. So we started a new tradition. Each year we have a yule log on Christmas eve. We have great fun going to the bakery to pick up the "log" and to buy bread for fondue which is our Christmas day tradition, as well as letting each family member pick out one other pastry to enjoy.
Make a new tradition whenever you need one. They are just as much fun as those that have lasted centuries.
Happy Holidays!
Peanuts
Now you brought back memories to me with the yule log :-) I'm Swiss and grew up in Geneva which is near the French border and the log is somthing done in france AND in the french speaking part of Switzerland.
So of course I had one or two during the holiday season. My dad used to order it from a local bakery, and my maternal Grand ma did the same. On year my mom decided to bake her own but this was a disster so we had to buy one at the last minute LOL. Baking the log is something for highly skilled people, and my mom is not really into cakes and stuff. The rule is that if you can't make a Swiss roll, forget about the yule log as those are done more or less the same way, even my Grand ma who was a cake whizz never attempted the yule log prefering to concentrate on cooking a great meal instead.
I also remember my siter and I fighting to get a particular plastic or candy decoration on the log itself LOL
Powered by CGISpy.com
My Adventures
Yes, I agree -- Yule logs are best left to the experts! They are great fun though. I'll have to tell the family about your experience with them in Switzerland. It will add to our fun.
My son was so thrilled about the yule log that he uploaded a picture of our yule log to Wikipedia. If you would like to see it follow this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule_log
or log onto Wikipedia and search for Yule log. They also give a history of the log.
Happy Holidays!
Peanuts
My father cooks dinner. He'll be celebrating his 84th birthday in a couple of weeks, though, so one of us will have to gradually take over...
Pages