Non-food Holiday Traditions

hiccups · Future Queen in Zion

Non-food Holiday Traditions

Cat Herder · Understander of unimportant things

More on these from the Cat Herders to come...

hiccups · Future Queen in Zion

Jen · Senior Bucketkeeper

Does not compute.

hiccups · Future Queen in Zion

Ok, maybe I'll clarify. I'm looking for stuff like does your family go carolling? Do you do the 12 days of Christmas for someone. Do you do homemade gifts? Do you act out the navity?

Jen · Senior Bucketkeeper

Yes to all. We also go to my DH's parents' house to help decorate. The woman has an unreal amount of Christmas decor. Their tree is enormous. So it's an all-dy event. The kids love it. :)

Christmas Eve is usually spent with my family, since that's my mom's birthday. Usually it's just the adults and spouses, since that makes 20 people. We've had a seperate party with everyone, but no one has a house big enough for all 60 of us.

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

Hmm... non-food. That's a good question. We like to drive around and look at lights. We don't "act out" the nativity, but I bought a new set last year and we tell the story and let the kids put up the pieces at the right time. We've tried turning down the lights and using a flashlight against the pieces which makes cool big camel shadows on the wall and stuff...

My dad and I used to go on a horseback ride Thanksgiving morning... we might try that again... course, that's next to impossible when you're the Mom/Chef.

salesortonscom · Wise and Revered Master

We like to go cut down our own christmas tree and hunt quail at the same time. What's particularly fun is cutting down the tree using only firearms.

glumirk · Senior Member

My sister and I would always pull out the Merry Christmas Songbook and just play and sing all the time (when no one else was home, of course).

Another tradition is to read The Forgotten Carols, one of my absolute favorites!

I still don't get much sleep on Christmas Eve...

Dyany · Senior Member

We have a tradition that everyone gets a new ornament every year, usually on a theme for that year. We label them for the person and the year. Then when the kids leave home, they get to take all those ornaments with them along with all the happy memories. :)

Poncho29 · Senior Bucketkeeper

Cat Herder wrote:

More on these from the Cat Herders to come...

What are you talking about?

Poncho29 · Senior Bucketkeeper

salesortonscom wrote:

We like to go cut down our own christmas tree and hunt quail at the same time. What's particularly fun is cutting down the tree using only firearms.

So you have "holy" Christmas trees then Jason?

salesortonscom · Wise and Revered Master

Yep, it really brings out the yuletide spirit. We tried to start another tradition, Christmas Eve fight club with gloves and pads. One poor feller could barely breath afterwards because of the pain. We ended that one.

Ros · Senior Member

I'm starting a new tradition this year. It's to get to Christmas without losing it and running screaming from my house.

I think, if I succeed, I'll keep it and pass it down to the grandkids...

Euphrasie · Senior Bucketkeeper

Putting up the Christmas tree
Lights at the temple (SLC if we're visiting in Utah, Mesa if not)
Little People nativity
Singing most of the choruses from Handel's Messiah
Christmas Eve Monopoly championship of the world
Reading "A Story a Day Until Christmas"
Christmas music ALL DAY (In Oct when Daddy's not home...after Thanksgiving when he is)

(Which reminds me...We're inaugurating the Christmas music fest tomorrow...when I buy my new CD!!!)

Umm...food, food...no, that one's food too...

Zoo lights (our zoo puts up lights and has the zoo open 1 or 2 evenings with fake snow storms and stuff)
Shopping for Angel tree presents
Going to see Santa (usually at Wal-mart, the mall is too far and crowded)
Getting a portrait of just the kids for Christmas cards
Putting hand-tied ribbons on Every. Present. Under. The Tree. Heeheehee!

Aaand...nope, food again.

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

Oh, we've done a Christmas letter each year since 2002. I know, I know, impersonal cheesiness, but they have really turned out cute and are fun to re-read. That's my extent of scrapbooking.

LoudmouthMormon · Profuse Pontificator

My personal tradition is to find that perfect balance between sacred joyful reverence for Christ's birth, and the unashamed practicing of things Festivus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festivus

LM

-- Edited by LoudmouthMormon at 13:46, 2007-10-08

Valhalla · Profuse Pontificator

What has become a fun tradition on the family get together is to read the Nativity story and talk about Christ, then have my blacksheep brother get sad and have tears because he is living improperly, but will never change. Then said brother will give some sentimental picture or gift to our grandfather or father of our passed on grandmother and mother and make them cry. I think he is angling for money. Then we all exchange gifts and my brother then proceeds with the traditional giving our gifts back to us that we gave to him because he does not need it, want it, or any other reason. Then comes the, I am not feeling well or I have something to do as he jets out the door as he refuses any goodies because he is "watching" his weight.

Good times!

Otherwise, Nativity stuff, Luke 2. My stepmom thinks Santa is evil so Santa is no where to be found in her house. Santa is such a jerk, bringing kids gifts and such!

salesortonscom · Wise and Revered Master

Cocobeem wrote:

Oh, we've done a Christmas letter each year since 2002. I know, I know, impersonal cheesiness, but they have really turned out cute and are fun to re-read. That's my extent of scrapbooking.

ARRRGH!!!!!!!!!!!! furious

I HATE CHRISTMAS LETTERS!!

My mom thought they were real cute and would put all sorts of personal stuff and send them out all over the world. I would read them and want to turn five shades of red from the embarrassing stuff she would put in them and when I would complain she would say that it was too late and they were already mailed. She thought it was cute to related to relatives far and wide medical problems, getting dumped by a girlfriend, personal struggles ect especially when they were my problems. People in our own town and ward got this horrible stuff. I wanted to just crawl under a rock. Could she put in how I had won three medals in cross country and lettered? No way. But if there was some behavior or attitude she could contribute to the effects of puberty it was right in there. furious

And she is not alone. I cringe when I read what some people write in these rags about what is going on in the lives of their family members. Does anyone really want to read how Billy Sullivan age 11 finally got over bed wetting in the christmas letter, yet some moms see no problem puting something like this in and poor Billy who was embarrassed to death now knows that 100 other family friends, neighbors, and relatives also share in his joy. How about his brother Steven Sullivan age 17 who gets to read again how his heart was broken by Suzie in September and how he moped around for weeks trying to get over it. I'm sure Steven can look forward next year to re-reading about his first car wreck, how he cried when his leg was broken at football practice, or how devestated he was at not getting accepted to his first choice college. Kids grow up so fast so lets do everything possible to put in writing those most embarrassing and painful moments and other things we want to forget and scar them good. I told me wife that to do one of these things would result in serious marital problems so we've been able to halt this insane practice in my family. But mom keeps on typing away.

Contrast that with the overachiever family who has each kid so perfect that they are basically on the border between being mortal and translated in the twinkling of an eye. Yea so all the kids got full ride scholarships to BYU but everyone knows that mom wrote their college and scholarship essays and did all their term papers in highschool so they really didn't earn anything. Or how perfect son number 2 is doing as a young army private when everyone knows he just came home early from his mission after his girlfriend went to the Bishop four months pregnant. Or how dad is loving his new job and it is a perfect fit for him when everyone already knows he lost his last job because of alcoholism and that the new job is the first assistant walmart greeter now, a real step up from Chief Financial Officer at a Fortune 500.

End the madness now! Send a family picture with best wishes for a happy holiday season and be done with it. furious

Poncho29 · Senior Bucketkeeper

If that's how you feel about Christmas letters, then you would really hate the Christmas newsletters that Cat and I do every year. Cat makes them pretty basic, no deep, personal, who cares-type of info (cuz we get PLENTY of those

), but he tries to make them funny and entertaining. Ours isn't your run-of-the-mill Christmas letter I'll have you know.

salesortonscom · Wise and Revered Master

It's child abuse!

Cat Herder · Understander of unimportant things

{makes note to scratch Jason off Christmas mailing list...} ...though do have to agree that those blatant Brag-mas letters are the worst thing since stale moldy sliced bread...

I do go to great length of composing a 2 - 3 page Holiday Greetings letter, one page devoted entirely to some sort of Christmas themed spoof of the corporate world / world happenings, one page devoted (following the theme) of what the kids have been up to (a paragraph or two each, not bragging), and 1/3 to 1/2 page about Poncho and me, and 1/2 page always closing on a spiritual note. Very little bragging. And we avoid sending it to folks we don't consider friends or relatives (cuz it costs a fortune to produce and mail...).

Growing up away from extended family and in a transient college ward where lots of people moved away after a couple years, Christmas Cards and letters were always a big tradition in my family growing up, and it was always fun to get them and make a big display on the wall (my parents were far more popular than Poncho and I seem to be, I guess). So, we carried the tradition into our family.

Each year, Poncho and I have found that fewer and fewer people are sending cards out, and I think that is a real shame. It tells me that most people are too wrapped up in their little world to care enough about others to spend 50 cents on even a cheap card and another 50 cents on postage...

I do remember one of the strangest "letters" I ever read was from some guy my parents knew... the couple had sent out letters every year, and then this one year (I guess I was about 14 or 15), it came from the husband and basically he announced to the world that his life and the family were in the toilet because the wife had apostacized and had blindsided him with divorce papers...

Poncho29 · Senior Bucketkeeper

Naa-uuh!

But I do understand why some people just kind of "skim over" peoples newsy newsletters.

Disclaimer: This post was in response to Jason's "It's Child Abuse rebuttal, Cat just posted before I could post mine.

-- Edited by Poncho29 at 16:01, 2007-10-08

salesortonscom · Wise and Revered Master

I did read one once where everything in it was made up stuff like the youngest kid winning the Nobel Prize for physics. I've thought about puting something completely rediculous together just to see if someone actually paid any attention. I'm a firm believer that if I haven't seen you in five years and this crappy card is the only contact we have during that time then maybe we should just stop exchanging cards. But I'm male and never really kept up with any my friends from highschool or college so put me in the lazy, wrapped up in my own life category.

I was talking to a dairyman the other day from a pretty big family of dairy owners, all of Dutch descent. They have their own stock car race during the holidays. They buy junkers, get them running good, add a roll bar of dubious quality and race around an oval track. He told me that large quantities of beer are encouraged but not required. Any cars still running after the race are entered into the powder puff race division for the wives and girlfriends.

glumirk · Senior Member

I always hated it because my mom would ask us to write a paragraph about ourselves for the letter, and I always refused and thus had something written about me that wasn't even about me, really. So last year I told my sister to hijack the Christmas letter and it came out as:

Christmas letter, ala Dr. Seuss.

Best Christmas letter ever! She's talented!

MegaMatt · Veteran Member

During my mission, Christmas really was hard. Christmas for a lot of the Dominicans (I served in the Dominican Republic) is to drink in the streets while listening to loud music, dance, and drink. They also tend to drink. Anyone who we were teaching seemed like they'd go out of town to visit relatives, or join in with the local tradition, and drink. So the work went down the drain and the adversary seemed to flaunt it in our faces. So I made it a tradition on the mission and since I've been back to read Elder Bruce R. McKonkie's talk in the May 1985 Ensign. It made (and makes) me feel happy and really centers my attention on Christ in the way it should be.

PollyAnna · Senior Bucketkeeper

Cat Herder wrote:
have to agree that those blatant Brag-mas letters are the worst thing since stale moldy sliced bread...

Ours is the worst kind of bragy and moldy drivel there is, and I am even worse, because I try to send an update quarterly... but I only send my brag-fests to family and friends that request it...

A few years ago I sent out a "survey" telling my loved ones that if they wanted to recieve my newsletters in the future they better "respond to this email" and type YES in the subject... or they were being dropped... With the exception of 2 aunts that don't have email I can say that everyone sent a response confirmining their desire to continue receiving the newsletters... But then I feel about the same when it comes to wedding, graduation, and baby shower invites...

BTW, who here did I forget off "the wedding" list???

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

We

LOVE

getting peoples' C-mas letters! Even if they totally suck, it's better than nothing.

And sales, that was hilarious.

I'm sort of a bragger - but mainly it's just letting our friends and far-away family know how the kids are doing. They grow up so fast, it's easy to lose touch for a couple/few years and then you're thinking, "Do they have 3 kids or 6? I can't remember now..."

So we'll talk about what the kids are "into" like sports or music or Halo (yeah, thanks) and give an update that our basement is "coming along" but still not done, yet... you know, all the good stuff you're dying to hear about.

Oh, man. I'm still laughing. Anything I say now I just picture sales like rolleyes

And heck NO I don't embarrass my kids.

And heck YES if there's not one LOL moment, I consider the letter a total failure.

salesortonscom · Wise and Revered Master

Yea bragging about beating the Legendary Setting on Halo in the Christmas letter is probably a bad idea, how fast you can type out a text message, or how popular your blog page has become. Shows a penchant for media addiction.

Cat Herder · Understander of unimportant things

{takes notes as to what to leave out of Christmas newsletter this year...}

salesortonscom · Wise and Revered Master

No worries Cat, your blog is safe material.