My family background is Norwegian (well a quarter of it anyway) and we "did" Advent too, with either advent logs or wreaths, and visits to church each Sunday to listen to the lesson. But we don't put up the tree until Christmas Eve Day and it stays until Old Christmas (January 6th.) I've always found it easy to ignore the holiday barrage, in part because I _never_ buy presents in a store where I noticed Christmas stuff earlier than Halloween unless the store does Christmas all year long.

Christmas for me means fattigmanbakkles (cookies), krumkake (more cookies, but bigger) and lefse (potato pancakes). Not lutefisk, however. My grandmother said that she didn't have much use for fish flavored cardboard.

Instead of tea ring, we made a cinnamon rose. Similar instructions, you make a bread dough, shape into a long roll and then snip off one end for the center of the rose, and the snip the rest of the roll into sort of crescent shapes which will be the petals you build out from the center. Dip each piece in butter, then roll in cinnamon sugar and walnut bits (if you like walnuts) and place on a baking tray (you may want to line it with tinfoil, but either way, make sure it's been greased, so it won't stick.) And then bake it, however long you would for the bread, I think.

Grandma also made vanishing marshmallow rolls. You take bread dough and wrap it around marshmallows that have been dipped in butter and cinnamon, and put each one in a roll baking tray. Then butter the top of the rolls and sprinkle some cinnamonsugar on top too. When you finish baking them, the marshmallow will be gone and you will have the most lovely sticky rolls ... yum!

Any children's librarian will have a lot of information on different ways that Christmas is celebrated around the world (and actually, NOW is a better time to ask, as the books will be pretty much vanished in December.) Some of the older craft books have some neat, elaborate looking things you can actually make fairly easily.