BS: Personal Christmas Rituals

Subject: BS: Persosnal Christmas Rituals
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 12:15 PM

Just wondering what other peoples little personal rituals are. Those things you do which make you feel anchored in your personal world over the Christmas holiday?

I keep Christmas short and sweet and minimal. But most of the 'ritual' happens on Christmas eve. It's going to be pretty sparse this year for relatives as I lost both my mother and my paternal grandmother this year. But I'm still looking forward to it. Even though it'll be rather sad of course.

Christmas eve afternoon (yep, usually the food shop really is this late..), I go into the pretty local town and hit the deli's posh food stores for small portions of horribly expensive serious cheese and oatcakes. And pick up a small amount of game, or free-range meat from the butcher. Some booze including a bottle of buttery bubbly. Home...

Before it gets too dark, we wander through the village and gather holly and ivy. Then in the evening we strew it about and put candles about the place. I like to burn some essential oil of frankinsence.

I do a bit of cooking and have a drink. Probably make some Stollen or mince tart or something similar 'cos I'm not a big pud person.

Later we always share a bottle of mulled wine (or two), I even found a terracota candle fueled mulled wine keeper warmer thing in a junk shop recently. Cool...

If there's something nice and vaguely worth watching like a bit of ballet, then that goes on in the background, while we much on stilton and oatcakes. Anyone who hasn't had hot sweet fruity mulled wine with their stilton, really should do it...

Things are probably still happening in the kitchen. Including the hated washing up while mildly slewed before bed.

Morning, hurrah! When I wake I still feel that tingly buzz. So many kids waking up and going nuts... But for me it's a vicarious little sparkle. One of us goes downstairs and gets the breakfast together, fresh squeezed organge juice, bubbly, smoked salmon, thin slices of butterd brown bread, and soft boiled eggs... Always.

Little pressies - we just get exchange stocking fillers really which is the way I like it, and crappy kids Christmas cartoon films in bed.

Up and on with my red velvet dress, which is fraying rather now, and a little tighter than it should be... And on with other little pretty adornments that jingle. Sherry while I cook the lunch. It'll be pheasant this year, but tends to be either free-range goose or duck. We both hate turkey. I'd rather have a nut roast!

Once that stuffs over, we'll go out for a drive to the beach maybe, or go down the woods. Then very likely just watch telly in the evening.

Boxing day, would normally be Mum day. But I'm hoping to go frosty camping for a day or two with my Dad, while my fella goes to his lot. Walking the Suffolk coast, with coves and Merrydown and bonfires appeals. I'm looking forward to this most of all...

Subject: RE: BS: Persosnal Christmas Rituals
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 12:54 PM

Pork pie and pickles on Christmas eve for some reason. No idea when that started.

Used to get the Christmas tree while coming home pissed from the works do but the 11 foot one put paid to that:-)

Chocolate gingers and malt whisky after Christmas dinner. Which usualy starts about 4pm and finishes about 8...

Cheers and have a good 'un.

DeG

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: Gervase
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 01:41 PM

Christmas tree up on Christmas Eve, Christmas candle lit in the window; Christmas morning scrambled eggs with smoke salmon on blinis, with maybe some poor-man's caviar, and some Buck's fizz to wash it down. No lunch, but an earlyish dinner of goose or duck.
I have to confess to some mixed feelings about this Christmas, as my mother died suddenly on Christmas Eve 1988.

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: Wesley S
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 01:45 PM

Lots of us in Texas have tamales on Christmas Eve. Regular Tex-Mex foods that night. I make my own hot sauce so there's plenty to go around. My wife and I take our 8 year old to an early service { he's 7 this week but turns 8 on the 13th - next Saturday }at church. We head home but Bretta goes back to church to sing in a couple of evening services. I put the little one to bed and then pop in a movie. Maybe "Love Actually" this year. She'll get home after midnight so we'll sleep late the next day and eventually get around to opening presents. And I'll make a big breakfast with lots of coffee. And my brother in laws family will come over later in the day and we'll excange presents. I'm sure we'll watch a little bit of football too.

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: Morticia
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 04:57 PM

Dear heavens, Wes, is it really 8 years???

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 05:28 PM

When the we were t'home, each child was required to make a new ornament for the tree every year. There were only home made ornaments and popcorn garlands with the lights. We made cut out cookies (lovely old cookie cutters passed down from grandmother and mom) each individually decorated (one year I made 750 of the suckers)

Christmas eve day, loads of cleaning, cooking, last minute wrapping, and one mug of hot apple cider (non alcoholic) with cinnamon stick and cloves in each room for the scent. Kids kept sneaking in and drinking them down.
We went driving round looking at Christmas lights and singing carols out the Trooper windows on Christmas eve. Then open one present each. Take turns reading the Christmas story from Bible.

Christmas day, traditional blueberry muffins for breakfast, take turns playing Santa, passing out the gifts from under the tree. Me in kitchen (actually was an L shaped great room lounge/dining room / kitchen) most of day cooking while kids played with gifts and father watched TV.

Meal - Baked ham basted in mustard and brown sugar pricked with cloves or roast beef. Sides = mashed potatoes or baked mac and cheese, green bean casserole, sweet potato souffle, devilled eggs, hot bisquits (scones), cranberry sauce.

Dessert = Apple pie, pecan pie or pumpkin pie. Sometimes I made a devils food cake, if I had the energy.

Christmas afternoon clear out paper and rubbish, put away leftovers, crash until the next day.

When we weren't at home I had the added bonus of packing suitcases, prettying up the kids and sorting out the pets for visiting as well as most of above.

I am exhausted just remembering it.

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: Anne Lister
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 06:28 PM

From childhood and teens ... Christmas Eve was when my Mum would get ahead with as much food prep as she could for Christmas Day, and get lots of washing done. So we would head down to the nearest fish and chip shop to bring back lunch. My Dad would come home in the evening totally exhausted (he managed a large Marks & Spencer store) but with all sorts of unexpected food extras (sold off to staff at the end of the day) and generally a hamper as a present from one of his suppliers which would contain black cherry jam as well as other goodies.   In the evening in our teens we would head off to a pub in the countryside (now a pub entirely given over to food provision, sadly) where they would hand out carol sheets and party hats and we would sing around the fire.
As children we would wake up on Christmas Day with a rustling pillowcase at the end of our beds (oh, no, not stockings for us!), in one corner of which there would be an apple, and the other corner was a clementine and somewhere there would be chocolate coins as well as a sugar pig as well as the presents. One year we were puzzled at why I had some toy cars and one of my brothers had a doll, but we now know this was when Santa had had a few too many celebratory sherries....As we grew older we developed a different tradition whereby one of the soft toys made by my Mum would act as Santa for both parents, and be placed quietly outside their bedroom door with a selection of small presents and a mis-spelled note.
Full English breakfast (cooked by Dad) and then presents. And then lunch - turkey and all the trimmings, but no Christmas pud until Boxing Day. Instead we'd have jelly and custard and mince pies.   The afternoon was a gentle blur of games and adults falling asleep, until it was time to make turkey and ham sandwiches with mustard or chutney and have a slice of Christmas cake.
Boxing Day lunch was always my favourite - cold cuts with jacket potatoes, pickled onions, beetroot and salad, followed by Christmas pudding.
Somewhere along the way would be the Christmas row, as my Dad was so very tired and had to take it all out on someone ...sometimes it would be politics (as we grew older) but sometimes the lack of something vital, like bread sauce or the wrong kind of fruit bowl.

But these days it's various small gatherings of the big family clan, and this year it will be the two of us with my parents (now in their eighties), and trying to join my sister and her kids for tea later on. It's not at all the same thing!

Anne
feeling nostalgic

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: skipy
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 06:36 PM

I always place a plate with a mince pie, a carrot & a small tumbler of wiskey on the landing, guess what, in the morning the pie will have a bite out of it, the carrot will be half eaten & the tumbler will be enpty!
P.S. I always spit the carrot out!
Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: Alice
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 11:02 PM

I don't "do" Christmas any more, except for one old family ritual, oyster stew on Christmas eve. There's an old mudcat thread about it.
My sympathy for your losses this year, Sleepy Rosie.

Alice

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 11:41 PM

Tabster -- my sister and I always had our presents in a pillow case at the end of the bed too! One year we opened everything before my parents were awake -- they were furious! My main gift was always 'something to do with my hands ' .... one year I remember it was this incredible 'gardening' set with little pieces of plastic dirt, 'lawns' flowers you could plant in the dirt and you got to set up the most elaborate gardens!!!! I loved it.........

Champagne and OJ is always available. This year one of our children has a long drive home so we won't start the festivities til later. Finances being what they are, there will be fewer presents this year but my sister is coming over from England with her husband and all three of my kids, plus two significant others will be there.....can't be bad.......

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: GUEST,Tabby's Secret Santa
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 11:51 PM

There's a note for you on the SS thread. luv.

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: artbrooks
Date: 09 Dec 08 - 12:01 AM

...talk about thread creeps...

Since we are a post-religious mixed household, we are usually lighting Hanukkah candles at the same time the Christmas tree goes up - we put it up the weekend before Christmas and take it down New Years Day. Stockings are the big thing on Christmas morning, and that takes a while...mine generally includes the holiday issue of Playboy and both contain chocolate in various forms. No particular food rituals - roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy and that sort of thing.

Oh yeah - and a judicious selection of old movies, like Miracle on 34th Street (original, uncolorized version).

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 09 Dec 08 - 03:06 AM

House must be decorated on or by the 21st, with berried holly over the entrances and windows (I have been known to use false berries on those years when the real deal has been hard to come by, but don't tell the evil spirits). This has a lot to do with my reading 'The Dark is Rising sequence' about 22 years ago, books I've read at this time every year since. It's become my own 'talisman' to read them all between Dec 1st and 12th Night to ensure a good year. I wonder if Susan Cooper knows exactly what sort of impact she's had on so many lives since writing that over 40 years ago?!

Anyhoo... pillow cases for us too, as our family tradition was to go to my grandparent's farm the day after school finished and stay there til the day before school started again. That meant helping with the mlking and on Christmas Eve, the animals all got a little extra something in their feed or a hot mash of oats and cider if it were particularly frosty. Fresh-caught mackerel for tea, telly in the huge kitchen (the table could sit 20 people without squashing anyone and room to dance a can-can all around it!), or after she got ill, in my grandmothers' room and then bed.

We used to alternate Christmas Lunch with friends but that has sort of fallen into disuse over the last 8 years or so.... this year it's looking like just us for only the second time in our 20 Christmases together.... (do the math, Manitas - there's the one before we got engaged in 1989 and every one since) which is ... different.

Boxing Day used to be a TV Free 'Open House' with various friends or family dropping in. Manitas got co-erced into performing with the Herga Mummers for a while but for the last couple of years it's been just us and the telly. I feel a new tradition is needed here....!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: Paul Burke
Date: 09 Dec 08 - 03:12 AM

Worry for weeks. Buy a load of over- expensive crap at the last minute. Hand it over knowing that last year's crap is safely stowed in their garage.

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 09 Dec 08 - 04:59 AM

Try to get round all the trimmings and go to Church on Christmas morning to thank God for Jesus....... which is really what Christmas is all about. Best wishes of the season to all. Mike.

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: GUEST,The black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 09 Dec 08 - 08:02 AM

We have had a Christmas tradition for the past few years that started when we took a walk just before Christmas in the hills above Lancaster. We came across a small fir tree in the middle of the moor, by itself and with no other trees for at least 2 miles.
Since then we try to go and decorate it in time for Christmas each year and remove the decorations for 12th night.
Someone else obviously spotted it one year. Xmas tree

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 09 Dec 08 - 10:37 AM

Beautiful photo, black belt!

The older I get, the more the traditions of light in the dark time mean to me. I still keep the Advent moss garden/candles going, even though my children are grown- one additional candle for each of the four weeks of December, to bring increasing light into a world that is increasingly dark.

Playing music, either live or on cd, gathering with friends, and bringing in the greens holds the darkness at bay, too.

My daughter, in her second year away at school, is very nostalgic and missing the traditions at home. Candles are forbidden in her dorm, so she's playing music and shining her light in whatever way she can!

This year, despite certain rays of hope that are shining in my country at least, there is a lot of deep anxiety and darkness. It is my hope that by keeping the traditions that mean so much to me and my family, we will be able to keep the inner flames burning enough that some of it can spill over and brighten some others' lives as well.

Allison

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: fat B****rd
Date: 09 Dec 08 - 11:10 AM

Whatever else we do, the Carol Concert from Kings College is a MUST on Christmas Eve, as is the Vienna New Years Day Concert.

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 09 Dec 08 - 12:04 PM

Mr. B****rd, I used to listen to Kings Carols with my Mother, but the bf isn't really into that sort of thing so it wouldn't really work with him. A friend of my Mums who went to Cambridge, still regularly does choral performances there, and we had always informally planned to go to Kings with him for evensong one Xmas. I should still like to go without her sometime.

Caterpiller Wrestler, I feel sorry for that little tree all alone like that, I think you should plant another couple of ex-Xmas trees there to keep him company. They could have a grand time together over the hols all decked up together.

Animaterra, I like the consciousness that you place on the symbolism of light in your own personal rituals. I'm not exactly a Chistian, at least not one with a capital C, but do understand the value of symbolic acts made with a 'prayerful' intent. I must confess that although I make nodding gestures to my own sense of the spiritual, I still fail to attend to the many opportunities to incorporate simple spiritual practice and awareness into my life, including on those classic Christian festival days. I do however tend to possibly observe some of the older festival days in such a way. Maybe because they are quieter and free of all the glamorous consumer distractions. For the light symbolism in particular however, I really like the festival of Candlemass (as is) or Imbolc (as was), and adore the first of the Candlemas Bells piercing the snow to hail the return of the light.

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 09 Dec 08 - 03:24 PM

Listening to Carol King? I didn't know that was a tradition!!! As to go to Church on Christmas morning to thank God for Jesus Tsk - Some people will try to get religion into anything;-) Only joking, Mike - You enjoy yourself in whatever way you like and may your God keep you safe:-) I used to go to Midnight Mass and enjoy watching all the drunks coming in from the Catholic Club. Hey - I used to be one of them later in life:-D

Cheers

DeG

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: Wyrd Sister
Date: 09 Dec 08 - 03:55 PM

Christmas Eve morning - holly and ivy, and finish decorating the house (tree up before solstice until New Year these days. I always start the Christmas baking as the Kings College service begins. Ice the cake - last-minute? Me? Stuff the turkey and put it in the oven with the timer so I don't have to get up too early. Christmas Day is family, Boxing Day is longsword and carols and lunch for as many as turn up.

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: jeffp
Date: 09 Dec 08 - 04:38 PM

My fiancee is Italian, so I join her and her family on Christmas Eve for the Feast of the Seven Fishes. It's quite a feed, even if we don't usually make all seven. I think we had 5 different dishes last year. Her sister is hosting this year, so we won't have to deal with cleanup so much. I've been asked to go over earlier to help rearrange furniture to accommodate everyone. Presents are exchanged that night, since everybody is there. Christmas Day itself is quiet.

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 09 Dec 08 - 09:41 PM

Fat Ba****d -- the carol service is required for me too.......our public radio station usually obliges on Xmas Eve day.......

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: KEVINOAF
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 05:42 AM

Mine is to book a long-stay holiday in a muslim country around mid -december thus avoiding the whole farce completly -HUMBUG

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: bubblyrat
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 07:01 AM

Or,if you went to Germany---HAMBURG ! I live next door to a church (bell-ringing practice on Monday nights is HELL !!),so it would be hard not to go in at some point,and anyway,it's a beautiful church with a lovely atmosphere (built in the year 1240).There will be holly,and carols,and a crib,and midnight mass,and loads of....well, "atmosphere" ! Next wednesday,I shall be having a full Christmas Dinner,along with fellow Alms House residents,in the ancient,grade one listed,Chantry House attached to the church,free,gratis,& compliments of the management at the nearby Hotel Du Vin,which is fine,but then the same day,later on,it's the Marlow Bottom Acoustic Club Christmas Dinner at one of our music venue pubs,so I probably won't be looking forward to food on Christmas Day itself ! But by then our 24-bottle Christmas wine order will have arrived (Australian reds) so who needs Christmas dinner anyway ??

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: GUEST,LTS pretending to work
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 07:45 AM

Then of course there is my recently evolved tradition of sending total strangers demands for presents to send to other total strangers or occasionally family members, soothing ruffled brows, winding up friends and trying to remember if I sent Limpit's Santee present out or not!

I love doing Secret Santa!!

SECSY
LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Personal Christmas Rituals
From: GUEST,PeterC
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 04:38 PM

Sugar mice in the christmas stockings (the "kids" are now 23 and 25)
Make fresh croissants on Christmas day.

Normlly two dinners, one for my girlfriend and myself and one family dinner so a trip to the same farm to buy two birds, always a guinea fowl and a duck. I don't have to give the farmer's wife the order any more, as soon as I say my name she remembers.