Family Tradition

[carolina0416]

Does anyone have any Christmas Family tradition that they would like to share?

 

                                                     

[carolina0416]

We spend Christmas day at my moms to open up gifts, but we usually wait till my brother and sister come over to open them up and have breakfast as a family. Then we spend Christmas night at caseys'  parents house and xchange gifts till everyone gets there and have dinner together..

This year I hope to start a tradition with maria, like make cookies the night of for santa.

[CallaLily08]

My family celebrates on Chrismas Eve. We have go to church, then have dinner, and then open gifts at midnight. Then, on Christmas Day, we celerate at Darren's parents home, and we open gifts(each person at a time, so annoying, my MIL even controls how and when we open gifts!) and then we eat. At the Jankows we also pass around this christmas wafer and everyone breaks a piece of each other's and makes a new year wish for the person.

[carolina0416]

ur MIL is too funny jenn..But i do like the wafer thing.its cute

[MaggieTw]

I like to host Christmas Eve at my house with my family. 

Christmas Day we spend with my husband's family.   Gifts are open and then we spend the day feasting.

[StasiaL]

The Lynch-Slowikowski Clan is all about tradition! LOL  We've had 12 years of practice and we've got it down to a science!

Christmas eve dinner is with my in- laws.  We do the wafer thing too, Jenn - it's called Oplatek. (pronounced O- Pwa - Tek). Very traditional Polish Christmas thing.  What I find annoying is that we all sit down at the dinner table and then we stand up to say grace and then sit to divide the wafers. Then we all have to get up again and go into the living room to do the Oplatek because there's no room in the dining room!  LOL  After dinner my husband's cousin comes over dressed as Santa and hands out the gifts to all the kids.  They each take a pic on "Santa's" lap.

After the family has gone home we go upstairs and Sydney "finds" a gift from Santa.  I leave a note from Santa telling her to open this present up and then get to bed so she can open more gifts in the am. The gift is always PJ's for her to wear to bed that night!  :)  We lay out cookies and milk for Santa and carrots and celery for the reindeer.  Then we all snuggle up in my and Darek's bed and Darek reads "The Night Before Christmas."

Last year my parents came over Christmas morning to watch Syd open her Santa gifts.  My in laws came upstairs as well and I made breakfast for everyone.  I hope to do the same thing this year.

Christmas day is spent at my family's house.  We used to go there after midnight mass and open gifts by candlelight but things have changed up since Sydney was born.  We now spend the whole day at my parents house just hanging out, cooking, etc. We open gifts before dinner while eating our appetizers and drinking wine.  It's lovely.

Then, the weekend between Christmas and New Year's we have a family party with Darek's extended family.  All of his aunts and uncles, cousins and their kids.  It's pot luck -- everyone brings an entree and a dessert.  We have grab bag for all the kids as well.  We also take our hilarious family picture each year.  We just can't seem to get it together to pose nicely and have everyone in the picture at the same time -- it's always a good laugh!