Hey Pandas, How Do You Celebrate Your Family Tradition? (Closed)

Every Christmas we have what we call Table Presents. These are little gifts all for under €10 we buy as a little extra gift for each other. My Great Grandmother on my mother's side started it off in the 1920s and as a family we've been doing it every year since. My Mother kept the tradition alive for us in our family as did her sister, my aunt did for hers.

So I'm a Canadian with a Ukrainian heritage (my great grandparents came here from the Ukraine). On Easter Sunday, we're not allowed to eat anything until we've eaten a blessed hard boiled egg. The eggs have been put in a basket along with bread, candles, sometimes chocolate, taken to the church and blessed by a priest the day before. The egg is supposed to be a symbol of re-birth and it must be the first thing you eat that day.

I have no idea whether this is something they actually do in the Ukraine or not, or if it's just a weird "Ukrainian" tradition we do here.

Our family gatherings usually start with somebody getting blamed for forgetting to bring something for the dinner. That escalates to arguing over the proper ingredients for stuffing the turkey, until it ends with at least one person crying and several slamming the door as they leave.

Every Christmas, the eldest member of the family gives a speech before we eat.

My family has one tablecloth that is used for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everyone signs it.

Enchiladas on Thanksgiving/Christmas. My dads Puerto Rican, moms American. Grew up having enchiladas & pastalles & beans with every holiday meal. Fast forward to my 1st holiday with the in laws. I brought a try of enchiladas and they all thought I was crazy. Now, 20 years later, if I dont bring them its an up roar!

My dad started leading communion for the family at Easter Dinner. I miss him and this tradition now that he has passed.

Every new years we each have 12 grapes to represent the months. Each time you eat a grape you make a wish for that month. My mom also does the black eyed peas thing.

Our family tradition is tamales on Christmas eve. Everyone helps, everyone eats, great times.

I celebrate my family's tradition by eating rice with tofu on Christmas for good luck before the New Year's.

Since we have Ukrainian on my mom's side, our Christmas dinners consist of perogies, borscht and cabbage rolls. It's usually just a few of us, so nothing too big.
I know it sounds so common, but since this is an international site I shall share.
Every Christmas we put up a pine or fir tree in the main living space and cram it with breakable decorations. Christmas Eve night we pile gifts underneath and tell the kids Christmas morning some of them are from jolly St. Nick, to keep the magic alive.
We watch Christmas themed movies and play board games.

In Canada we have our Thanksgiving on the 2nd Monday of October. This is when we have our honey glazed ham and turkey, with sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and a soft, buttered dinner roll. Apple pie with ice cream, or pumpkin pie with Cool Whip for dessert. Cooking and eating is pretty much what we do for that day with the whole family over.

That's pretty much it. My family just does their own thing mostly.

This is easy. I don't

Growing up we never celebrated Christmas and we didn’t get presents, we got presents on New Year’s, that was the only day when we could stay up until midnight. My mother always found a way to trick me into leaving the decorated tree for a second and my father smuggled the presents while I wasn’t looking. I opened them, enjoyed them for a little while and then went to bed. The first Christmas celebration dinner I had was with my future husband and his mother, we invited her over for the holidays (she lived in another city). It felt great and as the first real family celebration ever. She died the next year. Since that day I started going over the top with the holiday (compared to my mother’s way of my childhood). I put Christmas hats to decorate the chairs, i put a nice table cloth traditional for my country, I use traditional colourful clay plates and cook the traditional odd number of dishes. And I invite my mother to join us for dinner. The biggest tradition is to use the same plastic tree we’ve been using with my now husband, it has spent all of our Christmases with us.

My daughter and I do a Christmas Eve Box.
It contains Christmas pjs, hot cocoa, microwave popcorn, and a movie or book. I started it when they were little to give them something to open on Christmas Eve. Last year, I got my first Christmas Eve Box. My daughter is 16 now, and I’m so proud to be this amazing person’s mom.

Since our family is spread out, traditions have waned but I won’t ever forget my ex husband’s father. He would wrap gifts so you absolutely would not guess what they were. He would use larger boxes, things that rolled around, cinder blocks, 2-liters of Coke. You’d get a pair of socks in a gigantic box that weighed 100 lbs! He passed in 1999 and I’m convinced the world is less of a place without him.

We always have black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. They have to be the first thing you eat. They bring good luck, supposedly.

Get loaded and eat some Green Chile enchiladas.

The Gift: At Christmas someone always gets 'the gift'. It is generally given to a new family member (BF, GF, Spouse) or it can be someone who became a close friend over the past year who will be sharing the day with us. If there is no one new in the family someone will get 'the gift'. It is generally a small gift, sometimes expensive, most times not. It is wrapped and wrapped, and you guessed it, WRAPPED. I use different items for the wrapping layers, Xmas paper, of course, then there is tin foil, paper towels, wax paper, even toilet paper and tissues. Last years gift, as it grew ended up in a large prescription bottle, to be wrapped and wrapped even more. It is a gift that has been given with love that everyone groans if they are the one who gets it, and those who did not, enjoy the unwrapping. Well over 30 years now and we all still do have fun with it! LOL

My dad brought home a 'Charlie Brown' type Christmas tree when I was young kid. My mom saw it

My mom lets coffeecake rise overnight on the night before Christmas, then on Christmas morning she starts baking it, then everyone opens their stockings and we have coffeecake before the rest of the presents. Also often we have single family members come over on Christmas morning if they want to so they're not alone :)