Crazy Holiday things you do!!

[lynnek]

I really enjoyed the recent holiday food threads Melanie started and thought it would be interesting to see what crazy things you all do around the holidays. You know, when you mention it at work, you get the deer in the headlights look or people think you have lost your marbles. I have a couple, although they are pretty tame:
Our group of friends from high school (lots of yrs ago) has a certain fruitcake that is being sent around the group. Each year someone gets it--that same, nasty fruitcake is currently in my freezer. Why do we keep doing this?? No idea. My husband thinks its because one of our friends passed away from breast cancer and she is rumored to have started this. So we remember her with a moldy, freezer burned fruitcake--obviously it's her humor we honor!!
Another crazy activity is baking. O.K. seems tame, but, my work is insane this time of yr, I am on my feet 12plus hrs a day. Then to reduce stress, I bake. 30 plus kinds of cookies. I think the smell of butter, sugar and vanilla calms me down:blush: No, vanilla candles don't work. DS12 even asks me, "Are you stressed today Mom? I really want more cutouts" DH is the most popular guy at work because he brings in new cookies every day.

[Dulcee]

Your post made me smile. When stressed I also bake, year round. No one in my family understands it.

As far as crazy holiday traditions. We travel two hours north on Christmas Eve and stop at 3 different holiday parties. We usually make it home around 1 am on Christmas morning. When we tell people this they always think were insane but with all my siblings we have a lot of in-laws and it seems every year another stop becomes a necessity.

[Sam&Alex&Josh'sMOM]

On Christmas eve we bring the kids to my parents house... we eat cold cut sandwhiches on the living room floor and have the annual "Counting of the shrimp" My mother makes a few pounds of shrimp coctail... and we all have to guess how many shrimp there are. Who ever comes the closest wins... doesnt win anything but bragging rights. The living room floor thing started when my sister and I were very little and they needed the neighbor to sneak in some gifts and needed to keep us occupied in a different room... Hence, dinner on the living room floor... and it just stuck.

[Disney4us2]

My father grew up in a non Christmas celebrating family(Jewish). As a boy he hung up a stocking and his father filled it with potato's. Not really what he wanted..lol.

DD and I celebrate Christmas and I still put a potato in his stocking, along with real gifts. It give us all a good laugh.

[MNNHFLTX]

Nothing really crazy, I guess. However, when we lived in Florida my son and I would make the 1-hour drive every year to Christmas, Florida, so that we could get our Christmas cards postmarked there. Unfortunately, no Christmas, TX (that I know of), so we were unable to carry on the tradition here.

[Dakota Rose]

We have a luau for Christmas Eve supper. Here in North Dakota, most people can't pronounce 'luau' and very few have ever attended one. In fact we have never been able to find MaiTai mix local, so we order it from CA. We do it authentic style except that the pork butt goes in banana leaves and into the oven since the ground is frozen. Kids make leis for everyone and I order a bunch of 'treats' from the islands. So fun!

[princessgirls]

Christmas Eve Tradition is that my family never really had one, and when my inlaws lived in NJ we did Christmas Eve with them, but they moved some years ago...so we began some new traditions.
Friends...so blessed to have great friends. Open house party on Christmas Eve afternoon for friends.
Christmas Day is my family at our house, and we play the 7/11 dice game as a tradition. Every one who wants to play brings a ten dollar generic gift. All the gifts are put in the center and the players sit on the floor in a circle. You need to roll a 7 or 11 to open a gift, once everyone has a gift the timer gets set for 10 minutes. Roll a 7 or 11 and you HAVE to "steal" someone's gift. There are always a few "hot" gifts that get a lot of back and forth action. It's fun because everyone can participate!!
Merry Christmas to all of my Intercot friends!
Be Blessed! Be happy, and Stay Healthy!
Julie:mickey:

[MNNHFLTX]

Christmas Day is my family at our house, and we play the 7/11 dice game as a tradition. Every one who wants to play brings a ten dollar generic gift. All the gifts are put in the center and the players sit on the floor in a circle. You need to roll a 7 or 11 to open a gift, once everyone has a gift the timer gets set for 10 minutes. Roll a 7 or 11 and you HAVE to "steal" someone's gift. There are always a few "hot" gifts that get a lot of back and forth action. It's fun because everyone can participate!!My family plays basically the same game at our big annual gathering, except we get to take gifts when you get doubles on the dice. And we all bring a bunch of inexpensive gifts to throw into the middle so that everyone's pretty much guaranteed to go home with a few. :)

[jennbunn]

For my family it is watching a christmas story and having candy cane pie from bakers square on christmas eve. our new thing we have done now for a few years on christmas day is to spend the day at the indoor waterpark with my hubby's extended family.

[teambricker04]

Everyone's traditions sound so fun!

We are pretty low key. My DH and I are from different states and we don't live near any family so we have declared that Christmas is our at home holiday because "how would Santa find the kids?". This way no one gets mad that we don't go for a holiday visit. We stay home and have Swedish meatballs and lefse for Christmas eve dinner.

Probably the most unusual thing is that Santa doesn't wrap presents! I never realized that he generally does because it is family tradition that started when my Grandmother was a child during the depression! He never did for her, for my mother, for me, or for my kids. I tell them that Santa has gone "green" :)

[faline]

Probably the most unusual thing is that Santa doesn't wrap presents! I never realized that he generally does because it is family tradition that started when my Grandmother was a child during the depression! He never did for her, for my mother, for me, or for my kids. I tell them that Santa has gone "green" :)

From a discussion here in the last year or so, I discovered this is not so unusual. When I was growing up, Santa didn't wrap gifts either. When I started my own family, Santa wrapped everything. He even left one gift on the bottom of my daughter's bed. If she woke up really early, she could unwrap the gift Santa had left on her bed. She would then go to back to sleep until a more reasonable hour had been obtained.

Growing up, my cousin's family would go to midnight mass, return home and immediately open all their gifts. They'd essentiallly be up mot of the night and go to bed when they got tired.

When I was a child, we'd go to my grandmother's every year for Christmas Eve and she would make dinner for all of us. We'd exchange gifts to/from my grandmother that night. The next morning, she'd walk the few blocks to our place and join us as we opened gifts at home. Our parents would then have a mid-day meal.

As an adult, my traditions changed. We would get take out Chinese for Christmas Eve dinner. We still do this and, most years, our daughter and her husband join us. When she was growing up, she was allowed to select one gift from under the tree to open before bed. And..of course, Santa would leave a gift on her bed. In the morning, she was allowed to open any gifts in her stocking but had to wait for dad and mom before starting on the gifts under the tree. While she opened the stocking gifts, we got coffee going, cut up danish, and put out pasties. Then, we'd all sit down together and enjoy the gift opening. No free for all in our house. We all enjoy watching as each gift is opened before we move onto another. Once the gift opening is complete, it would typically be time to stuff the turkey and get the bird into the oven.

Thanks for the chance to bring back some nice memories!

[lynnek]

We too watch A Chrsitmas Story, after we go out for Asian food. I think the kids are hoping to recreate the duck scene in a Chinese restaurant--knowing how easy they can get me to scream.

Faline, I'm with you on the open the presents one at a time thing--we've done that every year as well. The kids like it too--makes it last a bit longer for them.

Here, Santa wraps, but in a totally different kind of paper. All my regular wrapping matches the tree decorations, Santa being the crazy guy he is, finds the loudess wrapping paper out there and even wraps the toothpaste that goes in the kids stockings with the candy.

[White Rose]

Oh, this brings back so many memories for me!

Our crazy tradition was Santa would actually visit our house twice, when my younger sister and I were little. He would come on Christmas Eve, of course, but he would also come the night BEFORE Christmas Eve, on the 23rd. He would leave a red dot on your nose (similar to his reindeer, Rudolph!) to indicate that you had been good all year long and that you would be getting presents on Christmas Eve. It would help to extend the excitement just a little bit longer. It was a tradition that began with my father's side of the family. A year or two, me or my sister woke up in tears, thinking Santa had forgotten to leave us a dot and we wouldn't be getting any presents! However, Dad could always find that red dot on our nose. ;)