In our house we do not was dishes untill we run out of plates. We really like to be lazy.

I dont have any traditions anymore but years ago when my parents were together and we all lived in the same house we had traditions for christmas... thats when christmas used to be a fun holiday...

For Christmas (and Thanksgiving for that matter cause mom hosts that party/dinner too) we finally quit using real plates and stuff and got paper plates and cups and plastic forks. My aunt always tries to keep the forks but us kids (who are doing the washing) always sneaks them off out the back door and throw them away outside in the garbage can that no one would go into if they had to. Whatever goes in it stays in it until dad gets brave enough to take it off.

Aww...my mom loves going to the church's parties and stuff, too, but also as a celebrator of Yule, I'm always left out. Of course I'm the one who refuses to go, but I don't like going to a place where I start feeling physically ill when I walk in the door. Dunno, why I get sick at church, I jsut know I do. Weird.....

my family has the tradition of waiting till noon before we open presents...... it was soooo annoying growing up!

Our family goes to my cousin's house every thanksgiving and christmas to celebrate :'D

My family always gather for christmas, there was 21 of us at my house on xmas eve.

We give out gifts the morning of christmas. We do have some odd traitions though. My dad is jewish, not very religoius but still, so we give a present on the first night on Hannukah, instead of christmas eve. Mom instists we eat breakfast or at least a cleminitine (we alwas have thoughs) before eating all the candy and such. As the kid It's my job to hand out presents, one or one to each person at a time. Other then that it's pretty nomal.

a new tradition I am getting involved with is dollar socks...my step-mom started that and now that I am a part of the family i get to be involved too...

Dollar socks? Sounds interesting. Care to elaborate?

That's pretty cool, twice the gift giving happiness. :) Haha, I'd have qualms about eating ANYTHING before getting to the candy. xD

My family has none but my husbands all go to his mothers and pay homage to the queen.

We have a lot of traditions in our family!

1. My mother grumbles and groans and swears we're NOT DOING A TREE THIS CHRISTMAS. My sister and I go out and get one anyway.

2. Decorating the tree: sister and I alternate putting ornaments on -- we're not allowed to get ahead of each other. When we get past the usual store-bought type and to the special handmade or gifted ones, we watch eagerly to see who'll get the glass bells, for instance, or the extra-big green ball. We debate over the top ornament, every year.

3. A subset of ornaments are the handful that don't get hooked on, but placed, like small cardboard boxes or tinsel balls. These must be taken as far away from the tree as one dares, then thrown backward without looking, to see where they land.

4. Christmas Eve, my sister and I pull out all the garlands that have rested under the tree and decorate the house with them. This was fun last year because we were in a rented vacation home, so it was a different set of things hung. Usually we "wrap" a piece of furniture, and write "Merry Christmas" with one garland on the floor. It's a lot of fun -- we try to finish before midnight, and listen to Christmas music.

5. Christmas morning, I wake up early, make coffee and cinnamon rolls, and then go wake up Mom (and Dad, when he was still alive). Mom comes down in her bathrobe and is all grumpy because she hates Christmas.

6. Opening gifts: we make Mom pick the first gift to open; whoever it's for opens it, we all exclaim and comment, and then that person picks the next gift to be opened. This can be really fun because sometimes you know what's for whom and sometimes you're just curious about a big box.

7. If we haven't opened the gifts from Mom's students (she teaches middle school), those get incorporated into the above practice, and so Mom, who hates Christmas, has to open more gifts than anyone else. :snerk:

8. Wrapping bows get stuck on heads.

9. Paper gets recycled; bags get re-used; other stuff gets thrown out.

10. Photos are taken by whomever is most enthusiastic about the camera.

And that's our Christmas! It's a lot of fun.

My family used to have a Tradition. Every year around Christmas, my mom's whole side of the family got together at her Grandma's home on the lake. Our family is very destructive, and I'm surprised fights didn't happen during those times, but I was younger so I may have just not noticed.

Anyways, after Grandma died, we quit doing that. We'd still get together, but it wasn't as big as before. Fewer people showed up each year, and it seemed like the family started getting worse and worse.

The elder people had all of the money, while the younger are very poor. The elder ones always gave most of their money to the younger, but the young people in our family are idiots and kept wrecking cars or destroying homes. They can't take care of anything.

So most of the elder ones died, and now the young people who are poor just don't want to do anything together. They'd rather complain and moan about being poor and how if so-and-so was still alive, they could afford to pay bills!

That sounds kind of sad. I hope that as your generation gets older, you become able to hold the family together. I've had a few holidays without family recently, and I find I miss the old traditions a lot. :sniffle:

thats fun !
i dont have any myself u_u

A tradition in my family is making up games to go along with opening gifts. The goal is to make the last present be opened sometime after 11 if we start at about 8 or 8:30am. So there's always hunts or hidden presents. Sometimes we just make the presents rediculous to open(like a whole role of duct tape!) or make up silly rules that you can only open it with your feet or your mouth. We all take turns opening a gift and sometimes we choose lots to see who goes next. We also do things like, play a tiny clip of a christmas song and whoever guess' it first gets to open a present next. My dad often gets my sister and charms for Christmas and he'll hand 'em up on the tree and we have to find them(those are HARD). By the time noon rolls around usually all the presents are open and we're all tired from running around and laughing all morning!

According to my grandma, our Christmas tradition was actually picked up from her first mother-in-law. Every year without fail we have tamales and chili. There are also these awesome candies she gets me from the store where she buys the chili powder for the chili. I think they're made with brown sugar or something, they just kind of crumble apart in your hands and melt in your mouth. She's only forgotten to get me them once and man did I whine! :XD Those things are freakin' addictive.

Ironically, I canNOT stand the chili. The rest of my family adores it, though, so I'm not in danger of losing my candies.

we decorate the tree with the family and go to my aunts house and open gifts :3

Tradition is this:

I wake up early, too early usually and sit waiting for a proper time while watching christmas movies.

Get up and make hot chocolate in the coco maker and begin to make the two cups of coffee or sleeping parents.

Then bring sleeping parents the coffee to wake them up, and when the coco is done, bring cup to brother and sister-in-law to wake them up.

Return to mother to ask if she is ready to get up, then go back to brother to inform him that mother is getting up (past years he would not move unless mom was getting get up, and she wouldn't move unless he was getting up or coffee was presented)

Stockings are done first, slowly to watch the other people open theirs, then we all get dressed and wait for the guests to come in the afternoon to open the presents under the tree, to which my father wore his Santa Goofy hat and passed them out, though when I play santa goofy I would go in a circle so everyone got one in a pattern (ocd like that lol)

Then Chinese food from the best place we know.


This is the first year that I've not been living home for christmas and my brother rather ruined the tradition. Though we did show up and greeted my mother with a cup of coffee, my brother wasn't there, and didn't show up for some time, so we oped stockings without him and my sister-in-law along with the presents under the tree. At 12ish we finally met up with my brother and sister-in-law at a deli returned to the house to open their stockings and their gifts. They left to visit a friend (while my fiance and I napped) then brother and sis left without a prior notice so we didn't get our traditional chinese food but my fiance and I did go to a movie.

Every year when my family decorates our Christmas tree it's a tradition that we eat bar burgers and mozzarella stick from the local tavern and watch a traditional Disney movie (usually it has to be 2D, because they're the best.) And then on Christmas Eve we eat nothing but our favorite appetizers for dinner only to be followed by a giant ham dinner on Christmas Day!

My family does an after Christmas thing on New Years...my Fiance and his family do a big get together, eh...

Well, its not a Christmas tradition but it is similar, its a holiday tradition. Since 07 me and my guy celebrate what we call Greedmas. We buy each other lots of presents and eat a nice dinner out...on the 12th of December. XD It all started from us buying each other far too much in 07 and sitting on the couch bored, staring at our presents and we were like, let's open one early. I apparently didn't open the one early he wanted me to open early so we opened another and that turned into opening them all early, so we just decided it was our own holiday. Now we celebrate every Greedmas on the 12th. >w<

My parents change the mode on their digital clocks in their room to "Set" right before the time they give my little brother that we will wake up and open presents so that it will stay at that time till they want to wake up. He sits in his room staring at his clock till the time they gave him, then goes and wakes them up, and they tell him "Look at the clock! Its still 7:30. we told you 8:00." then around 8:30 they get up and we go open presents.