What are your Christmas traditions?

This will be our first year in our new home and our first year as parents. We were chatting last night about Christmas traditions we had as kids and how we want to start a few for our LO. We used to get new pjs on Christmas Eve and our beds would be changed on Christmas Eve. We had traditions around visiting relatives and mass. We always got a book from Santa, this delighted my sister but appalled my brother!! We only had Cidona at Christmas(random)!! What are/were your special Christmas traditions?

New PJs and book on Christmas eve for the kids. DH gets out of work early on Christmas eve and we spend it as a family. I nearly love Christmas eve more than Christmas day! We always watch the Snowman (last year it was the Snowman and the Snowdog) before bedtime. Me and DH open our pressies for each other on Christmas eve after kids have gone to bed so its all about the kids on Christmas morning. Santa gets homemade cookies and a glass of milk. Rudolph gets a carrot too of course.. DH leaves crumbs around and a half eaten carrot in the drive - Santa is very messy! Always have pancakes, bacon rolls and bellinis for breakfast on Christmas morning (when I'm not pregnant - OJ this year). We used to insist breakfast was eaten before presents but kids aren't having that anymore so we eat in the living room. In laws on Boxing Day seems to be a new tradition. MIL does a cracker / after dinner present for everyone. We always have Shloer with Christmas dinner, dunno why! I buy a new Christmas tree ornament each year for each of the kids, and one of the family ones with the year on it. We always go for a walk after dinner too. I'm getting excited just thinking about it!!

What a nice idea for a thread! We always used to go to a bigger town on Christmas Eve for a last look around the shops. This was followed by a visit to a Chinese restaurant for dinner, then off to local midnight mass. We did this for years, eventually it was just myself & the parents once my siblings got too old and cool for it. Christmas morning Mam would cook a fry then launch into preparing dinner. Poor Mam, the rest of us plonked down in the sitting room watching films all day! Though it was always my job to set the table. Dinner is usually followed by a walk up the road, then home to the fire for a game of Trivial Pursuit. Turkey curry on St. Stephen's Day. Christmas is so much more magical when there are young kids around, the genuine belief in Santa, the wonder of it all makes me wish he was real!

My husbands family have this fab tradition and we're definitely gonna continue it if we're blessed with children. Since my husband and his sisters were born every Xmas morning before they came down their dad sat them on the stairs and filmed them, basically they all introduce themselves, they age etc and what they have done in the past year and what they hope to achieve in the coming year. It's so lovely they have all the tapes from the start and still do it now they are all grown up and it's lovely as they have husbands and wives now who join in. After that they have a big letter from Santa on the wall in room with pressie saying how he saw them for the last year, each one of them has their own wee section saying what he is proud of etc it's so lovely and brings a tear to my eye every year!

Rosiemama, I love the idea of new tree decorations. Mum and Dad still have some of the christmas decorations in the same old, battered brown leather suitcase from when we were kids. Also, we still have the crib that Dad made over 40yrs ago (he's very creative with his hands), and we still have the same old style figureines to go in them. A tradition is that the youngest member of the family puts Baby Jesus in the crib on Christmas morning. They even have the bells I made in 1st class - two pots of Yoplait chocolate yoghurt, covered in tinfoil with a little bell glued inside and a bow made out of two pipe-cleaners! When we were kids, having Rice Krispies for breakfast was just as exciting as Santa coming.....Mum used to say that they were too dear to buy for 7 of us, so this was our treat. To this day we still do it in our own homes and I love it - hubby thinks I'm bonkers, but he loves getting Rice Krispies on Christmas morning too. Dinner would take about 2hrs because of everyone relaxing and chatting. In hubbys, the meal is over and done with, in about 45mins, and then everyone legs it from the table, no sitting around talking. We have a very odd tradition, you wouldn't dare attempt it during the year, because that would be just weird.....I believe it was my Dads family that used to do this, and I've no idea how it started either. A few hours after dinner, we'd have tea, mince pies and christmas cake, there was always an extra bit......celery sandwiches!!! Yes, celery between two slices of fresh white bread - and I don't even like white bread!!!! I must ask Dad, how on earth did someone in his family come up with something so strange. We always have spiced beef, not everyone likes it - we love it, and it's my aunts job to order and collect it for us. I think it's a north Dublin tradition, Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas in our family without spiced beef....or celery sandwiches.....or Rice Krispies!! (my God, we're a bunch of weirdos! ) We don't leave the house, aunts and uncles come to us, so visiting is done after Christmas day - there's too many of us to get carted around the place on the day! I've asked hubby before if he had any family traditions when it came to Christmas, and all he said was as soon as dinner was over, he'd go straight over to his friends house and spend the rest of the day there just drinking! Everyone's way of celebrating is different, but I just find it very strange that it doesn't involve being around family really in his house. Each to their own as they say. Love hearing other families traditions, especially the leaving Santas footprints and taking bites out of carrots. McLisa, what a gorgeous tradition, no wonder you want to continue it, and please God will get to as well.

I thought we where the only house that had Cidona at Christmas, my father couldn't eat his Xmas dinner without it. Even now I'm married with 3 kids and I have to have a bottle for Christmas dinner. It just screams Xmas to me. We always had ham sambos on Christmas Eve when ham was cooked. Mam always thought it was nicer to eat when first cooked.

Awkwardly hugging siblings and in-laws in our once-a-year attempt at tenderness then fighting off the forces of family interaction that have us all reverting to fighting like ten year-olds within the hour; Reminiscing about Christmases of yore and the inconvenience of a Great Aunt that used to come to ours every Christmas Morning and how the children would migrate to the kitchen while she was in the living room, and vice versa. The occasional reprisal of my party piece from that era- lip-synching perfection to So Lonely by The Police using the blunt end of a knife as a mic. Not the radio cut mind, but the complete track *blows across finger tips* A 15 minute conversation round the table in praise of the quality of spuds on the plate and how you can't get them like you used to these days etc. etc. Several more offerings of said spuds. Someone trying to turn up Mrs. Windsor's TV address to her subjects for the laugh. Everyone bends over laughing. Not really. Affectionately giving each other dead arms when caught trying to duck out of cleaning up. Faking surprise and appreciation at the choice of gifts exchanged. Speculating which present from their children our parents seemed most impressed with, and slagging off the one sibling for always going above an beyond the average budget. Lick-arse. Having a shot of Gaviscon after every course to deal with the bitterness from being single during this feast of St. Couples. Oh that's right, I don't have to do that anymore. Yay.

McLisa that sounds so lovely! We used to go for drinks Christmas Eve (always turned into an almighty session) with cousins, aunts, uncles etc and then did christmas day in my mams with just us. I make the desserts, she does the dinner and we drink some bubbles. This year is LO first christmas so we're staying at home Christmas Eve just the 3 of us and will do santy there, I cant wait The first year we were married I got a little decoration with our names and the year on it and I have a new one for this year with baba on it Shes a bit young for traditions yet but I cant wait for the christmas' to come and starting our own little traditions

We always had to go downstairs as a family to see what 'Santa' brought, unlike my cousins who would be down the stairs at stupid o'clock me & my brothers had to patiently wait for a more civilised hour until we could get the folks up. We still follow this tradition only now it's dragging my hungover brothers out of bed! I nearly died of disappointment the first year I spent Christmas with DH family- they don't do presents until late afternoon! Last year was our first Christmas as parents & Santa definitely comes in this house in the morning! Hope to start our own little tradition this year bringing DD into town on Christmas Eve to see the lights & have a family lunch! Also started the tradition of buying a new Christmas decoration for DD each year, the idea is she'll have her own shoebox of decorations for her own tree one day!

Pals coming from near & far for drinks in the local on Christmas Eve. Been doing it for almost 20 years now. Sipping Baileys while opening presents, after mass, a walk & Champagne brunch. Dad's jokes. Watching Only Fools And Horses. I'm getting Selection Boxes for the lads this year. Loved them, as a kid. Books were my fave present back then & still are now. Grandad used to fill our stockings with fruit, smelly pencils, stickers & little soaps. And 50p!