Christmas and Yule Traditions

Christmas and Yule Traditions   Okay, summer as finally reached Sequim, just as I'm ready for Autumn, Halloween and Christmas. So I thought I would start things out by posting some Christmas traditions I've found, as well the ones my own family have done.   What can you add to my list?   Cindi   Putting up a Christmas tree, put up more than one?   Drinking hot cocoa while listening to Christmas music   Hanging and filling Christmas stockings is another tradition   Calling family members   A special Christmas Eve soup   Playing cards or board games   Going to midnight services   Watching football (my husband made me put that one in)   Watching Christmas movies (A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation, Charlie Brown)   A snowball fight   Sledding   Ice Skating   Tracking Santa on Norad   Reading "Twas the night before Christmas"   Walking around the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights   Driving around the city looking at Christmas lights   A special Christmas breakfast or brunch   Mimosas (champagne and orange juice)   Baking Christmas cookies   Making Christmas ornaments   A candlelighting ceremony   Christmas caroling   Decorating the outside of your house with lights   Baking a Bûche de Noel   Baking fruitcake   Making Christmas gifts   Setting up a miniature village   A Yule Ritual   Creating or adding to a Christmas scrapbook   Use special Christmas dishes   Buy new jammies and/or robes for whole family   Go over the top in decorating the inside of your home   Bake multiple pies (at our house it's apple, pumpkin, mincemeat and pecan)   Make a hot beverage such as Wassail, Cider, Wine, Hot Buttered Rums (we call those hot ruttered bums)   Decorate with dried and fresh fruit (pineapple, oranges, apples....)   Get family portraits done   Watch Christmas videos from past years   Send out Christmas cards   Send out a Christmas newsletter   Make candy... fudge, divinity, molded candies, peanut brittle, taffy, toffee, candy canes, sugarplums   Have a taffy pull   Play charades and other parlor games   Sing around the piano   Steam a Christmas pudding   Add to a Christmas collection   Have a Christmas tea party   Celebrate Boxing Day   Make your own candles   Hang mistletoe   Collect special glass Christmas ornaments   Make paperbag, sand, and votive candle luminarias   Make orange and whole clove pomander balls   Put a Christmas greeting on the answering machine   Work on a Christmas jigsaw puzzle   Visit a live nativity scene   Go to a stage performance of Dickens's Christmas Carol   Attend a performance of the Nutcracker Ballet   Attend a performance of the Messiah   Participate in a Messiah Sing-along   Decorate the trees outside for the birds   Have a kids Christmas concert   Have a candlelight dinner   Have a family fondue fireside supper   Go on a sleigh ride   Visit Santa Claus and get a family picture taken   Bake gingerbread kids cookies   Burn a Yule log in the fireplace   Here are some of the ones we had when the kids were still living at home...   Ours always started on Thanksgiving. Courtney would insist that the Christmas trees be put up right after dinner. We started putting up so many trees that one year we ended up with eight!   We celebrated our own version of St. Nicholas Day (December 6th), in honor of our Dutch and German ancestries. We hung the Christmas stockings on the fireplace the night before, and they were filled with oranges, gold foil coins (chocolates), film and a Christmas ornament.   The rest of the month we did all kinds of things such as driving around and looking at Christmas lights, visiting Santa Claus, ice skating, going to performances of the Nutcracker and the Messiah. The kids were always in some kind of school performance, and Courtney danced at the mall every year. We started going to a church that we became very involved in and did activities there, from Hanging of the Greens to a Living Nativity to Courtney and another girl dancing during a program to a couple of comedy shows. (I am now a Pagan, but I have fond memories of that church)   Christmas Eve was spent with family for dinner and exchanging gifts. Dinner was either ham or prime rib, pumpkin pies or cheesecake (depending on who was hosting that year). We didn't always have the same menu... one year we had lasagna.   Christmas morning was spent at home, just us and if possible the whole day was that way. Breakfast was big; sausage and eggs and hash browns, and Danish pastry, served on special red Christmas dishes.   We opened presents from Santa Claus and he *always* brought too many. Most of my pictures from Christmas mornings show us drowning a pile of wrapping paper.   We spent a good part of the day talking on the phone since most of our family is out of town.   We liked to bake and always made cut out cookies in Christmas shapes with colored frosting. Other cookies were lemon squares, toffee cookies and Russian teacakes. Tim usually requested mincemeat pie and fruitcake.   We loved to listen to Christmas music, especially funny songs such as "The Twelve Pains of Christmas" and "We Wish You a Merry Fishmas..."   We always took family pictures in October for Christmas cards and had movie and game nights. Movies, of course, was Christmas movies like "Santa Claus, the Movie", "Christmas Vacation" and "Home Alone". We have several Christmas board games... Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly and one called "North Pole".   We put up a miniature ceramic village every year, that each year has grown. I will now need a separate room in the new house just to display this....   In the year 2000, we had a big change in our lives and our Christmas... it was the first year without Courtney, she had died just three months before. I couldn't face a normal family Christmas, so Tim, Chris and I went to the Oregon coast and spent Christmas on the beach. We stayed at our favorite condo/hotel, Inn at the Spanish Head. We took a tiny live tree with us and decorated it with little pictures of Courtney.   We had a lovely seafood brunch at the hotel's restaurant and we spent the day walking on the beach where someone had drawn an angel in the sand and watching lots of movie videos on TV.   That year we also started doing the Children's Remembrance candlelighting wreath in Courtney's memory.   The following year, more changes.... a move to a new house, after 21 years in the last one. We had a small tree, but bigger than last years, but still with the same ornaments of pictures of Courtney, and butterfly ornaments. I put up some outside lights. I listened to Christmas music, with some new additions, but also some of the old favorites, although some of them made me cry.   Since then, Chris moved "home", moved out again, we moved into our newly built dream home, moved out again (into town to a smaller house) and this summer moved back to our dream house.   We still have prime rib for dinner. We still watch Christmas movies and play a board game. And put up at least one Christmas tree. But no more Santa Claus or Christmas stockings. I also started collecting those singing snowmen from Hallmark.   The candlelighting is still done, and now we go for a walk at midnight and look at the stars, and look for Courtney's star, and hope for snow....