What did your family do on christmas? Past or Present.


The youngest person in my family is Talisin at 20 so Christmas tradition isnt huge anymore. So Ill talk about what we use to do.

Christmas Eve.

Every Christmas eve my family would go out and look at Christmas lights. We would drive all over the place and then come home around 10:00PM.

Before Christmas we put gifts from the family (like from me to talisin) under the tree. Although gifts from my parents didnt go under until Christmas day.

So on Christmas Eve we were all allowed to open one gift already under the tree.


Christmas Day

Christmas Day we were not allowed to leave the upper level of the house. the top floor of our house had 4 Bedrooms. We could talk to each other and go from room to room as long as we didnt wake up my parents. We got our stockings put on the end of our bed too so we could play with those.
The two main rules of chirstmas morning were not to wake the parents until atleast 8:00-9:00AM and we could not go down and look at the tree. My parents said the best part of christmas was seeing our faces when we saw the MASSIVE amount of gifts under the tree. With five kids you get an assload of toys under the tree.
My brothers and sisters and I have always been very respecful of rules put in place by our parents. A strict religous house will do that to a group of kids lol. Anyway we did slightly break the rules each year. We always sent down one person who would "scout" the tree out for like 30 seconds and then draw a picture for the other four kids lolol. I swear we must have done this until I was 12-14 (tal is four years younger than me).

When it was time we would go down stairs and have a very big christmas breakfast before opening gifts.

After that we would open gifts for like 2-3 hours lol. Takes a long time to open gifts for 7 people. We always opened gifts one at a time. In our family we always got main huge gift. This gift was hidden somewhere in the house. In order to find it we had to open an envelope that had a letter with a little riddle. Not something complicated, it was more like two lines the rymed and we had to guess what the last word (that rymed with the first line) was and look there. After 3-4 clues we would find it. Sometimes it wasnt even in our house.

lol anyway thats my family stuff, what about other people?

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COBRA KAI DOJO NEVER DIES
RIP Shiloh

Christmas Eve:
My mom always makes a huge pot of chili, which we consume at dinner time.

I have a one brother and one sister, and we always put our gifts to each other and to our parents under the tree. We usually put those gists under the tree whenever we buy and wrap them, so everything is usually there by Christmas Eve.

Up until I was about 20, we got to open up one gift on Christmas Eve. Not a gift from "santa" but any other gift under the tree.



Christmas Day:
Up until I was about 16, my bro and sis and I would wake up VERY early, like 4am-7am, sneak downstairs with a flashlight, and find our gifts from "santa" (the good stuff) on the couches, individually sectioned off. These gifts were not wrapped, so we could immedietely see what we got. We would sometimes sneak back upstairs, depending on how early it was, or just wait for my parents to wake up. Our stockings would be hanging over the fireplace, so we could check those out as well.

When my parents woke up around 8am, we would eat kind of a snack, like hot chocolate and a muffin or something, then commence with the gift unwrapping. Someone would always hand out all the wrapped gifts first, so each of us had a nice stack in front of us. Then we would all unwrap everything at the same time. After a good hour or so of that, we would eat a big breakfast of pancakes or something.



This year I am 23 years old, and my bro is 25 and sis is 21, so of course we don't really do this kind of stuff anymore. Now we all get up at about 8-9am and I jump in the shower first before even going downstairs haha.

I think when I was around ten or eleven my family started taking my brother and I (hes four years older) to midnight mass (Catholic mass held on Christmas Eve that starts at 11:00 and ends on Christmas day at 12:00) which was probably one of the more interesting masses out of the year, and it wasn't in the morning so I didn't mind. In the morning on Christmas day we'd wake up and have breakfest before anything else, and then at around 10:00 or 11:00 we'd sit down and start opening presents. We would open one at a time, starting with the youngest. (hi, that's me) then my brother, mother, and then my father would open the last. We'd continue in that order til' everything was opened and done with then clean up everything.

I have a harder time remembering traditions from when I was younger, but sometime before Christmas I'd always be excited and draw up like a wish list (aka. letter to Santa) way ahead of time when I was really little. I used to set up elaborate traps and random tripwires in attempt to catch Santa, which failed of course, but I'd stare at the three, then the fireplace, and at the cookies and milk and I'd be fast asleep in no time, haha My brother and I also used to wake up and wear these killer robes which we had really only used for this occasion. We'd go down and inspect the haul under the tree, maybe shake a few boxes (legos always were a dead give away), and then just talk and wait for our parents to get up.

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Retired 8/21/06
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i just open the gifts on christmas.. Man yarr's family lol...


We're lame bleh

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Job 10: 20
The mikey's have a plan. Djay isn't all powerful.

We do nothing...

Silly christians.

matti is tainted with satan

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rofl

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COBRA KAI DOJO NEVER DIES
RIP Shiloh

Careful not to hurt yourself on chairs, laptops, desktops or door frames.

Christmas Eve:

We have a big dinner and then Church in the evening and half the church is filled up with my relatives. Afterwards we all go to my great aunt's house like 5 min away and chill. Everyone brings something so there's like 892392 cakes and 289374239 cookies. The kids exchange gifts but don't open them and we all leave around midnight. I moved though so this year I'm just going to my grandparents house with immediate family.

Christmas morning:

I wake up everyone at 7 or 8(I set my alarm for this). Nobody is allowed to do anything after they wake up, they have to go straight to the tree. We open presents and take pictures in our pj's and then we eat a huge breakfest provided by my mom and I. We make like everything known to man for breakfest. Then we all go our seperate ways(example: i go on the computer).

We used to have more little things we'd do but everyone is old now..my two siblings are 20 and 24. I'm the only one left with jumpy Christmas spirit.

Christmas eve we never did much, but we have gone to my friend's christmas party for the past 4 years. On christmas day Me and my sister always woke up early (If we ever even got to sleep). Our stockings were always put at the foot of our beds. We would both go wake up my parents and then go throught what was in our stockings. Then we would have to wait until my parents were good and ready and we would go to the tree. We always had someone assigned to the job of passing out gifts from under the tree. and we always have tamales for lunch.

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my traditions, though strange and few as they are, are quite enjoyable and can't imagine christmas without them.

Pre-Christmas:
My older sister rearranges the gifts religiously every day(cause new gifts are put every day)

My oldest sister will come over from her apartment and smell and lick her gifts trying to figure out what they are

Christmas day:
My oldest sister comes over around 8am-9am and will torture the family to wake up(like having her dogs attack my older sister in her sleep, she's usually the last up)

When you wake up, you can open your stocking but can't touch the gifts under the tree

When everyone finally gets up, we dont even bother touching the presents for another hour because we just sit around and talk and make jokes. ex: my oldest sister's most favorite joke is "what do old ladies taste like?"(the punch line is "depends")

We take 2-3 hours to open gifts because we do it casually and then we watch the parades and have breakfast

We also open gifts one at a time in a random order, but nobody gets to open twice in a row unless they're the last left

For dinner we have a honey-baked ham

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Family: open presents

Me: drive back and forth for batterys, or driving from my moms ot my dads house

I don't associate Christmas with Christianity at all. My family has never once been to church my entire life, although Christmas has always been a big holiday for us. I just see Christmas as a family holiday, I never even think about the religious connotations.

ever since the year i moved out (when i was 16), and got major static from my family ending in them sending my dads girlfriend to my job to tell me i owed them 100 bucks for dental bill and not to come home for xmas, i pretty much like being left alone really. i like to sleep all day on holidays.

prolly cuz when i was 16 i stayed at my aunts house for xmas eve (to not interupt the friends family i was staying withs xmas cuz i was only there until january when my apt opened). then the next morning told my aunt to drop me off at the mall where my friend would pick me up. i assured her everything was fine. but in reality i wanted her to go with the rest of the family and not worry that i was sitting in the mall for 9-10 hours when it was closed waiting for my friend to be finished with his xmas day stuff. i got to see a free movie because my friend was working the theaters... it was Mars Attacks and it was the biggest piece of crap ever haha.

anyways, when i was real young we never had special rituals really. we'd goto bed and basically lay there because we couldnt sleep. then around 5-6 am we'd wake up and go downstairs and look at stuff (some stuff was always to big to unwrap).. then after our paletes were watered for long enough we'd try and wake our parents up haha. then the process of opening gifts and cleaning up. then we would goto my grandparents house open the stuff there, and eat some stuff. on the rare occasion we'd goto my weird aunts house which was filled with cousins and uncles we didnt really know and generally made me feel awkward haha.

now that im older i dont really like getting gifts, makes me feel the opposite of what others feel i guess. id rather give gifts out but up until this year ive never had any money to do so which is prolly why i feel lame for accepting stuff when i dont have anything to return haha. i like just hanging out with people and the family if i do end up attending a holiday event.

/end novel

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75WHM / 37SMN / 61BLM / 37RDM / 70BRD / 75NIN / 75RNG / 56THF / 37WAR / 37DRG http://www.myspace.com/dan_wyld

my family is like mikey, when i was younger id wake up and get my dad and grandparents up then open stuff. Then eat breakfast and about noon my uncle would show up lol. Id say this christmas ill be up till 3 playing games so probably im going to be the last one up on christmas for once. Sometime around age 15 i quit caring about christmas so much. This year im really not all that excited. It really is a kids holiday.

like me lol? i had no traditions

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Job 10: 20
The mikey's have a plan. Djay isn't all powerful.

apathy ftw

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pass out drunk, beat my brother up coz he got better presents than me.

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this year, we are going to go feed the homeless from 9am-1pm, aint that somethin special?

We used to have pretty big christmas eve parties every year, with like 20 5 year olds, and 6 families. good times

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Does anyone else notice it takes old people like forever to unwrap one gift? I mean, they cut the tape to not tear the fucking paper, so they can use it again for next christmas to wrap a smaller gift. Thats so anoying.
Before I moved out, we'd all go over to my grandparents house, who lived in minnesota, and we lived in Wi. So it was packers vs. vikings for thanksgiving and christmas. I guess that is where my deep hate for the vikings comes from, cause vikings fans are just asses. But the better christmases where the one I'd get a new game and be "to sick" to go spend the day with relatives. I swear, someone was to sick ever year lol, we'd have to plan it out weeks in advance so someone else wouldn't win. lol.
But I can't ever remember what I've done the last 5-6 Christmases.

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I'm just a question knowing my answer,
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our tradition is no tradition i guess

Christmas Eve:

My sister and I get to open one gift...usually it's the one from each other. That's pretty much it for Christmas Eve in our family. My mom usually works, and my dad just preps the Christmas dinner stuff.

Christmas Day:
My dad always gets up at the ass-crack of dawn to get the turkey in the oven. He usually wakes us up around 7 to open presents. I swear, he gets more excited than I do! Especially this year because I think he knows he's getting Call of Duty 2 from us. We also have my Grandma staying with us for Christmas, and she always gets up early. It's fun having her with us because she gets so excited about our presents too. My mom works most Christmas days, but she comes home around 4 and opens her presents with my aunt and uncle when they come. We always have a big dinner that my dad takes pride in cooking (and does a great job at) and we also play any board games that we get for Christmas.
This year is particularly exciting because I have Yarr around too which is so fun and I'm soooo excited to give him the presents I bought him.

Have a great holiday, everyone!