This is Santa's big scene

It's almost 7:30 in the morning, but it's pitch black outside. Sigh. Friday we'll have the shortest day of the year and then begin the long turn around towards the light. Even if December 21st is a particularly rotten day, you can tell yourself that it won't get any worse.

When I am filthy rich I will spend the fall and winter somewhere in the southern hemisphere. I am open to suggestions. Right now I'm thinking New Zealand.

So what do you guys do for Christmas? Any tug of war between families? We're going to have three Christmases this year, sort of. Christmas Eve afternoon we'll do the present opening with just my mom and dad and siblings. Christmas Eve night we'll do the [massive, loud, takes forever, extremely fattening] present opening at my grandmother's house with all the aunts and uncles. Then we'll go home, go to church in the morning, have our little 3-person family Christmas and then drive down to Phillip's parents' house for dinner. I guess that's four Christmases. This is the most-doable version of Christmas so far- for a while we were thinking about having to stay the night somewhere and cram three of those four Christmases into Christmas Day.

Luckily there will be plenty of wine.

Phillip and I have talked some about what traditions we want to start in our little family consisting of him and me and our perfect brilliant child. Phillip's family doesn't HAVE any traditions. He chalks this up to 1) an extended family that lives hours away, 2) a brother older by 8 years, so a lot of the time it was just Phillip and his parents and 3) his mom is a nurse and often had to work Christmas Day. Since we've been married we have Christmas dinner with his parents. His mom makes a rib roast and we quickly open gifts all at once around the kitchen counter. One year we did it one at a time in the formal living room. THAT was a special year.

MY family, on the other hand, is insane. In MY family, if you do not do exactly the same thing every year, there will be Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth.  I've got four brothers and sisters, my mom has four brothers and sisters and nearly all of them and their respective families converge on my grandmother's house Christmas Eve night. (And, for the longest time, I had no idea that people opened presents Christmas morning. MORNING? But you can't party all night if you open presents in the MORNING!) It starts around 4 or 5 with soup and fried bread dough. Do you know what fried bread dough is? I will tell you. A little cloud of heaven, that's what. You put jam or sandwich fixings or egg salad on your little ball of fried bread dough, and oh my God, some people even put BUTTER on their FRIED bread dough. You eat until all the bread dough is gone (which takes a while, even though there are four or five Giant Men who do their very best to complete the task quickly). Then you set out all kinds of awful things- cookies, candies, cakes- on the coffee table, fill up your wine glass and the present opening begins. There is a Present Passer Outter and we open them one at a time and now that everyone is Old we have a gift exchange. It takes FOREVER. But since you are constantly eating treats and slowly growing tipsy you don't really mind. It's fun, but it's exhausting. Christmas Day, when I was growing up, was for recuperating.

So, you see, we are coming from different places when we talk about Traditions. But Phillip seems to really like the insanity that is my family Christmas and I have already laid down the law about things like Advent calendars and garlands and nativity scenes, the law being OUR HOUSE WILL BE CHRISTMASSY, OH YES. I think when Jack gets a little older we'll have more of an idea about how to have our own Christmas. For now we're good mooching off everyone else.

Somewhere in all of this we try to include the Baby Jesus. The reason for the season and all that. I would really really love to go to the midnight Mass at my church, but because of the aforementioned Fattening Family Party, we'd never get there in time and/or we wouldn't be able to stay awake. You shouldn't really go to midnight Mass after five glasses of wine, right? I always want to go to midnight Mass because they do a half hour of lessons and carols beforehand and by the time actual Christmas rolls around, I start to feel like I haven't sung 'Hark The Herald Angels Sing' enough times. (It's this time of year when I start to miss having a piano in my house.) And if I can't go to midnight Mass I'd like to go to the children's Mass at 5, but that's obviously out of the question. So we go Christmas morning when the church seems sort of empty and anti-climactic. It's nice, but I miss going on Christmas Eve. My church has a prayer service at 5pm on Christmas Day. I'd like to go to that if we're home in time.

But I'm thankful we don't have to fly anywhere, I'm thankful we actually enjoy all of our Christmases and none of them feel like chores or obligations. I'm thankful we can see everyone with a minor amount of hassle. I'm thankful we don't have to fight over whose family gets Christmas this year.

And I'm excited to share Christmas with Jack, even though he doesn't get the whole present concept yet and will probably be freaked out by Santa Claus. (What? Your uncle doesn't dress up like Santa every year?) He isn't terribly enthralled by our tree or the decorations or the constant aroma of cookies, but I'll have to give him a bite of fried bread dough on Christmas Eve and THEN HE'LL UNDERSTAND.

Comments

[Nessa]

My family is HUGE on tradition. Every Christmas Eve we go to church and then back to my parent's for New England Clam Chowder and Pork Pies. I don't think I've ever had anything else on Christmas Eve. His family has no traditions and is a bit boring Christmas Day. We tend to leave his mom's early so we can go hand out with my fun family instead of watching Grandpa in his green jumpsuit prop Grandma up on the couch. Good times.

THis year, this year is different. We are NOT spending Christmas with anyone but the two of us. Mr. Sparky has to work the graveyard shift Christmas night, so we don't want to drive two hours just to turn right around.

Wow - sorry about this turning into a post and not a comment. I hope that everything turns out just the way it should this year!

[Jen]

My family watches the same movie every Christmas Eve (The Night They Saved Christmas- what, you mean no one else has heard of it?) and we eat snacks all night. We open one present Christmas Eve and save the rest for Christmas Day.

My husband's family has no real traditions that I have been able to determine. (And this is our fifth married Christmas and FOUR of those have been at his parent's house.) I am trying to teach them some traditions.

Speaking of traditions, I plan to immediatly add your fried bread dough to mine. Recipe, please?

Adorable picture. I love it!

[Lindsay]

We used to have all sorts of traditions when I was younger, mostly because of me. Since my siblings are 6 years older than me, my parents didn't particularly care about them, but I shake when I get excited and apparently it was the cutest. thing. ever. (according to my father) when I was little because it looked like I was having a seizure and would require help in opening my presents. It was this that earned me far more presents than my brother or sister ever got and the reason why my family went to great lengths to keep me believing in Santa Claus and to keep doing all the special stuff on Christmas. I believed in Santa until I was 10 and my aunt let the cat out of the bag. My aunt is kind of mentally unstable and not a particularly wonderful person, and my dad did not like her before, but he especially dislikes her now. Because of that. I'm serious.

So, now, our family Christmas tradition? Spend Christmas Eve drinking. Sometimes games and movies are involved, but alcohol is a must. This was not my idea, obviously. This has been the tradition for the past several years since my parents have been divorced.

I'm all for New Zealand. That was actually going to be my suggestion! I wanna go to New Zealand. So pretty. AND THERE ARE HOBBITS.

[Renae]

Chris and I started a tradition of buying a new ornament every year on our anniversary (Nov 26th). We are still feeling out the traditions we want to start. My family is HUGE on traditions - Christmas Eve dinner (mini-pizzas) and presents and Santa present with Grandma. Midnight Mass. Christmas Day at home with just our family (my dad usually had to work). We'd play all day and hang out then have dinner as a family when Dad got home. Now we have family all over the place.

This year we head to MI to see Chris' family.

Oh, and Fried Bread Dough! I started salivating when I read that! We used to spread butter and syrup on them and eat them like a pancake. Yum! Haven't had it in years. May have to remedy that soon!

[Dooneybug]

Oh my....he's getting so big! What a cutie!!

I wish that our Christmas celebrations were more like yours. My family is half way across the country so I don't get to see them often and my in-laws bug me since we've had kids. Sometimes I wish I lived closer to where I grew up because my side of the family is huge and there's just something so fun about all that chaos of the people. My husband's family is really small so it tends to be a bit boring.

[Angela]

My God, fried bread dough sounds AMAZING. Our family Christmas traditions were always so special, and it's definitely going to be difficult this year being away from everyone. But I'm sure Colby and I will make our own traditions and have a wonderful time.

And Jack's first Christmas--so exciting!!

[Kate]

Ohhhh! Jack is soooo cute! What an adorable kid!

My family's biggest tradition is the making of the Christmas Cookies. Its a week long event that ends in a year long sugar high.

We usually open presents on Christmas eve with our immediate family (mom & 4 kids) and eat food (nacho dip, spinach dip, and cookies) and watch movies. Then we cook all day the next day and our extended family comes over for dinner. My mom is a nurse too and sometimes it got interesting when she left us alone to do the work... :)

[annie]

Since we've been married, I've found Christmas to be the easiest of all holidays, what with the 2 days of mandatory celebrating and all. The bulk of each family is really only an hour apart, so we can easily spend my family's traditional Christmas Eve (doesn't Santa come to EVERYONE'S house on the 23rd?) and then come back for Christmas day with the in-laws. It has required a bit of compromise on both ends, but at least we haven't had to choose between one family or the other.

As for Midnight Mass, I've always wanted to go too. I figure at this stage of the game it's out of the question for at least the next several years until the little ones are either old enough to handle it or have moved out of the house completely. My in-laws inform me that midnight mass is no good anyway, considering that most of the people there have been celebrating all evening and are, therefore, completely LIT. I don't know about that, but I guess it makes sense.

Merry Christmas, Maggie.

[Lisa]

December 21st is my husband's favorite day of the year because he says "it only gets lighter every day from this point on". Therefore, he hates June 21st. We are not much for the dark days either.

So cute, that photo of Jackson. Our family is crazy during the holidays too, but it will be nice to have them to distract the baby for awhile. She is adorable, but having a newborn in the dark days is hard and isolating. NEED MORE ADULT INTERACTION. And sugar.