Traditions are an interesting thing to me. Everyone has some sort of tradition for something. It's different from family to family, culture to culture, and heritage to heritage. Come Christmas time, I always look forward to our family traditions, even though they are a little silly/different in comparison to most everyone else's.
Our first tradition starts on Christmas Eve; we will have made oodles of sugary treats during the day time, and then when dusk settles, we all gather in the living room and watch the Muppet's Christmas Carol and then commence to eating the afore mentioned edible goodies. I adore the Muppets Christmas Carol. Always a Dickens fan, I find it hysterical to see the Muppets doing this Classic tale. If you have yet to see this hilarious Christmas flick, you really should look it up. Take my word for it.
Our next traditions often cause some raised eyebrows from outsiders. On Christmas morning, we have a very special breakfast of - um - canned cinnamon rolls. Yep, you read that right. Those pre-made food items that come in a slender tube found in the refrigerated section of the grocery store, and have so many ingredients that you can't pronounce, that it fairly gives you a headache when you try. Those ones. Christmas morning is the only day that we have these, and frankly I like this tradition. It's not Christmas without those canned cinnamon rolls.
Our second, slightly horrifying, tradition is that we always have pizza for Christmas dinner. And that has to be store bought too. It can't be homemade, it has to be from the store. No turkey for us; no ham, no stuffing, no cranberry sauce, no nothing. You'll find us throwing a pizza in the oven as the day wanes. Our logic is simple: None of us want to be in the kitchen on Christmas day. We don't want to be fussing with the oven, or washing dishes. We do that every day. On Christmas, we want a break. So that's why we go for the canned cinnamon rolls and store bought pizza. Fast, easy, yummy. Perhaps we're barbaric, perhaps we just don't know how to appreciate the "real" Christmas experience as we throw the turkey out the window for a box of pizza, or perhaps we're slightly nuts. Whatever it is, so be it. It's not Christmas to me without my canned cinnamon rolls, pizza, and my Muppet's Christmas Carol movie.
I'm curious though, what are your Christmas traditions? Am I the only one who likes prepackaged foods and corny movies on Christmas?
8 comments:
That's not a bad idea! An easy Christmas dinner sounds wonderful
I usally do a nice sit down breakfast, then presents with the kids (now grown). Dinner was usually something easy, like a ham. Christmas Eve was usually pizza or something really fast, since I was usually working that day. We would alwasy watch The Christmas Story, and a few others, all day. Cracked us up. The kids still love it now...
On Christmas Eve my whole family goes to my Grandparents house and us, our cousins and our Gramma and Grandpa eat pizza, open gifts, talk a bunch. Then we go home, go to bed, wake up Christmas day, open gifts, play Say Anything (super fun game) and eat.... canned cinnamon and orange rolls! Then for dinner we have lasagna. It's really fun in our house.
We do almost the exact same thing! We have the Pillsbury cinnamon rolls for breakfast, usually skip lunch, and then have a big dinner of pizza. We do homemade pizza though- the family recipe takes AGES to make, so we only do it once a year!
Years ago I copied the recipe for Cinnabuns and I make prepare those Christmas Eve. I set aside a few rolls for us and give the rest away to members of the choir when we go to church. Then in the morning I bake them, put on the ooey gooey bad for you icing...and we love it!! Big dinner later....hubby loves to cook and show off. Mostly locally raised foods.
All of my siblings (12) and nieces and nephews, (6) come over. One of my sisters moved to SD so we skyped her this year. Usually, we have a ham dinner but this year we had a prime rib dinner. After dinner, we sing and read about the story of Christmas, and afterword, open our presents.
We didn't get to indulge in most of our traditions this year (due to a really weird extended-family travel schedule), but I can at least type about them! My father studied in Germany when he was in college, and brought back the tradition of live candles on the tree - which I'm still trying to convince my husband to let me continue in /our/ household. (Obviously with lots of caution!) We always start about mid-way through December and read A Christmas Carol - unabridged - to each other. We make lots of cookies (averaging 8-10 different kinds). We have a brunch in early morning followed by a big afternoon/evening meal - pot roast this year, sometimes ham, often turkey. We TRY to always gather with lots of our extended family, though that didn't happen so much this year, sadly.
*siiiiigh* I look forward to feeling more settled and having more chances for feast and festivity with my family (now that we live some 7 hours closer to them)!!
We do McDonalds on Christmas Eve!
With the farm and working full time, I am exhausted by the time Christmas rolls around. Then it is up early Christmas day, presents, our farm eggs and bacon for breakfast. Then back to the kitchen for baking bread and potatoes to take to our larger family's Christmas Ham dinner down the road.
Heather in PA
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