Christmas Traditions and How They Have Changed

I've had different Christmas traditions during my lifetime.

As a very little girl, my parents and I would go to the early Christmas Eve service at church and then go to my grandparents in the next town. My maternal grandparents were from Holland and Germany and the tradition was to exchange presents that night. Christmas morning I was wide eyed with what Santa brought. I also put my wooden shoes on the hearth for St. Nicholas on Dec. 6th to be filled with candy.

As an older child, my grandparents would come to our house as we then lived in a period colonial from 1760 that my father and grandfather restored. My dad had a roaring fire in the dining room fireplace (large enough for several adults to stand in with room left over), had a nice dinner and opened some gifts. The next morning we had a nice breakfast and opened more gifts. My grandparents came over and my aunt, uncle and cousins came in the early afternoon and we had a roast goose with sweet and sour red cabbage to keep with the German tradition (and many other sides and deserts). We exchanged family gifts. This continued through college. My last holiday with my father was my senior year in college as he died on Dec. 9th the following year. It'll be 41 years this Thursday. I think of all he missed in my adult life and never got to know his granddaughter and great granddaughters.


When I married, my first holiday was spent with my ex's family in Oregon as we flew out there after our Dec. wedding and ski honeymoon. The next holidays we were back in Oregon as we were living in Berkeley where my ex was in grad school.


The next year we were back in CT and had a baby. I decorated the entire house the day after Thanksgiving. We were back to Christmas at my mom's on the 24th for overnight. Things were the same. The only difference is that Phil and I came home the night of the 25th and Tami stayed with Grandma for a visit. This continued until the year she was in kindergarten.


That holiday we were in a bigger house and one with a fireplace. Phil had also labored all fall to make Tami a gorgeous two story doll house. There was no way that we could hide it in the car to bring to my mom's house. We started a new tradition. We had started Tami skiing when she was 3 so off we went to the Berkshires for a day of skiing. It's a perfect day to go as most people are home preparing for the holiday. We had packed our thermos with hot cocoa, made yummy sandwiches and had Tupperware with an assortment of my Christmas cookies. We would get home around 6:30, shower, get on our nice clothes, have chili with melted cheddar cheese, crusty hot bread and for desssert, a Friendly's holiday ice cream roll. Then we'd take pictures in front of the fireplace, tree and on the stairs. Off came the nice clothes and we'd come back down to the living room in our flannel pj's and Lanz nightgowns to open presents from each other. After Tami went to bed, we'd do our elf things.


The hard fast rule was that Tami could not come downstairs without us and everyone's hair had to be brushed. Santa had been and we'd open our stockings and gifts from Santa. Breakfast was light and consisted of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls and OJ. I did not have time to cook between gifts and getting ready for the family around noon and a big dinner.


I set the formal dining room table the weekend before Christmas and shut the door. For two days before the 25th, I made whatever food that could be made ahead. The morning of the 25th, I prepared the rest. We had switched to turkey some years before and it had gone in the oven around 7:00 or 8:00 AM. I used to make a mashed potato casserole with sour cream, cream cheese, crushed garlic, butter and chives, a sweet potato casserole mashed with orange juice, and spread on a base of butter, brown sugar and pecans (in a metal round mold to bake), mashed butternut squash, broccoli casserole with Town House crackers with butter and parmesan cheese, brussel sprouts (for my mom and uncle), green bean casserole, tomato casserole, peas, creamed onions and rolls. My mom always made a cranberry salad that was made in a red jello. The cranberries and celery went in the old fashioned food grinder (a real messy job) and had lots of walnuts in it. I also made a green creme de menthe pie and an English truffle. My mom would bring pecan pie. All this food and there were not even a dozen of us. Mom and my aunt went home with lots of leftovers.


Things changed once Tami was grown as she was usually not home for the holidays. She was in Europe, Moscow or CO (at her in-law's). I was working full time and not hosting the holiday so told myself, "Why should I spend so much time decorating as it's not worth it?" When the kids are here, I decorate but scale it back a great deal. My holidays vary. Some years I am with the kids where they have lived (Brooklyn, NY, or Moscow), with my cousins or close family friends. One of the holidays that I was in Brooklyn, NY, Natalia (my granddaughter) was 10 days old on the 24th and had come to us via a C-section. My daughter still wanted to do our yearly trip into Manhattan. We'd started doing that the first year that they have moved to NY. We headed off to Manhattan early in the AM with Chris on his commute to work. Tami and I spent the day roaming Macy's, F.A.O. Schwartz, looking at all the decorated holidays windows and met up with Chris around 4:00 at the ice ring at Rockefeller Center. We watched the skaters, saw the tree and decided to head for home. Poor Tami was just spent and I don't know how she did it all considering she'd had a C-section 10 days earlier. We stopped at a Chinese restaurant for our Christmas Eve dinner. That sure broke with tradition.

I still do all the baking of cranberry orange walnut breads, spritz and sugar cookies. I've sent cookies to her in Europe so she'd have them the year that she did fall semester abroad. I have a tin ready to mail to her friend in MI that will be in Moscow for Christmas. It's not Christmas with us without my green cream cheese butter spritz Christmas wreath cookies.

Whatever your traditions are, have fun!