Holiday Traditions!!!

So it's finally here, I've been talking about this for a while and I'm glad the time has come because I'm so eager to find out about all your traditions. As I said before, I just want to hear about what you do as a family during the holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas....

Do you and your family have a special tradition every Christmas Morning, or maybe it's a special dinner for Thanksgiving??? Do you all go out on a certain day to get a Christmas Tree??? Is there a special ornament or fun way your family decorates for the holidays??? How about different Heritages, how are the holidays celebrated all over the world???

I'll start with mine.

I'm sure you all know that I'm portuguese and since I can remember we have celebrated and opened Christmas presents on the 24th of December, Christmas Eve.

The whole day is spent in the kitchen, cooking and catching up with family, laughing and just having a great time. At dinner time we always have something like Roast or Bacalhau (Cod Fish) which are pretty traditional meals for a Christmas Dinner.

About an hour after dinner, the table starts being loaded with all sorts of different goodies, consisting of Codfish Cakes, Prawn Cakes, Prawns, Fried Chicken, Pasteis de Nata (cream cakes), Pudim Flan (Caramel Custard), Arroz Doce (Portuguese Rice Pudding), Rabanadas or Fatias Douradas (pretty much like French Toast), Bola de Carne (Meat Pie) and then a bunch of small things like dates, raisins etc.

Everyone sits around the table talking and eating, there's TONS of food, just before midnight we all move into the living room and sit around the tree counting the minutes.

We always open our presents on midnight and it was funny because when I first came to the States I just couldn't understand having to wait until the morning of the 25th LOL

But anyway, after opening presents the table is usually covered with a big tablecloth, anything that has to be refrigerated is put away, but everything else is pretty much left as is. The next day, on Christmas day, the whole family has leftovers, we spend the whole day YET again, just eating and enjoying our new presents.

Since getting married, we keep my tradition but now we leave some presents and the stockings for the Christmas morning.

Every year I also hang up christmas ornaments with the names of all the family members that can't be with us, either because they live far away or they've passed on. It's a great way to make it feel like they're here.

The kids and I also put together a Nativity Scene, they love being able to help me do it and it's also a wonderful way to teach them about the real meaning of Christmas.

And that is pretty much all we do, I just can't wait to start hearing about everyone's traditions, remember you can talk about Thanksgiving or Christmas, and if you don't have any traditions yet I'm sure you'll get great ideas from everyone else :)

Just go ahead and use the banner up top and don't forget to add your name to Mr Linky so others can come see your post.

Have fun :)