Tis the season for holiday traditions. Anyone have any they want to share?

Every year, my family gets a new ornament for our Christmas tree. We actually had to get a bigger tree because we have so many now (I'll take a picture of all of my ornaments later). We also have one of never having a 'proper' Christmas dinner, we usually just do finger food sort of treats and have a ham ready to go.

Tell me what yours is. Doesn't matter what holiday you celebrate, it just matters what tradition is important to you and your family.

(I am so sorry, this was posted in the wrong group, it was meant to go to Real Life)

I wouldn't worry too much about it being in the Real Life section. A Mod can move it if he/she so chooses, though. Mod magic!

Hmmmm, my mind went blank.

This year is a hard year for my family, so I won't be going home for christmas. But every year, I feel like I need to crack out Harvest Moon Back to Nature on the PS1 and watch some good old Star Wars.

(12-07-2016, 04:40 PM)Colossus Wrote: This year is a hard year for my family, so I won't be going home for christmas. But every year, I feel like I need to crack out Harvest Moon Back to Nature on the PS1 and watch some good old Star Wars.

That's always fun just to chill out and play video games. I have two younger brothers and when we got new games, we would play them together during Christmas day.

I haven't even been in the same country as my family for the past three years straight during December. Not exactly any traditions to share. But I can share that my family does have a tradition of naming the first male child born into the family Charles, which is how I wound up with the same name as my great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather and uncle. Wish it didn't skip my Dad, being Charles the Vth would have been cool.

(12-08-2016, 02:33 PM)CosmykTheDolfyn Wrote: I haven't even been in the same country as my family for the past three years straight during December.  Not exactly any traditions to share.  But I can share that my family does have a tradition of naming the first male child born into the family Charles, which is how I wound up with the same name as my great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather and uncle.  Wish it didn't skip my Dad, being Charles the Vth would have been cool.

That's pretty cool but at the same time how do you tell different Charles' apart when you're calling for them?

Besides going to my Aunt's house, which I'm doing on Saturday despite the near two hour drive, I have a few personal traditions I like to go through every year. Most of them consist of doing things online such as posting Linus' speech about what Christmas is really about on my facebook feed every year or telling the story of the real Saint Nicolas on another forum I've been apart of about 13 years. I also like to find at least one new version of one of my favorite Christmas songs or several of them so that I can keep them for ever growing dull. Less of a tradition, but more of a thing I just do, I try to get at least two things for my family members and friends I buy for, and I also try to do either donate to a charity at this time of the year as well as find one of Christmas Trees that have gifts written on the and go buy one of them. Sadly, I lost my job a over a month ago and getting unemployment hasn't been going well so I'm pretty broke right now, but I did what I could. Other than that, I also watch some of the typical Christmas Special's like the animated "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and several others. Last year, like this one, a lot of things have happened like loss of life and other matters I won't post here, but last year, I didn't follow through with most of my traditions and ended up regretting it. So, even though this year has been worse than last year in a lot of ways, I'm trying to stay positive and do my traditions and just enjoy life as much as I can. Both for what and who I've lost, as well as with the hope that 2017 will be a better year.

(12-09-2016, 12:44 AM)RepentantSky Wrote: Besides going to my Aunt's house, which I'm doing on Saturday despite the near two hour drive, I have a few personal traditions I like to go through every year. Most of them consist of doing things online such as posting Linus' speech about what Christmas is really about on my facebook feed every year or telling the story of the real Saint Nicolas on another forum I've been apart of about 13 years. I also like to find at least one new version of one of my favorite Christmas songs or several of them so that I can keep them for ever growing dull. Less of a tradition, but more of a thing I just do, I try to get at least two things for my family members and friends I buy for, and I also try to do either donate to a charity at this time of the year as well as find one of Christmas Trees that have gifts written on the and go buy one of them. Sadly, I lost my job a over a month ago and getting unemployment hasn't been going well so I'm pretty broke right now, but I did what I could. Other than that, I also watch some of the typical Christmas Special's like  the animated "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and several others. Last year, like this one, a lot of things have happened like loss of life and other matters I won't post here, but last year, I didn't follow through with most of my traditions and ended up regretting it. So, even though this year has been worse than last year in a lot of ways, I'm trying to stay positive and do my traditions and just enjoy life as much as I can. Both for what and who I've lost, as well as with the hope that 2017 will be a better year.

Well if you think about traditions have to start somewhere and doesn't matter if you do those traditions alone or with others. Still sounds like a lot of fun!

(12-08-2016, 11:21 PM)AngelPixieNinja Wrote:

(12-08-2016, 02:33 PM)CosmykTheDolfyn Wrote: I haven't even been in the same country as my family for the past three years straight during December.  Not exactly any traditions to share.  But I can share that my family does have a tradition of naming the first male child born into the family Charles, which is how I wound up with the same name as my great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather and uncle.  Wish it didn't skip my Dad, being Charles the Vth would have been cool.

That's pretty cool but at the same time how do you tell different Charles' apart when you're calling for them?

Charles, Charlie, Chuck, Chad, Chas, Emory (the shared middle name), Em. Got a few ways.

Edit: I might add that I never met my great great grandfather(I mean, he wouls have been really old) or my grandfather, as he was a coal miner and got crushed on an accident on the job. So there's only ever been a max of three of us around at once. Now two, since my great-grandfather passed away (he was a tobacco farmer, lived to 101. I'd say he had a good life, besides losing his son (my grandpa) kinda young).

Not really a tradition of my family, but I've always completed a game on Christmas Day since 2012.

This year I'll probably try and break the record of 2 games finished on Christmas, up to 4, by finishing The Witcher, Stalker: Call of Pripyat, Pokemon and Shenmue 2. They're all pretty close to the end, probably need about 10 hours combined to get to the end, and I can push them to the end the few days beforehand when I do nothing.

(12-09-2016, 04:16 PM)CosmykTheDolfyn Wrote:

(12-08-2016, 11:21 PM)AngelPixieNinja Wrote:

(12-08-2016, 02:33 PM)CosmykTheDolfyn Wrote: I haven't even been in the same country as my family for the past three years straight during December.  Not exactly any traditions to share.  But I can share that my family does have a tradition of naming the first male child born into the family Charles, which is how I wound up with the same name as my great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather and uncle.  Wish it didn't skip my Dad, being Charles the Vth would have been cool.

That's pretty cool but at the same time how do you tell different Charles' apart when you're calling for them?

Charles, Charlie, Chuck, Chad, Chas, Emory (the shared middle name), Em.  Got a few ways.

Edit:  I might add that I never met my great great grandfather(I mean, he wouls have been really old) or my grandfather, as he was a coal miner and got crushed on an accident on the job.  So there's only ever been a max of three of us around at once.  Now two, since my great-grandfather passed away (he was a tobacco farmer, lived to 101.  I'd say he had a good life, besides losing his son (my grandpa) kinda young).

I'm sorry about your grandfather, that must have been rough for your great-grandfather and your dad but it's still a great legacy to have. And dang, you're great-grandfather lived a long life and I hope a good one.

(12-09-2016, 07:49 PM)retrolinkx Wrote: Not really a tradition of my family, but I've always completed a game on Christmas Day since 2012.

This year I'll probably try and break the record of 2 games finished on Christmas, up to 4, by finishing The Witcher, Stalker: Call of Pripyat, Pokemon and Shenmue 2. They're all pretty close to the end, probably need about 10 hours combined to get to the end, and I can push them to the end the few days beforehand when I do nothing.

I wish you luck! Let me know how you do

Our traditions
My husband and I open our gifts from each other on Christmas Eve. We also give our cat her gifts on Christmas Eve.

My family's traditions
Christmas Eve night, we go to my parents house and spend the night. Christmas morning, I always wake up stupid early, no matter what I do to try and sleep in. I've always woken up at like 5 am on Christmas since I was a kid. I just turned 31 and I still did it last year too. So that part is not so much tradition as it is my brain being crazy. In the morning after everyone wakes up, me and my parents and brothers (along with my husband and sister in law) open our gifts from each other. After that we get the house ready for lunch. My grandparents, Aunt, cousins and their kids come over and we have a traditional Christmas lunch (turkey, ham, stuffing- my great grandma's old old old delicious family recipe- sweet potatoes, and a bunch of other food).There's also tons of pies. After we eat, we go in the living room and let the kids pass out everyone's gifts (they have already opened their gifts from each other other their own homes like we did that morning. So they'll have gifts from us, we'll have gifts from them, and my grandparents have gifts from everyone.). We let the kids open their gifts first, all at the same time. It's insane and super fun to watch. After they're done, they go off with their new toys and us adults open our gifts one at a time. We have basically done some version of this since I was a baby.

Only potentially unique thing I can think of is partitioning off gifts based off who they go to ahead of time to avoid having people crowd around the fire hazard we call a christmas tree.

Colossus is going NEAR Canada* to spend Christmas with family this year.

*Canada. Not a real country anyways.
-South Park

(12-14-2016, 09:10 AM)Beware of Cuccos Wrote:

I FUCKING LOVE CHRISTMAS

Our traditions
My husband and I open our gifts from each other on Christmas Eve. We also give our cat her gifts on Christmas Eve.

My family's traditions
Christmas Eve night, we go to my parents house and spend the night. Christmas morning, I always wake up stupid early, no matter what I do to try and sleep in. I've always woken up at like 5 am on Christmas since I was a kid. I just turned 31 and I still did it last year too. So that part is not so much tradition as it is my brain being crazy. In the morning after everyone wakes up, me and my parents and brothers (along with my husband and sister in law) open our gifts from each other. After that we get the house ready for lunch. My grandparents, Aunt, cousins and their kids come over and we have a traditional Christmas lunch (turkey, ham, stuffing- my great grandma's old old old delicious family recipe- sweet potatoes, and a bunch of other food).There's also tons of pies. After we eat, we go in the living room and let the kids pass out everyone's gifts (they have already opened their gifts from each other other their own homes like we did that morning. So they'll have gifts from us, we'll have gifts from them, and my grandparents have gifts from everyone.). We let the kids open their gifts first, all at the same time. It's insane and super fun to watch. After they're done, they go off with their new toys and us adults open our gifts one at a time. We have basically done some version of this since I was a baby.

My family used to do something pretty similar to this, but because of work, whether it be late work on Christmas Eve or early work on the 26th, or just general tiredness leading up to actual Christmas day, we just meet up the one day in the month when most of us can show up and have a time of it. On Christmas Day itself, we open up the gifts we gave each other one at a time in some random order for no given reason, eat a meal, maybe watch a Christmas special or two, and then everyone heads home. This year is gonna be a bit different because most years we'd meet in the morning but due to my Brother-in-Law's mother working late Christmas Eve and possibly Christmas day depending, as she is a nurse, some of my family will be appearing late. We've also invited a friend and his mother who recently had some issues I won't disclose here over, so there will be more people than normal. It should be fun though. Oh, one final thing, don't worry about waking up early or not getting regular amounts of sleep on Christmas Eve, I do that as well. So if anyone in your family makes fun of you for it or anything, just show'em this post and prove you aren't the only one who does it.