(no subject)

[the_rck]

One of our neighbors gave Delia an advent calendar. We have some in storage in the basement, and I'd been planning to pull one out for her, but I got pre-empted. The gift is one of those advent calendars with a small piece of chocolate for every day. It's a generous gift and one that I wish we hadn't gotten. Delia's going to expect that all advent calendars will have chocolate, and I have no intention of buying that sort for her in the future (especially since I'm likely to pick them up on sale after Christmas and stow them in a tote in the basement until next year).

I'm thinking more about Christmas traditions this year than I have in a long time. Delia's old enough to notice them now, so I'm trying to figure out ways to make the traditions I remember from my childhood work for us now. Some will be easier than others, I think.

We always used to decorate the tree late, not earlier than the 19th or 20th and then leave it up until the Twelfth Night. We'd have a little party for the decorating, inviting a few people over, making cookies and so on. Then we'd have a family only party for the take down (which also involved eating the edible ornaments). My mother made a rice porridge for breakfast on Christmas day. There was one almond in it, and whoever got it was supposed to have a lucky year. As I recall, my sister, brother and I all liked getting the almond better than we liked eating the porridge (not that it tasted bad. We were just apt to take larger servings than we would otherwise in hopes of getting the almond).

We had two LPs of Christmas music. One was done by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and the other was all in Swedish. (My mother had spent a year in Sweden during high school as an exchange student.) I don't remember the titles of either, but I'd like to get my hands on them.

My mother had made batik stockings for me and my sister when we were small. She had stopped doing batik by the time my brother arrived, so his stocking was different. For many years, we didn't have a fireplace, so we simply pinned our stockings to back of the couch with big safety pins (my brother had some anxiety about the stockings after my parents moved to another house without a fireplace. He didn't remember the previous arrangements because he hadn't even been a year old when we moved). Each Christmas, we'd find some sort of exotic (for the time and where we lived) fruit in the stockings (along with other stuff). I remember kiwis, pomegranates, and kumquats. I think we may have had a prickly pear once, too.

Comments

[booniverse.livejournal.com]

I love the porridge tradition, that sounds like lots of fun for kids. We got fruit in our stockings too (still do over at my mom's place), always in the toe. It wasn't particularly exotic though. I like your tree trimming and detrimming traditions; we just put the tree up. We did have a tradition of not putting the gifts out until Christmas eve though. I always thought that made Christmas more real (to me) because the gifts hadn't been there all month. They were new and shiny! and I love the shiny.

OH!! My mother has a really neat Advent calendar which is a hanging deal with a tree and pockets marked 1-24. Each pocket has an ornament and the tree has 24 hooks and every day you hang an ornament on the tree and get whatever is in the pocket. My mom typically filled the pocket with small change, toys, candy, whatever.

[the_rck]

A place where I worked had an advent calendar like that, just without the treats (I think it's more that the owner didn't put treats in it than that it was meant not to have them).

We also always waited till Christmas Eve to put out presents. I seldom managed to get mine wrapped before then, anyway.

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

We always had the presents on Christmas morning, not before. :-)

And Bruce's grandmother knitted stockings for him and his sibs/cousins when they were born, and then extended that to me (though she got my name wrong! Arrrgh) and his aunt knitted ones for R and G. Alas, no one in the family can knit now, so we don't have the stockings for anyone younger.

I dunno. We're working on traditions, but melding what R's ex wants with what we do is very hard. Very hard indeed.

[the_rck]

If I ever figure out how to crochet stockings, I'll make stocking for them. No promises though. I get confused every time I try something that requires serious counting of stitches.

Good luck with the traditions.

And I didn't mean that we opened presents on Christmas Eve. We didn't. It's just that that's when we put our wrapped presents for each other under the tree. I suspect that that particular tradition owes something to the fact that my mother ran a daycare in our home for many years.

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

Maybe you and D. could make her calendar next year--it's pretty simple to do so, and making her own might be exciting enough to forget the chocolate. :)

My sister and I had knit stockings, although the batik ones do sound gorgeous. I like your family's edible ornaments idea. Did you make popcorn strings?

[the_rck]

We did popcorn some years and not others, the same with cranberries. Largely, it depended on the size of the tree. We never ate either the popcorn or the cranberries, though. They were too nasty after being on the tree for more than two weeks. We ate the gingerbread men, the pretzels (though they were often stale) and the chocolate. Some years we ate the candy canes and some we didn't.

Maybe we will make a calendar next year. I don't know.

[thette.livejournal.com]

We always decorate the tree the day before Christmas Eve (Christmas Eve is when we Swedes celebrate Christmas), and leave it up until Knut, January 13th. Removing the decorations is a party reason in itself.