Martha
My husband and I started a tradition where we order one of the Lego Christmas Kit’s every year and build it on Christmas eve/Christmas morning. We don’t disassemble and every year we have a slightly bigger Lego Christmas Village 🙂 Of course we usually have the movie Elf playing and Hot Chocolate while we build!
Nancy
Ever since my brothers and I lost our Mom in 1989, we have become best friends. At first we tried to do the traditional Christmas with the trees and decorations and the turkey. We soon realized that the traditional wasn’t us. We don’t have traditions but rather goals. Each year, our goals are to be together and eat together. We don’t always have the traditional turkey dinner. Some years we have hamburgers with lots of finger foods, and some years we have a sit down meal. We don’t do gifts, but rather relive our funny life’s moments. We tend to laugh a lot.
Leigh
When we’re away from family, we make our favourite appetizers for Christmas dinner, instead of turkey and all the fixings. It’s easy to prepare and if friends are around, we can make a potluck out of it (or have done so pre-Covid).
Marnie
Our non-traditional tradition is that we have our Christmas Dinner on Christmas Eve. Not because we want to attend church, or a heritage tradition, but because I find that the kids always ate better, and then we would watch a Christmas Movie and tuck them in for the night and await Santa’s arrival. This allowed us to spend the entire Christmas day with the kids, playing with their new toys that they opened that morning, watching movies and playing our traditional “Family Game Gift” that Santa left under our tree. We would munch all day, starting with cinnamon rolls while opening our stockings, and then an egg & ham strata casserole for lunch that I made up the night before, and leftovers for dinner. I found this way here was no stress of getting a turkey ready, or not being able to open or assemble something with the kids because we “had to get the turkey in the oven”.
The first year that my parents joined us for this type of Christmas my Mom said, “I will do it for you, it isn’t Christmas without the big warm dinner on the 25th.” I said, “No,” because I would feel guilty and help her anyways. Then there would be lots of dishes after dinner and we’d be tired from the kids up early, and stressed by the end of the day. She agreed to do it my way, and at the end of the night on Christmas Day, after the kids went to bed, my Mom said, “I don’t know why I never did Christmas this way myself, so much less stress and we just got to enjoy the day as a family”
Julie
My parents live on a lake surrounded by a forest.
On Dec 31st, when it’s dark outside, we turn on the Christmas lights, put on some music (it’s always traditional Québec music called Rigodons).
We roast marshmallows on the outside fire pit and stay outside until midnight. We sled, we made a snowman, we play hide and seek, and if the temperature is cold enough, we also skate on the lake.