Hearing about other people’s traditions is often interesting. When my wife and I got married we decided to start a Christmas Eve tradition where we’d pick a country and plan out a dinner consisting of items from it. We’re making sure we’ve got the necessary ingredients for this year’s meal and it brought to mind how comforting and fun family traditions can be.
So what does your family do this time of year (or any time of the year) that you look forward to and helps make the holiday feel like the holiday for you?
Everyone gets together to make lussekatter the first day off from school.
Christmas eve parents hide the pickle ornament on the tree. Christmas morning the kid who finds the pickle gets to open the first present.
Record video of kids opening presents, they love rewatching them years later.
Those look neat. As a baker at heart I often look for some cake, bread, cookie, or other baked treat I can make for the contribution for our Christmas Eve meal (I always work Christmas Eve so being able to either bake something the day before or get a dough ready and let it stall in the fridge helps ease things). I may have to try a country’s version if they end up on the list in the future.
When my grandparents were alive there were similar traditions - a child would whisk the mayo, another would fold the uszka (one of my cousins was forbidden because he ate the filling by the spoon), another would gather chives from the garden… it was for the sake of the family meal, as the adults did the actual cooking, we were helping somehow.
Sadly those traditions died with my grandma. My mum only got a single grandchild, and he was never into helping out, it’s always “meh, I don’t want to”.