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Dec 2017

This might be a bit of a weird question, but being born and raised in a nordic country that had christianity come in fairly late, my christmas ( or yule, as nordic countries still call it by it's pagan name ) has never really been about christianity. We still have our straw goat decorations2(I think they originate from sweden?) and my family has always lit a bonfire for winter solstice, take a wreath of wheat out for the birds, all the good old stuff. So I guess my question would be how tied with whatever religion you practice are your holidays?

Also if you have any traditions I'd love to hear them! In finland (I think elsewhere in europe as well) on christmas you NEED to watch the snowman1. It airs every year. I also watch it every year. Never watch it outside of the 24th either, that's blasphemy.

Also in finland christmas starts with rice porridge (made with milk & rice) that you season with cinnamon & sugar. Usually there's one almond mixed with, and whoever finds the almond gets a wish/good fortune. My dad used to put like a whole bag of almonds in it when we were kids so we'd get a lot of wishes/ good fortune ^^;

Usually santa claus (or the yulegoat, as he's still called here lol) comes by after christmas dinner (Main course is ham, side dishes of different casseroles of root vegetables & smoked salmon) and that's when kids get to open their presents, as opposed to on the morning of 25th like in the USA.

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    Dec '17
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My family came from Italy but our Christmas has become more American. In Italy we don't really have Christmas trees but instead set up a nativity scene and put the presents around that. One year we didn't have a tree and practiced the more traditional Italian Christmas but all of our friends and American relatives were asking why we didn't have a tree set up. We told them we had the nativity but they weren't impressed, lol. Now we have both set up usually. The Christmas trees are really nice when they're decorated and lit up so we don't mind.

Our Christmas is religious. We sing carols in both languages and have a big feast. We typically celebrate both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve we have fish while Christmas Day we have a meat roast. This year it's lamb. Christmas has always been my favorite holiday and I look forward to celebrating it every year. We always open presents on Christmas morning. When we were little our parents let us open one of Christmas Eve just because we were too impatient. We became more patient now that we're grown up but we still look forward to presents. lol.

Anyway, have a Merry Christmas. :slight_smile:

That's really interesting. I love learning about other cultures and their traditions. The goat decorations are cute.

Not very religious at all? My family is full of people of varying beliefs, and it's Sweden after all, so most of us have a rather chill approach to our faith (or lack thereof in the case of certain men that are part of the family/extended family/married into the family.)

I think the most religious one I can think of would be my aunt, who is a priest. So she has a lot of work to do around the holidays, and will be in church and the like for obvious reasons. That being said, when she comes over to celebrate with us it's not very religion centric? It's more like hey lets eat good food and watch donald duck like good ol' tradition.

Mom does go to church sometimes on christmas (she goes to church other times of the year too but christmas is trickier because of the other celebrations involved). My sister is buddhist-ish. As for me I just hope the ghost in my parent's place won't find a way to fuck with our fun :joy:

In Sweden there's this old cartoon/donald duck/mickey mouse etc roll that they usually play on christmas and it's part of the tradition for many. However it is also the target of a lot of controversy. It seems every other year they remove something from it that has been pointed out as racist or something of the sort, and that is then followed by a wave of complaints going "GIVE US OUR (n-word) DOLL BACK SHE WAS FUNNY". Personally I am a bit conflicted as I think hiding humanity's racist history will only pave the way for the mistakes to be done again, however I also think these cartoons will be shown to children and I don't want them to be taught old stereotypes and values. But at the same time... when I was a kid and saw these I didn't see stereotypes, or a jew toy, or a black doll going "mama", I just saw a bunch of toys doing weird shit.

my family are all christian, and not 'oh yeah we are bc we grew up that way but its eh,' kinda christian, theres a vicar in the family. and yet our christmas is totally areligious (except maybe telling the Little Ones its Jesus' birthday and singing happy birthday bc we need to be a lil bit christian cringe)

for my branch of the family its really meh, we dont really do presents or holidays. we go down the road to the grandparents and see the rest of the fam though, who do a lil big more given theyre travelling each fairly far to reach us.

the only tradition i can really think of that we follow (aside from food traditions i know nothing abt) is watching the doctor who christmas special. gave it a miss the past few years bc we hate moffat but this new one? well be tuned in for better or worse...

My family's never been very religious. My mom used to make us go for church but I think that was just for the community interaction 'cause she never believed that stuff either. We still do Christmas, though. We (well most of us) love the holiday, but it's almost not a religious holiday to us. It doesn't feel that different then something like Halloween or Thanksgiving; just a special day with certain traditions. We just love the presents and aesthetics, sans the christian stuff like the nativity.

I always have to put up the tree with the lights and candy canes. My mom does the stockings. We open the presents in the morning, but everyone has to present. No one can open until everyone's downstairs. Then we just chill and talk and stuff.

I guess the only real tradition we have is the pre-Christmas dinner with my aunts and uncles we all start shortly after my dad died. We always go to this one German restaurant in Queens. It's really good, especially their burgers.

I personally love to watch It's a Wonderful Life, my favorite X-Mas film, before the 25th.

Also, it's not Christmas, but for New Year's we all hold quarters during the ball drop so that we have good fortune in the next year. Don't know who else does this.

Very religious!! I'm Anglican (Christian) in the USA. We have a looooot of traditions surrounding the Christmas season— one of the weirder ones is that during Advent (the four weeks before the 25th) we fast pretty strictly, so we don't eat any meat/seafood or animal products or sugar or processed food except on Sundays. Then, on Christmas Eve, we don't eat anything at all for the whole day. That night at 10:00 we go to Mass, which lasts until midnight, and then we all go and drink champagne and eat chocolate and cry happy tears because Jesus is born and we're allowed to party now.

Christmas is more church, but we also open lots of presents and eat special breakfast and stuff. We usually watch Chicken Run or Megamind because hey, those are pretty festive movies, right?

A non-religious tradition: only one person in my family is allowed to do the lights on the tree and that is, sadly, me. I say sadly because my family has extremely high standards for Christmas lights, so every year it takes me like 10 hours of non-stop work to get it done. I use well over 3000 lights for a 7' tree. It's… it's a lot. Last year we plugged the lights in and there were so many that they blew the fuse. Anyways, the rest of the tradition is that everyone else must open the tree-lighter's every whim for the entire day.

Coming from a predominantly Catholic family we actually celebrate Christmas in a more secular manner. It's really the elders/ grandparents that keep to religious traditions (ie reciting the rosary)

My grandparents knew xmas was originally pagan so my mom was raised against celebrating it, which in turn made me not extremely into it even though we did casually celebrate it in my childhood. I myself never really liked that people are so dead set that it's the day is Jesus' birthday when Julius or whoever only decided that would be the day of celebration, since no one truly knew when he was born. But then again wedding ceremonies with rings are considered biblical despite them never existing in the bible, and the concept of wedding bands were invented by some jewelry company in the 1930's.

AHEM, anyways, enough of that ramble! Funny enough I was actually reading up a bit on the origin of xmas and the ritual of Yule. I actually find it more interesting than the theist xmas, but I've honestly grown sick of the modern, overly commercialized holiday. I'm an atheist myself, so whatever I'm not too lazy to do in regards to the holiday doesn't particularly reflect a belief. Sometimes I even wrap presents (when we can afford some) with really weird birthday wrapping paper, and hang halloween decorations with the yule stuff.

Swedish tradition here!

So, we almost always woke up to a small gift on our bedside.
A book, a necklace or a small car, just a something small.

Then we made rice porrige (as mentioned in OP) with cinnamon and sugar and milk ontop.
(mum and dad didn't eat it so it was just me and my brother)

Then it's time for the DISNEY TIME!! (which is an old cartoon run every single year where they cut off the racist parts and dumb stuff every year, such as the part where Goofy puts a fork in the outage and gets electrocuted in order to make popcorn, to give you an idea). Also, it's VERY important to shout at the tv if they don't lit the candle at precisely 15:00.
I mean, there's 6 adults screaming if they go over just a second.
We will whine about it later.
(They also send a snippet or two from the newest disney movies which we all must see and if someone talks, they are banished from the room).
After that, at 4pm we eat.

It's a smörgåsbord. Ham, meatballs, brown beans, "Jansons frestelse" (potatoes baked with anchovies and cream), rootbeet salad, eggs, smoked salmon, herrings of different kind and the most important part of it all:

JULMUST.
Seriously, every year coca cola brings on the artillery and tanks and promote it but we kind of prefer the less sweet, more carbonated kind called Julemust.
It's a great company to the salty food and the sweet candies.

After we're in a food coma, there's the gifts! It almost always starts at 6pm, hence "Christmas Eve".

Ofc, we eat lots of candy, one that's very prominent on every table in Sweden is "Knäck". A tough, chewable toffee with bits of almond in it.
Difficult to make, but aahh, it's so good.

And then people leave.

(notice, I've not written anything about alcohol, because... We've never had that? Christmas is for the kids after all, and it wasn't until very recently I found out that people drink heavily and that's actually a wide spread problem in the country)

Speaking of wide spreads, my Dad always had one of those at his house.

First, the appetizers. Roasted chestnuts, still fragrant and warm. Their insides were starchy and meaty and sweet. Lumpia, or spring rolls, little balls of chopped meat rolled into pastry wrappers and fried till crunchy. Baby potatoes, also fried, their skins paper-thin and crumbly, their insides hot and buttery-soft .

Then, the main courses: Spaghetti. My uncle's chili, that perfect mix of beans and beef. Sugar-glazed ham and loaves of dense buttery bread. Spit-roasted suckling pig, with its crisp hard skin and its sweet fatty flesh. Bicol Express, my dad's childhood favorite: pork strips, chili peppers, and savory shrimp paste, with everything stewed in coconut milk. Kare-kare, a thick grainy peanut stew with crisp veggies, tender banana hearts, and glassy liquid cuts of pork. Menudo, but dressed up fancy, with carrots and potatoes, peas and raisins, and pork cubes and hot-dog slices, everything marinating cheerfully in a rich tomato sauce.

And the desserts: Some manner of jello dish. Leche flan, a caramel custard. Fruit salad, basically canned fruit cocktail drowned in evaporated milk. Ube, purple yams stirred for hours in sugar and hot milk.

I'm a bit sleepy and I read that as "my favourite X-Men film" to begin with...

I moved to Slovakia so I do a bit of their stuff now but I go back for the main day. I wouldn't mind sticking around for their fish in the bath tub thing as long as we set it free instead of eating it. I just want the gimmick of having a wild animal in our flat for a couple of hours.

The snowman cartoon, you mentioned. Was made in Scotland, where I now live, they have their own joke version of it aswell, for Irn Bru1 a beverage thats only really sold here in scotland.

such laborious animation for a p*ss take. #justscottishthings

I can't help but like anything that'll go that far for the sake of a joke.

Oh no! (you're not the only one, brothers wife hates it as well xD)
I love it so much, I long for easter and christmas to finally be able to buy Zeunerts or Apotekarnes <3

My family being a large and mixed up one made of different cultures and nationalities, has a tradition of incorporating traditions, lol.

The first tradition we had, came from my mother's parents. We would spend Christmas eve with them, when I was young my grandfather would say he saw Santa outside getting an early start, and we would rush out to see. Once disappointed we would go back inside to see presents. For dinner we only had cold foods. Like cold cuts, shrimp cocktail, cold potato salad. The big hot meal was reserved for Christmas day. Now Christmas Eve is still the most important day, though we have added some hot foods. Christmas eve is the night i spend with my family no matter what. I'm actually working Christmas day, filling in for a co-worked so he can have Christmas with his little boy, since I don't have kids and will have done all my celebrating tonight.

We also practice Advent, and my mom lights a candle every Sunday of December. Also coming from my German heritage we celebrate the Christ Child day, where the Christ Child puts candy in you shoe. My mother once drove one hour to my house to put candy in my shoe that was outside my door my first year of collage. I love her for that.

When i moved to America, my father introduced "The Grinch' and other Dr Seuss books to me. It is my own personal tradition to always watch one rendition of "The Grinch" every Christmas, or read the book.

My parents also have a tradition of an "unexpected guest' gift under the tree. It's there encase some poor soul is alone on Christmas and is invited last minute to our celebrations, so they won't feel left out when the family is opening presents.

When my sister married a man of British tradition, we added Christmas poppers to end the meal and start the gift opening portion of the evening.

I guess in the end our Holidays aren't about religion so much as inclusion and acceptance of other ideas and cultures, and about begin together as a multi-cultural family. I like it that way.

I am catholic (a bad one :stuck_out_tongue: )

In my grandma's house we make a small Natvity scene (Belen) in the living room, which is kinda cool.
Here's an example (it's not mine, thanks Google lol)

The normal tradition is that people go to church at almost midnight and there's a mass with candles and songs, after that people go home and eat dinner which is turkey most of the time and panettone with hot chocolate (in summer lol) we love that.

In my family we skip all that and just eat the panettone and wait until midnight to put baby Jesus in the nativity scene and then pray a little say Merry Christmas and go to sleep.

Here Santa Clous (or Papa Noel) is really popular lol, before that people used to believe that the three kings where the ones that brought the presents or baby Jesus.

Because it's summer people don't use real tress but fake ones made of plastic lol.
And there's always that random family member or friend that remembers you exist and call you to say Merry Christmas!!

Also Coca Cola is a must (Yeah we have been brainwashed lol)