Cultural differences are of extreme interest to me. I love finding out how different things are on the other side of the world, it's fascinating. I'm intrigued by the concept of Thanksgiving, and had a turkey sub to celebrate this year. XD

The holiday season provides a whole range of interesting celebrations... different ways to recognise Christmas, and other religious or national holidays, New Years... seasonal differences and the like. Religions also fascinate me, and the curiousities within, the tradition and ceremony of it all.

So, with the holidays upon us - what do you celebrate, and how do you celebrate it?

I'm Australian, and technically non-religious. Meaning my grandparents take me to church on occasion, seventh day adventists, I'm not hooked into it by any means. I'm a bit of a skeptic like that.

But I celebrate Christmas/New Years. Christmas for our family is a huge celebration, that lasts until New Years. It sounds stereotypical, but yes, we barbeque like crazy. Ever tried having a heavy meal on a forty degree day? We opt for lighter sausages, steak and salads. Until recently our family had a backyard pool, so we also used to have enormous pool parties. All the family over, loud music, plenty of alcohol for 18+ or anyone deemed old enough by their parents.

Santa still comes to me and my three siblings, and yes, I'm 20. All four of us know, but I think Dad just likes sneaking around the house at night with goodies. We wake, and get the Santa goodies, before carting the tree presents to whichever family is hosting Christmas for that year. Everyone gathers at one house (the furtherest out for reasons of being polite to neighbours), and has coffee and kids muck about, show off goodies, that sort of thing. Dinner is held at about 12.30, and tree presents are opened straight after.

We eat left overs for dinner. :D

Days between Christmas and New Year are a blur of chocolate, meat and pool -- everything from dim sims to pancakes are barbequed to cater for a large number of people. New Years is a similar gathering, without presents, and a lot more alcohol. Generally ends in someone standing on the coffee table doing karaoke...

But that's just my family. XD

I'm really the only person who celebrates holidays at all in my family. Probably the biggest holiday we celebrate together is Thanksgiving, and I think that's just because the guys like to eat. Neither of them have any sort of religious beliefs at all, so there isn't any holiday which seems to mean a lot to them. My mom's birthday was on Christmas day, and after she passed away, my dad and my brother pretty much stopped celebrating Christmas entirely. If I didn't decorate my dad's house myself, we wouldn't celebrate it at all. Really, I still think they only allow me to celebrate it for the food.

I like Christmas, and I would probably love it if I had my own house and could celebrate it away from my family, since they're a bunch of grinches. While I was teaching, I loved having little parties for my class, and having all the parents come in. I'd pretty much celebrate every holiday anyone had if we had enough classtime for that!

Traditionally, I've always had a New Year's party, but it's always been rather small (of my own choice). The last couple of years I've gone to a gaming convention, but they're not having it this year, so I'm having another small party. The only traditional thing about it is the lightsaber fight (yes, we are geeks). I still remember the year my dad actually participated and got beat bad by our 7-year-old next door neighbor kid. I don't think my dad let him win either. This year we're adding boffer weapons, so that should be interesting. There's likely to be karaoke as well.

One of my other favorite holidays is the 4th of July (American Independence day). Mostly because I like lighting things on fire. Fire's alway fun...

I'm Catholic and I celebrate Christmas with my family. And yes, Santa still comes to my siblings and I, despite the fact that I'm 20. We generally have a big dinner on Christmas eve with a pork roast or something yucky like that (I'm a very picky eater) and then we go to 9:00 or 11:00 (pm) Mass. Then in the morning we open presents and Christmas afternoon we eat our Christmas dinner, which is generally more meat. :p

I have two sets of family who celebrate xmas, my dad's side and my mom's. We spent it with my mom's on xmas eve, and since they're catholic we go to church out of politeness and the children try not to giggle and poke each other. By "children" I mean we're all about 18+ now but that makes poking each other all the more fun during the ceremony. I recall last year being a disaster of snickering.
I digress.
After the ceremony we go to my uncle's house (new tradition when my grandparents got old and cranky) and eat a huge meal, horse around, and give out gifts. I think there was like, the cheapest karaoke machine known to man that appeared last year. We prefer not to speak of it. Ever since we transitioned to my Uncle's place, the holidays have gotten much weirder... like we get into wrapping-paper snowball fights for a good 20 minutes.

Then, usually, we'd go "home" and "wait for Santa" which is now mostly "go to my sister's apartment" and "wait for mom's hangover to wear off" before exchanging gifts among the few of us.
That day, new tradition is driving down, just my sister and I, to my uncle's house on my dad's side, where we meander around acting adult-ish and eating delicious appetizers and drinking the BEST unpasteurized spiced apple cider. Oh my golly. You have no idea.
The night wears on (it's a smaller occasion of just us 3 tiny families) and food is to be had, politics is argued over the table, presents opened (which have mostly degenerated to gift cards and returnable pajammas or such) and more general interaction. They keep trying to make me drink eggnog with brandy or do champagne toasts but I get so fussy that they tend to give up. Thus concludes the night.
This holiday actually keeps us coherent, as opposed to Thanksgiving which I recall last year I took a cameraphone pic of myself laying halfway under a table with an expression of "I'M DONE."

After all this spiel, I have to admit that this year I will not be taking part in said activities. I'm going to school out of state and as it stands, if you work at a hotel, people DO need room and board no matter what day of the year it is. I'm working through every single day.

I should have changed that, and gotten at least one day off.

It's a bit killer for me, I admit, especially with such a great and slightly lunatic family on both sides, in addition to just the camaraderie and how close we can all be during these times. I've never had to skip out on a holiday before, Thanksgiving was hard enough with what I missed and now all those too. I haven't been taking it well, so I think I get to hunker down with a candy cane on my job and do what I have to do.
Not to be a buzzkill or anything, I just needed somewhere to put it.
(So if anyone can think of something warm and fun I can do at work to amuse myself through the night, I'd like extra suggestions)

I have never believed in Santa. I've always known that my presents were bought by my parents and by the time I was in my teens I was buying my siblings and parents presents too and helping wrap everything on Christmas Eve.

Pretty much our tradition is to wake up early Christmas morning, open presents, try presents out, get dressed and either go out to a close family friend's place or have them come here and have lunch. Light like Mousie's, because it's Summer here. Then we don't do anything for dinner (or we stay there until dinnertime, I forget) and that's our celebration done for the year! We don't celebrate after Christmas and the only thing I've ever done for New Years is stay up and cry once, when I was in the North Island.

This year and last year will be slightly different in that after lunch I am going to my boyfriend's place to have Christmas with him and all his Christchurch family which will be fun.

And haha, suckers! I get Christmas before you do!

I get a lot of joy in watching peoples' mouths gape open when I declare I don't celebrate Christmas. Yes, that means no presents. For some reason this is a huge deal for everyone... except me. I associate Christmas with frantically trying to run around telling people not to buy me presents because I will not be returning the favpre (don't really see the point is dishing out a lot of money for presents nobody will ever use for a holiday I don't even celebrate).

I have a lot of family in the area, though, so the general season is pretty fun. It's a lot of movie marathons, making (or failing to) make ginger bread houses and dinner parties. I personally hate New Years... because I can't shake off the image of my uncle swaggering all over the house making a completely fool of himself, piss drunk.

So, yeah. I'm really not that much of a holidays person... sort of like the Grinch.

That's why you learn to be a good gift giver. I LOVE giving presents, I look for excuses to go out of my way for all of them. This is a stressful time for me, moneywise, but it's always a fun one because I get to be so creative and people are always surprised with what they get. It's always something useful, and something they didn't know they wanted.

For instance: my new boyfriend grows roses, he's crazy about them. And we have a game where he always loses his chapstick somewhere and asks me where it is, and I use my psychic chapstickery talent to locate it for him. As in, he asked me, and I (though at my own house and therefore unable to know at all) proclaimed "IT IS IN YOUR SHOE." Turns out it had fallen off the desk into a shoe that was laying there, and I was correct.
But no matter how many he buys, he always loses them, and the game starts again.

So for one of this presents, i took large boba straws and attached silk roses and leaves to them, so they look like... well, big awkward roses. But inside the straws I had 3 different kinds of chapstick, and I made 4 roses total, so about 12 total lip balms. Then I arranged then in a vase and voila.

Something he likes, with something he can USE. That's the glory of gift giving. Now I know a lot of people are all gung ho about gift cards and things like that, and useful they may be, but I'm all the more interested in a personal touch.

/soapbox

(happy) I love the holidays. Usually we spend them in El Paso, where most of my family lives, but this year we're spending it at home in Spring. In El Paso, we have over 40 people at my grandmother's Christmas party... It's great seeing everyone, since we only see them once or twice a year.

I'm Mexican-American, and many Mexicans celebrate Las Posadas, or "The Inns." It's a ritual describing the story of Mary and Joseph as they go from inn to inn, looking for a place where Mary could give birth. Traditionally, there is one procession each night for eight (or nine?) days, but it's just my family, so we only do it for one night.

My cousins and I play the peregrinos, the people looking for lodging. It's typically for my younger cousins, but I like to be involved, so I'm usually an angel or something among my 7- and 10-year-old cousins, who play other angels, Mary, the Three Wise Men, and Joseph. We used to go around my abuelita's street and go to her neighbors' houses asking to stay, but now we go to three doors of my abuelita's home (it used to be a one-story apartment complex; it's kind of like three apartments in one, so there's about four doors). All the while, we're singing a prayer, asking us for lodgings. The third "innkeepers" will let us in, at which point we will gather around the Nativity scene and pray (the Three Wise Men also bestow their gift to the baby Jesus [doll]). We've taken some liberties with it, in that we're just supposed to be peregrinos, not angels and what-have-you... but oh well. We've been including a Santa Claus the past few years, for some comedic relief. He's usually played by one of my cousins, or my dad (LOL). Then we have a pinata, which the kids under 10 swing at, and resume our regularly scheduled partying.

I'm not sure I explained it well; it's hard to describe if you're not familiar with it. But here is the Wikipedia article on it, though that gets very specific, as we don't follow some of those traditions (like, we just fill our pinata with candy and gum, and we have actual kids playing Joseph and Mary, not statues).

Around midnight, when it's officially Christmas, all the cousins gather around my abuelita's Christmas tree and she passes out our presents. My father has a huge family of 11 kids; I have around 30 cousins, many of whom are adults now, but I also have around 10 second-cousins between the ages of 6 and 12, and it seems we get a new one every year. So... it takes a while, and presents get lost, and a few kids inevitably get the wrong gift... But it's fun.

There's lots of food, and as I sort of glossed over earlier, I love getting to talk to my family and hang out with my cousins, especially the little ones. They're all over me, lol.

We also go to my aunt's house on my mom's side. My mom's family is considerably smaller. 17 or so people in all, and around 20 show up for dinner and merriment.

Since we're still on our side of Texas this year, we're... probably going to have a quiet little affair for dinner, watch Christmas comedies, stay up 'til 12 AM on Christmas Eve, open presents, and then go to sleep. Not nearly as eventful as when we go to El Paso, but still nice. : )

Aww, I love Christmas. Hope everyone has a happy holiday. <3 (blush)

Your Christmas sounds -awesome- Sunday and I would love to participate in something like that.

The most family I've ever had Christmas with was when we went to Australia two Christmases ago and went to my Aunty Helen and Uncle Greg's place. We had about four families of our family (if that doesn't make sense it was my immediate family, the Chaselings (Greg and Helen + kids), the Lanhams (Peter, Kim, Chris, Bradley, Andrew), us...any that might have been it) having a good old Aussie Christmas (barbie outside with Spotlight etc). It was so great.

All of my family lives in Aussie, many in different places, so we had three different Christmas celebrations at three different places that year. It was AWESOME.

I'm Norwegian, and from what I can gather, we celebrate what most Norwegians think of as a more or less traditional Christmas.

There is generally a lot of cooking and much ado going on through the entirety of December, coming to a climax of sorts on the evening of the 23rd with a very lazy dinner usually of rice pudding. And me helping my mother decorate the tree, with ritual fits of laughter, sreaming over bad christmas carols and the others joining us occasionally. Then there is "Dinner for One" on TV at some point, more lazing about, eating of assorted candy and discussing relatives. It seems Norway is the only country that, for some unfathomable reason, airs "Dinner of One" at Christmas.

It has become something of a tradiation that I team up with a good friend and make disastrous ginger-bread men (this year, they turned into pieces of finely shaped coal), drink mulled wine and sing carols at the top of our lungs.

On Christmas Eve we get up late, have a very long breakfast in dressing gowns and slippers, and then have a few very long hours to kill. Which we fill with traditional cartoons and movies – an ancient version of Cinderlla and "Reisen til julestjernen" (do not ask me to translate that, it will sound awful), among others –, then a boy choir sings carols and we prance around with dripping hair, trying to get ready in time and cursing ourselves for not ironing whatever we are wearing earlier.

And off to dinner we go, either at one of my aunt and uncles', or grandparents. There we eat pork ribs, potatoes, sausages and what-not, topped with a dessert of some kind. Through these proceedings everyone over 18, save those driving, get tipsy enough to forget that they dislike half of the relatives present. I should perhaps mention that there are other types of traditonal christmas food, such as steamed mutton (called "pinnekjøtt", literally stick-meat) and lye fish – none of which I can stand, personally.

After dinner wee exchange presents, eat cakes and talk. The day after we usually end up at another Christmas party, this year at my aunt and uncle's where there will, reputedly, be some 40 people turning up. The day after that we will most likely stay at home, and perhaps have someone over. The third day is spent with friends, usually, eating said steamed mutton, or "pinnekjøtt". In-between the third day and New Year's Eve most people are required back at work, but surprisingly few show up and those that do come in late and leave early, doing next to nothing.

Ahhh Nirinia, my kjæreste has been telling me alllllllllll about Christmas in Norway. One day we shall go celebrate it with his family. I just haven't informed him of this yet : D

Mine has always been a semi big deal. Mostly it's lead up though.

Christmas Eve, we begin! Usually my dad and I will go and collect the turkey from the local farm shop. anything from 22 to 28lbs and since I was 11 I have been carrying it by myself. Talk about heavy.

Then, my brother, mum, dad and I will go out for a meal in the late afternoon. Usually somewhere we've been itching to go for ages. Be it a good curry house or an italian place. Then we go and see a movie. Christmas songs on the way home, dad warbling along to his CD. Then we'll pile off to bed and sleep for several blessed hours.

Now, keep in mind that I am 23. My brother is 26. You'll need to keep this lodged in your brain for the next part, okay?

At about 3am, Dad will traipse down the hall, filling our stockings and going, 'ho-ho-ho!' as "quietly" as possible. I will usually tell Santa to ho-ho-ho quietly, or I'll stick him back up the chimney.

In a loving way, of course.

6am, Panda is rudely awakened by her bedroom light being flicked on and off.

On. Off. On. Off. On. Off. On. Off. On. Off. This is usually repeated until I swear.

A lot.

Because my brother loves Christmas so much, we still have stockings. I think I could go without one these days, but dear darling brother adores them, so we still get them. He will bring my stocking to me, (or rather, throw it at my head to make sure I'm up), then climb into bed next to me. I will try to go back to sleep, despite the light being on, and a stocking wrapped around my head. Darling brother will commence the opening of his stocking--wait, no--my stocking.

That's right folks, he loves them so much he opens mine for me.

Then he throws the wrapping paper allllllll over my floor, looking at the time (6.15am usually) and wondering if it's, "too early" to wake the parents.

We don't tend to bother until about 8am, at which point we undergo operation wide-awake. This involves the switching on and off of my parent's bedroom light, loud ho-ho-ho-ing, then climbing onto their bed, covering them in our stocking presents.

By about 9am we will have convinced poor old dad to get up and make us all tea/coffee.

Then we open our presents--still in our PJs and we talk and give one another things to open. My parents like to go all our--my dad is very into Origami, so will always do some impressive wrapping every year.

Then we tidy up and help with the Christmas dinner. It's a combined effort usually and we end up with his enormous bird between four of us. Nuts, yeah? After dinner (and after dad has proclaimed that it was, 'the best meal of the year!') mum and I will watch a DVD or if we're really desperate, watch the Queen's Speech.

7pm! The army arrives. I have an enormous family. There have been up to 20 people in the house (not including us) on Christmas day before now (which is why we have such a huge turkey) and we have a buffet! Turkey meat, finger foods, Christmas telly and general catching up. We will all get horribly drunk, gorge ourselves on my mum's very-sherry trifle and drink far too much tea.

At about 11, they all trundle off and drive into the distance. Drunkenly we will tidy up, listen to dad snoring in the living room and crawl off to bed for much needed sleep.

I don't think I'd trade it for anything. Not even the 6am wakeup call!

I am told it is an expierence, particularly the food – which even the most sturdy of natives at times have problems stomaching. I say, inform him, and come tottering onto his doorstep as quickly as possible, and make sure he does the same to you. Your Christmas sounds magnificent Ü

By the by, don't tell me your kjæreste has transfered his Norwegianskillz to you, so you can read my oh-so-cryptical signature?

Mousie is rather proud of her own personal tradition: Odd wrapping of Christmas presents...

This year: Safeway Christmas meets Metcard Eco-Wrap...


Yes, Safeway Supermarket's (division of Woolworths Limited) special red and green Christmas eco-bags, tied in gold ribbon, with Victorian Public Transport tickets (metcards) as gift tags.

I think it's rather effective. :D

And now for a tradition Mousie hates:
ZomgWTFbbq! HOW ARE WE GOING TO EAT IF THE SHOPS ARE SHUT!111!111!
---- We must buy everything at the supermarket... NOW!

Christmas Eve at Safeway = murder. I just got back from work. *collapses*

aww, unfortunately not. My language skills are coming along slowly. Thus far I only know little bits--but he loves to correct me.

Frequently.

It's a twisted sort of critical love <3.

j/k

I used to have my beloved Clue to give me advice on the language--because frequently he will just slip into Norwegian and while he picks phrases he thinks I'll know, it's usually 50/50.

Languages: Not my forté. But I'm working on it! New Years Resolution: Understand your signature!

</tangent>

Critical love is always the most fun, particularly the insane bickering that no one but the two of you get. And I can sympathise with him on the Norwegian: I do the same thing whenever I try to speak another language – particularly swearing, it seems, is more effective in Norwegian.

Norwegian is not awfully complicated really, unless you plan to foray into dialects, at which point it gets awfully complicated and barely legible.

Brilliant resolution! Perhaps I should make mine joining yours? I've contemplated it, but never gotten around to it.

I'm late as usual, but because i have four seperate families who celebrate four different ways, i thoughts i'd throw in my two cents...first there is the regular family, my mom and her people. Christmas usually starts extremely early for me (read the 13-14 of December) because I am a child of divorce, and all of my familes have to share me. so, the first christmas is with the people I'm not spending Actual Christmas with. this years it was my father's family in Florida. They had mailed thier gifts before and vice versa, and we all got in front of my father's internet camera and opened gifts here in Jersey while they opened theirs in Florida.

Then there is my stepmother's family, who doesn't celebrate Christmas, they celebrate Kwanza. Seven days of swahili and candle lighting. (Someone said something about fire being good? yes Fire is very good.) So granted that I am in town (and not at college or already at my mother's house) I go with my little brother and my stepmother to my step-aunts house, where they light the Kwanza candles we go over the Kwanza principle of the night, and open our present for the night. Then we go back to our houses. And so on for the other six nights.

Now my aunt. I celebrate seperatly with my aunt because she is my most favorite person in the world, and our schedules keep us from being able to celebrate with the rest of our family at large. We usually go out to eat, then go back to her apartment and get drunk (me secretly...don't tell my parent's because i'm underage) and open presents. This year, we did this on the 23rd, and then she dropped me off at work the next day.

Yes, i work on Christmas eve. My boss needed me, and it is the entire reason i'm only nineteen and get paid a whopping 13 dollars an hour.

After Work, my grandmother and i usually catch three trains to the airport that is only 30 minutes away from our house (too expensive to park there the entire time) and we arrive at my mothers house at around 10:00 pm, just in time for the 10 of us (me and five younger siblings parents, grandparents) to go to midnight Church service. Not mass, because we aren't catholic, but midnight services.

This year, because i was deemed old enough, i was allowed to stay up and help wrap presents, so we do that until 3 or 4, then i tease my brothers because they are still awake and I know what they are getting...then i crash.

At five...yes five o clock...my oldest younger brother, who is ten, pulls my hair until i wake up and repeats the process of everyone else in the house. so around 6 we are all sitting in front of the Tree with cameras and all of that stuff, and we start ripping into the presents. Or at least the two boys (10 and 6) do. the rest of us are either too old or to young to care.

Then all of us old people go back to bed while the young ones play with thier presents. At the much more decent hour of noon-ish, the adults wake up make coffee, and put the two boys into bed, because they have by this time fallen asleep in the living room on top of thier presents. Then the adults open up all thier presents, and we talk junk, and play cards until the boys get up from thier nap, and we go out to eat at a cousins restuarant.


And that is Christmas....and Kwanza... :D I have a lot of seperate families....