How do you celebrate Christmas?

[hamano]

Now that Christmas is just around the corner, I thought it might be fun to have a topic about how do people here celebrate Christmas (if you do so in the first place of course). Do you have certain traditions and things you do every Christmas? Do you have certain dishes you eat during this time? Do you celebrate the holidays with family, friends or alone? Or do you even celebrate Christmas?

In my case, I'm spending my Christmas partially alone and partially with my parents, that means I usually spend the Christmas Eve with my family and on Christmas Day I tend to stay at home, some friends might stop by, but nothing special. But then again, I kinda like being by myself. Of course I have dinner with my family again. My favourite Christmas dish must be (aside from ham) swede casserole.

Overall I'm not that much of a Christmas person. As a child I obviously loved Christmas because of the presents :D (Nowadays I have to buy my own presents, yesterday I got myself a parcel of Miku stuff from Japan). It may sound boring, but Christmas doesn't bear that much significance to me. Also, I'm not at all religious, so that could explain in part why. I like the Christmas time though, maybe carols and Christmas decorations remind me of childhood or something, I don't know, the Christmas time still has a special feel to it. I don't decorate very much myself, but a real Christmas tree is a must have, besides lighting some candles in the evening.

That's about it for me, please feel free to share your way of spending the holidays!
(Other Christmas related talk is welcome too)

 

[Kona]

Christmas is pretty big in my family! At the end of Thanksgiving, we always go pick out a tree together, which we’ve done for quite a number of years now...before we used to use a fake tree. I don’t really remember when we converted to real trees, but it’s nice.

For Christmas itself, we always have a “Thanksgiving dinner” on Christmas Eve, with all that turkey and ham and all that.
After that, we wait for it to get dark and go see the Christmas lights. We have a display in our sister town (that’s five minutes away because I live in a smalller city) called Starbright Village that we go to, it’s really cute and nice. There’s also those rich people in my town that do the huge displays with their own radio station and all that. They didn’t do it last year though, but I’m hoping they still do it because there was only one family that did and they had stunning displays.
We stay out until 11 or so, and come home to open presents at midnight by the tree. And we listen to Christmas music while doing so, the kinda “have to hear every year” songs are Christmas Don’t be Late (Alvin and the Chipmunks, I know-) and Feliz Navidad.

That’s basically everything we do for Christmas in my family. It’s really only ever intermediate family involved, not too super close with extended family to celebrate holidays with them haha.

 

[Blue Of Mind]

My Christmases usually just consist of opening presents in the morning, perhaps an English fry-up for breakfast and messing around with whatever we got until Christmas dinner is done. Christmas Day is usually a low-key thing at my house.

 

[Zunkari_Official]

I love Christmas!! I mostly spend time with my family and such. I have a big family so it's always lots of fun because when I go to recieve the presents to my uncle's house (I get them there) there are lots of presents for everyone (even if there are not much for everyone, in total there's still a lot of presents) ... It's really chaotic.

 

[Laeril]

Presents: check
Family: check
Good food: check
A Christmas Story: check

We don't really do the traditional Christmas morning gift unwrapping much these days. My family and I moved to Utah just before the Christmas of 2006. The oldest (me) was 18, the youngest (my brother) was 10, and nobody felt like getting out the tree so soon after moving. So my parents gave all three of us $100 gift cards and said "have at it!" It wasn't until this year that we've had a proper gift-under-tree scenario, thanks to my now 22 year old brother buying us stuff. He somehow got me three separate items. So excited as to what they could be.