That's Christmas To Me

[Meganium]

This is not all about Pentatonix's amazingly awesome album and title track "That's Christmas To Me". This is all about the joys of Christmas...in your perspective. Christmas is celebrated in so many ways all around the world, and each family has one or several traditions. Like myself, every Christmas we always gather the whole family to cook up some tamales, using the recipe that's originated from my late grandmother. Then after Christmas dinner we would play board games while sipping on some Champurrado (hot cocoa made with flour and cinammon), and share our desserts. At midnight Christmas Day we would then open our presents.

Aside from all of that, I donated several toys to the Toys For Tots charity, which will benefit underprivileged kids in my area, I feel that spreading the joy of Christmas to people who deserve it, or to people who aren't as lucky as we are is the best gift of all.

My question to you guys, what is Christmas to you?

 

[TRIFORCE89]

Family, food, childhood wonderment, festive-ness.

I dunno. Christmas is my thing. I like everything but the gifting, mostly. Decorations, classic TV specials, holiday music, fantastic food, lots of time spent with family, all the little traditions throughout the month, I like the snow, Christmas trees. Whatever.

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

I don't have a clear definition of Christmas at all. Since I can remember it's been gifting time with family and that's about it - no one cooks or goes out or anything, however last Christmas when my uncle died my father took us out to the cinema, which I thought was incredibly cryptic. This year it looks like we won't be having a Christmas with how tight things are financially. I'll be lucky to get a $20 RAM chip for my PC.

 

[Warspirit]

Spending time with family, eating, cooking with my mom, and the giving and receiving of gifts as well as holiday festivities. It can also be fun if you have friends over but if i could I'd go in and spend time with the other volunteers and dogs at the animal shelter and have a good time at the Christmas party. Snow can also add a really nice touch to the holidays and I'm really hoping for a white Christmas.

 

[Astraea]

Holiday, whole family together, fun, enjoyment and its a very beautiful festival where we at least get to relax and get off from study for a day xD.

 

[pkmin3033]

Christmas means lots and lots of panicking. My mother gets horribly short-tempered as she starts dieting so that she doesn't feel even worse when she inevitably puts on weight due to the Christmas food, cleans the house from top to bottom before the relatives arrive (which is in itself horribly stressful) and frets about what to buy individuals who are very difficult to buy for, and then about getting them sent off on time, because Royal Mail is notoriously inept at this time of year because of the sheer volume of parcels.

There are lots of one-off events going on - school Christmas fairs, etc - making it difficult to find time to put the decorations up, and that day is probably the worst one of all, because it takes hours to get it done and everyone is in very foul temper by the end of it. My father works at the post office, so he's getting home at around 2pm - 3pm some days, which makes it hard to get things done that need the three of us to do them (such as moving furniture around to accomodate the tree in the living room, getting decorations out of the attic, etc) and means he's in a bad mood as well because he's been up since 5am.

I get all my shopping done well in advance, but that means I'm at a loose end, which makes me under foot, which really offends my parents for some reason. I'm actually organized, even though I don't really think about Christmas until November 25th, which is the day after my mother's birthday. Once all this stuff is out the way mid-December, Christmas just means waiting for presents, more films than average on TV, Christmas shortbread, and festive music; the usual sort of thing.

In short? Pure, unmitigated chaos. That's not to say I don't enjoy it overall, because I usually do, but the setup is absolute hell and tempers are always very short until its all over. Christmas Day is met with a profound sigh of relief in my house.

 

[DRCM]

Christmas means HARDCORE COOKING. We meet with my dad's side of the family on Christmas day, and then the next day, my mum's side. My mum's side is generally more fun.

But for the last few years, we've been hosting Christmas. So it means loads of preparing, loads of cooking, loads of decorating, all that. It's all worth it in the end though.

 

[│Medic│]

Christmas to me is going to my grandparents' house. My grandma has anger management issues, but for the entirety of my youth she was beyond nice to us kids. It's hard to find anything genuine in that house anymore, and everything is just awkward, especially since I don't like the idea of receiving gifts.

It's a huge relief celebrating with the other side of the family, where all my close cousins are. And I just enjoy their company until Christmas dinner. Christmas is also not Christmas until there's Christmas music! <3

This year, I'm leaving on Christmas Day to go visit my sister in Delaware! o:

 

[Alfieri]

Spending time with family, eating good food, and then giving each other presents and immediately ripping apart your own presents' wrappers to see what's inside.

 

[Guardian]

Family, food, family gatherings, lights everywhere, snow preferably, cold, cold, cold, winter break, food, I mean, SO.MUCH.AMAZING.FOOD, friends, Pokemon, PC games, TV, presents, cats trying to knock down the tree, cold, food, and present.

 

[starseed galaxy auticorn]

I guess it would be spending time with my family. We don't really do much stuff as a family like we used to... other than possibly doing normal things (IE. going to walmart, doctor's appointments...). So, to have Christmas is often really important for us. Since we moved to Arizona, our extended family all lives in Maine still. So, it's just me, my dad, my mom, our cat and two dogs, (which are also just as important to our family).

No seriously, it's all about the presents, man! 8D

It would be nice to help others, but it's hard enough for us alone during Christmas. D:

 

[Evanlyn]

Christmas to me is spending time with family, friends, and loved ones. Spreading Christmas joy, showing love, and of course eating the yummy food.

A good example of the Christmas spirit that really makes me think 'this is Christmas' happened yesterday: I was walking around town, and headed into Coles (a food shop in Australia, for those who don't know). Well, actually just into the shopping Mall where Coles is. Anyway, there was a choir of school children in there, and they were really cute. I stopped to listen for a while (half of the reason was to listen, the other half was to not step in front of this lady who was recording the song on her phone).
Then, the manager from Coles came out of the store (at least, I think it was the store manager), with a tin of chocolates, and started handing them out to everyone who was listening, whether he knew them or not.

That really made me feel like we're in the Christmas season.

 

[rickyt713]

im a pretty family oriented guy so christmas is always my favorite holiday. i get to see people i havnt seen in a long time. some people dont like christmas because of this reason but i always find it something to look forward to. even though it can be stressful at times, i get to see my family become a big unit once again and that is always the best present of them all.

 

[Poki]

Food + presents.

Look, I'm not religious, so that's all I care about on Xmas.

 

[Arylett Charnoa]

Christmas used to be that one time where, as a child, I wouldn't have to deal with my parent's nonsense excuses about there not being enough money and "I'll get it for you later, for Christmas." (No seriously, they were nonsense. As an adult, I see them quite happy to spend money on things like a $300 table for no reason... in the middle of October.)

Nowadays, because I don't have many friends, Christmas is... really nothing to me. Most holidays aren't. I don't really feel any sort of emotions during them, even if I've been trying to force myself to and make them more festive. Perhaps it's because most holidays in the winter months, save for Halloween, are about family. And I, as you may be able to guess, have a very poor relationship with them. I don't feel like I've ever had a family. Right now, the only family I have is my fiance. Even though I'm living with my parents right now due to lack of finances. we mostly don't interact. And that's the way I like it.

He and I can't really celebrate it together by buying each other things, because we share our money and we can't have any extra expenses. I could make him a drawing, but because of how close we are constantly (we are basically confined in a single tiny room at all times), it'd be difficult to keep it a surprise. Also, we don't really know how to celebrate in general. We just kind of sit around confined in the same room most of the time, due to not only our general lack of money, but our lack of friends. If we had more friends, I'd be happy to go to some sort of Christmas party and have fun with them. But I don't even really have the ability to enjoy parties too much.

I guess what I'm saying is that... I don't really have a Christmas 'cause I don't have any sort of ability to celebrate things. And for now, due to the situation I find myself in, it's okay. In the future, I think things will get better once we have more people in our lives and a much bigger living space. It's not really super important to me though. I'm not really a holiday celebrating person.

 

[Lunaris Adamantine]

Christmas doesn't really mean much to me anymore. I was raised to believe all that it's all to do with Jesus and all that, but it didn't last long til I discovered I wasn't a fan of Christianity. After that it became all about just spending time with the family, but then holidays just all kinda died off in my family. I don't live anywhere near my immediate family anymore anyways, so that's out of the question.

Now all it really means to me is that I get an extra day off work, and everyone is extra nice because of the "Spirit of Christmas". I don't understand what this weird spirit is, but I guess it's that thing that makes certain people nice for only about one week out of the whole year. I guess that means my spirit of Christmas is much larger than most, cause it works all year 'round!

But yeah, because of my job getting a million times more difficult due to Christmas, it's just that annoying time of year I want to be done with already.

 

[Maharet]

Considering the situation, this year's Christmas for me will only mean trying to save the tree from our hyperactive kittens' assault, and hoping that the next one is better. I've never been very religious, and this year we won't have giant family gatherings as we used to, which saddens me a lot.
I'm hoping to spend at least a day with a couple who's been friends with our family for eight years. It's like they're relatives, so I'll get a chance to have some good laughs with them and spoil their older son by playing videogames with him and baking something for/with him.

Since the weather here is too warm, I won't even have the snow :/ I've always wanted a white Christmas to be honest, but I guess I'll have to move in another country to have it.

 

[Sydian]

Christmas to me is eating crab legs, cocktail weenies, fruit salad, and greek salad while sipping on a cold Dr. Pepper and playing some Super Mario All-Stars with my sister and cousins. Then, opening presents after asking a million times if it's time to open them. Then there's staying up til midnight to watch the ball drop in New York at 11...then an hour later, watching the Moon Pie drop in Alabama to celebrate the new year.

Christmas on New Year's Eve is my favorite family tradition and I definitely want to be the one to carry it on in the future.

 

[Corvus of the Black Night]

I've always been closer to Halloween than Christmas and I've never been very much of a family oriented individual but it is fun and I like the lights I guess. Christmas last year and the year before was more associated with hell on Earth though because I worked at a photo studio which would overbook to absolutely obscene levels. I worked 14 hours, from 7 am to whatever the hell time the last customer came in, with a 30 minute break, sometimes as late as 10 hours into my shift. It was rough and pushed me to my absolute limit of patience.

We would always celebrate Christmas early because almost 30 years ago my father was involved in a horrible auto accident that happened right around Christmas that killed his wife at that point. He still is scarred from it to this day, so Christmas was always kind of put to the wayside in our household. It was basically "open presents on the 15th and eat some food I guess".

So yeah, Christmas is a bit weird in that respect I guess.