Who holds the festivities during the holidays?

[Blade_of_darkness]

Here's a little something that fits the time of the year for a change.

So, whenever Christmas comes along, there's always some sort of festivity for most families to gather around a single table of food to celebrate the holidays. The question here is, who in your family holds those? Do you & your family hold them at your own place? Do you go to another place for them? Or do the holidays always end up as silent, lonely nights for you?

 

[Mr Cat Dog]

There's a bit of alternation going on with my family. Sometimes my parents host Christmas lunch and either my maternal grandparents or paternal grandparent comes and visit; other times, we end up going to one of my grandparents' houses and have a lovely meal prepared for us. It seems to have worked out alright for all of us, although I can't remember what's happening this year!

 

[-Jared-]

We have both a solid tradition, and an alternating one in my family. xD

EVERY Christmas Eve, my great grandmother has us over for dinner and gift exchanging. Lots of family typically visits, and we have a ton of fun and food and all that good stuff. :3 And just so you know, this great grandmother is my mom's mom's mom. xD

On Christmas day, however, we never quite know what we'll do. xD Sometimes, we stay home and relax, sometimes we have my mom's parents over for brunch, sometimes we visit my dad's siblings for dinner, so yeah, it varies. :3

 

[Whistle A Tune]

Well my mom has 8 brothers and sisters so I have like 30-some cousins and like a dozen second cousins who live all over the place, so it's only fair that we all convene at my grandma's house, which is plenty large enough to hold us all.

On my dad's side we also usually go to my grandma's house, which is tiny, but it's oka because there's not even 10 of us total :P

 

[~*!*~Tatsujin Gosuto~*!*~]

It's usually my Grandmother's sister (Great-Aunt), its a bunch of us at her house which I do not look forward to especially since its happening next Sunday (oh joys -_-"). But the only thing I like is her cooking, she ends up cooking a lot of food, its like she spends over 1000 on food and supplies for the big Christmas dinner at her house.


:t354:TG

 

[TRIFORCE89]

We go to whoever has the largest house I guess? There are a lot of us.

On Christmas Eve. we go to my aunt's house. Mom's side of the family. We're Mediterranean. So, we want to have lots of seafood, as is custom. Dad's side of the family, who are Italian, doesn't like seafood or garlic for some reason, so we see them Christmas Day instead.

We go visit them during the day for lunch once we wrapped up gift exchange and breakfast at home. Afterwards, we then visit another aunt on mom's side of the family. We see all the same people (maybe a little less?) from the night before, but at a different house. Everyone helps out, it's not as if the family hosting is doing all the cooking. For instance, my mom's going to preparing three dishes.

The immediate family likes to do stuff just on our own though, so on the 23rd we're headed downtown to the best Mediterranean seafood restaurant in the city for a 'Feast of the Seven Fishes' event they're holding.

 

[Ivysaur]

I usually have them, even though they don't really mean anything special for me- it helps that my family has a whooping amount of four people, so we sometimes hold a family-wide dinner on April or whenever we happen to be together. My aunt does consider it a special date though, and she always does her best to be there, so in that sense I guess we can single this ocasion out though.

It was slightly different when my gradparents (father's parents) were alive, because I never saw them except in Christmas. Again, they hated my mother and I never really cared about them, so I don't really have outstanding memories of these.

 

[PlatinumDude]

My family has a Christmas dinner late during the night before Christmas. This year, me and my sisters are going to prepare the food as a family tradition.

 

[Meganium]

Every year my family and I always pay a visit to my abuelita's house for our traditional Christmas dinner. The food consists of tamales, champurrado, hot punch, bone-in ham, macaroni salad, mashed potatoes and much more I can't really remember. xD The kids go to sleep at 10 at night, and wake up till midnight to open the presents as a family.

 

[Sydian]

Christmas Eve, my Mimi, Nana, Munner, Pop Pop, Aunt, and cousin come over for dinner (this is mostly my mom's side of the family). Then my dad usually picks me and my sister up to go to my great grandmother's house for a Christmas party, but she passed away this year. :( It's not gonna feel quite like Christmas Eve this year, sadly. But she had 10 kids, 26 grand kids, 40-60 something great grand kids, and 7 great great grand kids. Her house was PACKED.

Christmas, we open presents in the morning, then go to pee paw's for lunch and see cousins and aunts and uncles there, then we go to mimi's (or uncle Shawn's cause it alternates every year) for presents and dinner. This whole day is stuff with my step dad's side of the family.

New Year's Eve (yes, my Christmas isn't over yet), the folks from my dad's side of the family go to my maw maw's house for Christmas/New Year's and we have crab legs, nachos, fruit salad, and random food that doesn't go together, but we eat it anyway. We open presents and play SNES and Wii, and when we were younger, me and my cousins would stay the night and stay up til midnight. Nowadays, only me and my sister stay over for the night. We're the youngest, so lol. Not like we have any other party plans.

THAT'S MY CHRISTMAS XOXO

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

Though we might meet up with relatives before Christmas to exchange gifts and talk, on the actual day it's just the family at home. I can't for the life of me remember what we usually eat, but it's probably boring and mundane anyway. It's an incerdibly boring time, and I hope this is the last Christmas I have to spend in this manner. I'd much rather spend Christmas day at the office and get my Christmas dinner at someplace like Denny's. Much better than spending it at home.

 

[Shining Raichu]

We host our festivities every year because we really really can't stand travelling on Christmas lol. We'd much rather run around cleaning the house than have to deal with the horrible traffic all the way to someone's house and back on Christmas Day. Who ends up coming to our house differs every year, but there are never usually too many people, which I like. It's just a nice relaxed way to spend Christmas after the huge hectic build-up leading up to it.

 

[oocyst]

We used to go to my grandmother's house for a big christmas dinner and some presents, but she passed away a month or so ago, so we're actually changing our traditions and hosting our own dinner at our home. I guess it'll still be the same but just not at my grandma's home. I'm pretty excited now.

 

[Kikaito plush]

Every 26th of december our Gran holds a big family christmas party. which is boring but on actully christmas day we do nothing special

 

[Truality]

Our Christmas are boring and extremely religious (which strikes me as the same thing, basically), so we don't do anything more than go to church and then a normal family dinner with just the necessary turkey/X-mas food.
My parents also have issues with our relatives exactly because of this celebration manner, so it has always been awkward.

Easter is a different story, though.

 

[OriginGiratina]

Sometimes us, sometimes our relatives. We invite people who are worth having, because they are not strange characters. Some from our relatives are stingy and they celebrate alone, while we celebrate with people.

It ends up being a bit boring when the families celebrate alone, because every celebration, like Christmas, are supposed to be celebrated with friends.

 

[Hybrid Trainer]

My household always seems to hold Christmas :D we tried having it at my aunts house two years ago but it wasn't the same. I like having it at my house, I only have a small family so it's never crowded and I dislike waking up in other peoples houses anyway so that would probably ruin the whole Christmas feeling if I was in a bad mood from the second I woke up xD And like it was said above I don't really want to travel on Christmas, that'd involve getting up earlier than necessary and being in a cramped car with my sisters toys poking me from every direction.

 

[Arma]

On Christmas day, we always visit our grandmother (dad's side of the family), and in the evening, most of us dine together. I usually spent Boxing day at my mums place, and we don't usually celebrate that with a lot of people (Divorced parents -.-)

 

[Cherrim]

I don't live near any of my extended family and we haven't for a long time, so it's just my immediate family.

My aunt and cousin used to live in Toronto and would come over for Christmas Day dinner or something, but now that aunt lives in D.C. and her daughter, who we were never thaaat well acquainted with, lives a suburb away or so and I don't think we're doing anything with her or her boyfriend. So it's just us, which suits me just fine, since I didn't like having to get dressed on Christmas Day anyway. :P

I do kind of miss the big family get-togethers on either side at Christmas, but we haven't lived close enough to Saskatchewan to do one of those since I was 5 or 6. (Also, blech prarie winter.)