christmas...

[MamaRuthie]

hi everyone how is everyones Christmas plans going? is anyone doing anything special this year?

we are having family over at our house for Christmas lunch so I am busy planning a menu, I have all the presents figured out I just have to wrap them now

where is veryone else at??

 

[IADad]

We have everything pretty well purchased, waiting for a couple of things to be delivered, and need to get a couple gift cards, but we know what we need and have everyone covered.

We are taking a special trip this weekend to see the Green Bay Packers play the Pittsburgh Steelers (NFL) We're big Green Bay fans, so this will be our kid's first game at historic Lambeau field. (we tell them tomorrow), so that'll be fun.

Christmas itself is a litle conflicted. My wife is pretty much estranged from her mom, so her mom and dad, who usually come for christmas eve and stay through Christmas, won't be coming. Her dad would be welcome, but realistically that won't work, puts him in an awkward place. So, Likely her brother and his wife won't come either as they are beholden to MIL.

So, that's all very sad, and it's going to mean a pretty small and un-festive Christmas at our house. My mom will join us for Christmas day. I feel for my kids, we usually at least have a few people around and this is just going to be the 4 of us.

So, I hope everyone else hugs their families extra hard and be thankful for them. It sucks having family who don't get along.

 

[IADad]

oh, and we have wrapping to do too.

 

[IADad]

and candy and treats to make.

 

[cybele]

At least they will have your mother. Family problems ruin everything.

Onto my family problems, haha.

Our holidays are a bit higgledy-piggledy this year.

Litha is on the 21st, which is our summer harvest festival (so the opposite of Yule because we are in the southern hemisphere) we are having a bonfire at MIL's house with my husband's family as we usually do. We buy our kids protective charms for Litha, which I am actually yet to do and should get on that.

We don't celebrate Christmas, with the exception of Violet, my husband's family started up a 'family day' tradition when he was younger where everyone exchanges letters about why they are grateful to have that family member. So we do that. To incorporate the whole Christmas thing for Violet, as of last year we got a small tree which we decorate on Christmas Eve and put our letters underneath it, and I have to admit, my husband and I get a small gift for the kids each (as do my in-laws). So we open up and read our letters on Christmas morning.
Dita is working this year, which is the nature of hospitality, so she will be doing that.
MIL helps organise a Christmas lunch for those less fortunate at our local community centre so Sunny, Violet and I are cooking there, then once everyone is done with work/food we will all go to MIL's house for a fascinating vegetarian 'Christmas dinner' which will really just be a whole load of desserts because it always is, and we will exchange our extended family letters.

Personally, I need to get my butt into gear and go to the gemstone lady probably today, I have 4/6 gifts purchased and wrapped (I am regretting buying Dita a cushion shaped like a giant stack of pancakes, I know she wanted it but that was ridiculous to wrap and it's currently in my wardrobe and it's this giant thing next to 3 much smaller presents).

And then, because I did promise family problems, being that this is the firs year my mother is by herself for Christmas she has asked me what we are going to do, I told her what we were doing and that she was welcome to come along and serve lunch in the community centre and she looked like she was going to explode and/or eat me so I don't know what's happening with that.

 

[akmom]

We got our tree decorated beautifully, and even put up lights outside around our window frames this year. It's so beautiful. Every time I pull into our driveway, I gawk.

We like to drive through the more populated neighborhoods and look at all the Christmas decorations. We made three gingerbread houses, a bunch of ornaments, attended two Christmas concerts for the kids, did a bunch of Christmas activities at my daughter's school, and now we are entering three weeks of Christmas vacation!!

We keep gift-giving to a minimum now. We both come from a family of hoarders, so Christmas time has always been stressful on that front. (Marathon gift-opening followed by insurmountable cleanup is just not my idea of a celebration.) I got my kids some science projects I can't wait to do with them. (Even the baby... she will be raising ladybugs!)

 

[akmom]

Cybele, the tradition here in my community is to burn the Christmas trees on New Year's. Man do those things go up in flames!

 

[cybele]

I'll throw a Christmas tree on the bonfire tomorrow to test it out.

 

[akmom]

Just take the lights off first.

 

[cybele]

Bet the plastic baubles would do something interesting.

 

[IADad]

Cybele, the tradition here in my community is to burn the Christmas trees on New Year's. Man do those things go up in flames!

here they either shred them into mulch or put them out on lakes so that when the ice melts they sink and create fish habitat (especially some of the newer man-made ponds and such). Burning anything is practically a dirty word here. I'm all for reducing carbon emissions, but I'm not so sure, my bonfire is the place to focus lots of energy.(ha, made a pun)

 

[superman]

havin the boys for Christmas eve
but they're goin with their mommas to visit family Christmas day

maybe ill drink with my buddy or something haha

 

[singledad]

Well, I'm in for a rather unfamiliar Christmas experience. GF's family have a tradition of everyone getting together for Christmas, and due to our new baby, our house is IT this year.

GF's mom has been staying with us since the baby was born, to help out and so, and tomorrow, her dad, as well as her two brothers and their families are joining us. We only have four bedrooms, so GF's parent's will get the spare room, and the rest will be sleeping on air mattresses and camping beds all over the house. On Christmas day, my brother and his three kids will also join, to make for an insanely over-crowded house. I have no idea where everyone will sit, but fortunately GF's mom and Sisters-in-law will be in charge of feeding everyone, so I don't have to worry about that. LOL.

So I'm in for my first crazy family Christmas, and if last year's family dinner is anything to go by, it will involve meals that go on for hours, with everyone talking at once, poking fun at each other, and eating way too much food. And then some. And probably more presents for DD any any decent 7 year old should ever be allowed to receive

Oh, and of course, we have the most common kind of tree found around here - the ugly, plastic kind. :/ By my DD thinks it (and specifically, her decoration job) is gorgeous, so who am I to argue?

 

[cybele]

I remember my first Yule with my husband's family. It was so unlike anything I had ever experienced before. When I was younger we had Christmas Eve dinner, we got dressed up had a small number of people over who were usually business associates and sat at an oversized table with my father at the head eating little set courses that my mother hadplanned out perfectly with matching wines and listening to Bing Crosby.
Then suddenly I'm in my in laws house with this crazy culture mash of food (I still maintain that only his family think it's normal to have korma eaten with rugbraud with potato salad and dim sims on the side) and everyone was loud and running around and my father in law got drunk and started singing Abba songs to my mother in law who was trying to clean wine out of the carpet.

It's funny how that seems so normal to me now and a formal meal seems strange.

 

[akmom]

Whoa... back up.

Korma?
Rugbraud?
Dim sims?

I do know what potato salad is, or at least something Americans call potato salad...

 

[cybele]

Korma is a style of curry where you braise the vegetables (or meat, but we don't use meat) in stock then add a cream element (so coconut cream, yoghurt or regular cream) once the ingredients have cooked. We mostly make Navratan Korma which has nine different vegetables (doesn't matter what vegetables, it's a Hindu thing) with nuts and paneer (which is an Indian cheese)
Looks like this:

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Now, rugbraud is an Icelandic heavy rye bread that is sweet and baked underground
Looks like this:

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Dim sims are Chinese inspired dumplings that were actually 'invented' in Melbourne, filled with either meat or vegetables and wrapped in a water-based pastry (kind of like shumai dumplings) and are either steamed or deep fried
Look like this:

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or this

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My in-laws are a very multicultural mix so the food gets very mixed up, as do the holidays celebrated, the way things are celebrated, languages spoken (my mother in law composes sentences that include words in Hindi, Icelandic and English, then gets annoyed when people only understand half). It's all a big jumble.

 

[pwsowner]

The dim sims look good.

I never do much decorating, even though it's generally a big thing around here. I don't really have anyone to celebrate Christmas with, so it's no big day to me.

insanely over-crowded house

I do home renovations, still, and a couple years ago I did a job that I'll never forget, and never do again. Should have been a simple job, patch and paint the 3 bedrooms in a 3 bedroom house. Problem was, it was 3 generations of Pakistanis living there. Had to be about 20 people there and I had to work around them and paint the rooms while they were being used. Never again.

 

[akmom]

Korma is pretty much the same way we do our curry.

So is rugbraud like a rye cake? Man, I hate rye bread, but I never thought of using rye for a sweet bread. I wonder if it can be cooked aboveground? Our ground is frozen and buried right now.

Still don't quite get the dim sims. Dumplings to me are an entirely different concept (dough tossed over a stew and boiled until it's cooked and fluffy). Is the wrapping like egg rolls or wontons? Or perhaps pierogies?

Made my first fruit cake this year though. It's supposed to be really good, not the crap stuff everyone makes fun of. But we will see...

 

[cybele]

Chinese dumplings, not the other dumplings. I know about the dumpling difference from another forum, haha. I said that we were going 'out for dumplings' as there are dumpling restaurants here where they mostly have various types of Chinese dumplings and it just confused everyone because what you guys call dumplings are very similar to what we call savoury scones.
Rugbraud is a bread, not really a cake, it's just bread that is sweet, like fruit bread minus the fruit.

I love fruit cake.

 

[cybele]

Kind of on topic, I had a wedding set up this morning, the shop is closed for four weeks but I still have a few set ups during that time, so someone is getting married on Christmas Eve and they are having a full on Christmas themed wedding. Not my cup of tea, but so much fun to work on. Poinsettia and cranberry bouquets and pine, cranberry and raspberry table arrangements and mistletoe everywhere. It's at a venue where I know the owner really well and he was telling me that they have a full Christmas dinner on the menu and a fake snow machine and it's going to be Christmas carols all night. When I was there the chefs were making all these little individual plum puddings.

I kind of want to crash the Christmas wedding.