Your Seasonal Celebrations and Traditions Over the Years?

[Cygnus]

The luminarias during the holiday season in Santa Fe are breathtaking!

My mother was raised in New Mexico, so we always put luminarias out for Christmas when I was growing up. That is one of my favorite family traditions.

[Laird_M]

My traditions have changed over the past few years.

We now go to the St. Andrew's Ceilidh in Harrow, and Xmas has become more 'international' - my wife is Sinhalese from Sri Lanka.

We do the usual: decorations, presents, duck, etc, but for Xmas Eve, since I aquired a wife and kids, we have mutton (goat) curry with dosai (indian riceflour pancakes).
Its my favourite curry which the wife makes SUPERBLY.

We also go to the local lakes for a walk to welcome the new year and have kukul-mas curry with kiri-bath and lunu-miris (chicken curry with milk rice and a 'chutney' of onions and chilli).

Hmm, I'm hungry now!

[Bugbear]

I don't think we really had any New Year traditions. I do remember playing in the snow, and making snowmen, snow tunnels, and snow forts. Snowball fights! We don't have snow of any significants down here where I live now; it's mostly orange picking season.

[auld argonian]

Christmas Eve has tradition from the Polish side of my wife's family. Apparently the family dinner served on Christmas Eve is supposed to be fish...specifically, a carp. Thus far...possibly because we are indredibly fortunate...we have not had the carp. My mother-in-law always hosted the dinner while she was with us...her style of cooking was what I can only refer to as "serviceable". Basically, we would hurry through the meal (best way to deal with it) so we could retire to our flat (which was right downstairs) and start the loooong cocktail hour with my wife's cousins...really nice people and round about our own age. Those that wanted to go to Midnight Mass would slip out with the assurance that the festivities would still be going strong when they got back.

Since my mother-in-law's passing and the general dispersal of the family to all parts of this city, I have inherited the hosting duties. One of the challenges is that we never had fish for dinner very often in my parents household (we literally lived across the street from the Union Stockyards so beef was pretty much likely on my dad's table) so I had very little experience in its preparation.

So I've gone over to things like giant prawns, shrimp and pasta, tilapia baked in white wine sauce and grilled salmon fillets. This year I'm looking at doing salmon en croute and a salad of spinach, beets and carrots served with goat cheese and a dressing made from balsamic and a reduction of tangerines (plentiful and pretty tasty this time of year). I was also thinking about doing wee cakes of baked rutabaga as a side for the salmon. Looking right now for half a dozen bottle of Crios Rose of Malbec for the main dish and haven't decided on a wine for the soup and salad. Dessert will be this funky chocolate pistachio cake that my own mother has been known to make...remarkable green pistachio pudding frosting. Still thinking about the soup.

Next day we go to my parents and have roast beef....

Best

AA

[LANCER1562]

As a youngster, I liked Halloween the dressing up, the candy (especially the candy) as I grew out of the Trick or Treat part of Halloween I would go to more and more grown up type costume parties. Thanksgiving was a time for family. Sometimes we would have Thanksgiving dinner at our home other times at a relative's home and always after the Grace was said we would go around the table and say what we were thankful for. I have continued this tradition with my own family. Usually a week before Chistmas we would go to the tree lots and pick out our tree and then decorate it the next day. Christmas Eve we would go down to the Marina and look at all the boats an dthe homes accross the street all lit up for Christmas. Christmas Day was also a family time. On alternating years we would have an open house for our friends and neighbors. New Years Eve my parents would wake me up to watch the ball drop on TV. Now I have added St. Andrew's Day, Burns Night, Hogmanay, and my Renaisance guild has a Winter Feast.

[Bugbear]

Looks like the Northern winter solstice is coming up on the twenty-second this year. Lots of celebration around this time, or midwinter etc.

[Pleater]

If we get snow I make a snow Rupert (childrens character in newspaper cartoon, Rupert the Bear, I used to get the annual for Christmas) They are carved from compressed snow using a pallet knife.

I think I have a photo somewhere of one I did - and also the snow dinosaurs, which only happen when there is a lot of snow..

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[Bugbear]

Oh, that's interesting, Pleater, you carve them. We always built snow creatures by packing on pieces of snow to a core. If we needed a really big ball, we rolled a smaller snowball around the yard and house, packing it now and then, to grow it to the right size.

That's a cute idea, , a snow-bear.

We also used to play with the giant icicles that formed off the edges of the roofs.

[mexpiper]

The Christmas tree comes down after Ephiney (little Christmas) .when I was a kid, my father on new years eve always made menduo, at midnight on the eastern east coast we would call abulto (my dads mom) in California to wish her happy new year, my parents would eat the menduo ( I eat the hominy and add kidney beans). Than at midnight in california my Tia's (aunts) would call us, while they served menduo to their families. Does not happen anymore...we all are in bed before midnight. Now my friends try to get together to go for a morning walk (1st footing, I am taller then them and a somewhat still darked haired male, ) while drinking hot cholcate with baileys.

[Bugbear]

Yes, I've also had menudo (with the families of friends) on holidays. The last time was on a Thanksgiving.