Playing a little holiday game here – tell me what your holiday musts are in the following categories:
Movies
Cookies
Traditional Family Gifts
Food
Outing
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Here are my five:
Movie – It’s a Wonderful Life
I was watching this movie on lazy Saturday afternoons before Hallmark started producing ornaments with George Bailey’s face on them. It is the best redemption story out there and you can’t get through the movies without crying –even if you are a big strong guy (right Roger?)
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Cookies – Mexican Wedding Cakes/Russian Tea Cakes
My mom makes these yummy-powdered-sugar-balls of love every single year and they ARE Christmas. Check out this post on how to make these extra special cookies.
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Traditional Family Gifts- Chocolate Orange
It’s easy. Whack ’em on a table and eat. Yum. If Santa doesn’t get one for every kid (and Roger still considers himself a kid) I am in big trouble.
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Food – Broccoli Casserole
I love me some Broccoli Casserole – a long-standing tradition in our family. Mayo, condensed soup, and Ritz crackers. And now, I pass my family’s white trash heritage on to you:
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Broccoli Casserole
2 Eggs – Beaten
2 T Green Onions – chopped
1 Can Celery Soup
1 Cup Mayonnaise
2 boxes frozen broccoli
8 oz grated cheddar cheese
1 tube Ritz Crackers
1 cube butter
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Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Mix the first four ingredients in a bowl.
Par boil broccoli and drain.
Mix the broccoli into the first four ingredients. Pour into an 8×8 casserole dish.
Sprinkle the cheese on top of the casserole.
Melt the butter.
Crush the tube of Ritz crackers and mix with the melted butter. Cover over the casserole.
Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.
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Outings – Looking at Christmas lights while listening to Trans-Syberian Orchestra
Here is a map of Christmas lights around the Bay Area. For all my homies. However, almost every paper in the country has a guide on their website.
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OK – now it’s your turn – tell me what you need to make it Christmas…
it wouldn’t be christmas without
christmas morning pancakes,
Movie:Polar Express with a cup of Hot Chocolate (whipped cream)
Spending Christmas Eve with Grandma& Grandpa Jennings (Chuck & Susan)opening gifts at 12am
Cookie’s: Sugar(Chocolate Chip Tollhouse
Outing: Griffith Park’s Christmas Lights and driving through Hasting Ranch Holiday Homes
movie: Charlie Brown Christmas and the Grinch (cartoon)and a new fave The Holiday
cookie: snickerdoodles
gift: any and ALL new Star Trek ornaments and a stocking filled will an apple, an orange, a ‘good’ present, color book, crayons, bubbles and a paddle ball. OOO and some January issues of magazines I like.
I always get the kids jamjams and we have hot chocolate with marshmallows
Oh I know what we do for gifts! Christmas jammies and a book on Christmas Eve.
How fun!
Movies: The Family Man with Nicholas Cage is a tradition for DH and I, but if we’re talking classics it’s definitely It’s a Wonderful Life followed closely by Charlie Brown’s Christmas
Cookies: I’m really open to most any of them 🙂
Traditional Family Gifts: My family would always do an orange in the toe of our stockings. But the only thing we still do now that my siblings and I are out of the house (mostly!) is a Christmas box. It’s just a box that has vintage Christmas pictures on it, but we use it every Christmas to wrap something. My mom called me in a panic about a week after Christmas last year because she couldn’t find it…but I had it tucked away to use this year!
Food: Shepherds dinner Christmas Eve. Junk from stockings for breakfast. And eggnog. Yummy!
Outing: Christmas Eve service, then looking at lights.
MOVIES- “Elf” and “A Christmas Story”—lots of laughs around here.
COOKIES- Swedish Spritz cookies—one way to give props to the hertiage without eating pickled fish.
GIFTS- There always seem to be Starbucks cards popping up everywhere. My kind of gift!!
FOOD- Christmas breakfast involves bagels, corned beef, (from a Jewish deli), fruit and lattes….mmmmm…my mouth is watering now…
OUTING- Redwood City’s “Bethlehem AD”, a live reenactment of the town and nativity.
Movies–Every Christmas movie we can find, but especially “Elf,” “Love Actually” and “Joyuex Noel.” Most people probably know the first two. The third is an indie foreign film about a Christmas Eve during WWI on which the soldiers from both sides came together to celebrate Christmas.
Cookies–Not cookies so much as pumpkin bread!
Traditional Family Gifts–My step mom always sends us fudge from the little shop in Cambria, CA.
Food–This is always changing for us. When we lived in California, we often had homemade tamales from the nearby Mexican deli, but now that we live in South Carolina we improvise. This year we’re having homemade chicken noodle soup. For breakfast, we always had homemade cinnamon rolls, but I recently discovered that the yeast is a migraine trigger, so this year we’re trying out grandma’s coffee cake recipe.
Outing–We used to drive around looking for the houses with the most Christmas lights, but now that the kids are older, it’s hard to get everybody together for this. We definitely are all together at the gate of the Christmas tree farm waiting for it to open on the day after Thanksgiving!
Fave Christmas movie – dd’s fave this year is Prep & Landing, my fave is Christmas Carol. So many good lessons there!!!
Cookies – any that I make with my dd, a universal family fave is the PB one with the choc cup in the middle
Traditional Family Gift – I get our kiddo a new pair of jammies every year. My hubby can’t resist buying me every single loofah he finds along the way on 12/24. Ladies – beware of what you tell them you like!!! 🙂
Food – my hubby makes soem OUTSTANDING drop biscuits for Christmas morning – yum, yum!
Outing – Christmas Eve Service with my dd and my parents and then viewing Christmas lights after. I’ve been doing this with my parents since before I can remember – such good memories!!
Movies – Elf
Cookies – Any I don’t have to bake myself
Traditional Family Gifts – socks – boring but warm.
Food – Same as cookies
Outing – Hot chocolate and fresh made donuts from Krispy Creme. We eat them while driving through Lights of Life display. Incredible drive every year.
Music – Any traditional Jesus stuff, love when I slow down long enough that it hits me between the eyes what really happened that created this amazing holiday
Cookies – baking biscotti
Food – munching all day
Outings – Going to Papa’s and Ruth’s houses when I was little – hum….. now it is Christmas Eve service
Some version of “A Christmas Carol”
Don’t care for cookies. : (
Traditional family gifts: Legos for boys — they never grow out of them.
Food: Spinach dip
Outings: To Grandma’s House & Finding the one open Starbucks in their area that day.
OK I love the Vicar series – but I have never seen the Christmas special – I will hunt it up on Netflix!!!
Movies – my husband says “Frosty the Snowman” but that’s probably because our kids are still young enough to enjoy it. Being an ex-pat, I didn’t grow up with Frosty, so my current favorite is a Christmas special of “The Vicar of Dibley” where she has to visit several of her parishoners and eat a full Christmas dinner with each of them.
Cookies – we’re together on this one – his Spritz cookies. He makes a huge batch and we keep them in the freezer so the kids can’t get at them.
Traditional Family Gifts – for me it was always a good jigsaw puzzle that would be set up in the living room and every member of the family would sit and place a few pieces here and there until my Mum got sick of it being there and put it away – usually around February time! My husband always received socks.
Food – for every family gathering in my husbands family, there’s always sticks of celery filled with peanut butter. He just doesn’t feel like he’s had Christmas or Thanksgiving without that. For me, food was a big part of Christmas, so there has to be mince pies, a good Christmas pudding and a trifle.
Outing – we love to take the kids to see the lights. It was so easy in San Jose, to just drive around the neighborhoods. Now we’re in Texas, there’s an event the first Saturday in December in the town square they call the ‘Stroll’. There’s a full living history Bethlehem Village and a huge area of free kids activities that another church provides together with loads of market stands to browse. Santa even shows up in a Cowboy hat! This year was very ‘crisp’ for Texas weather so it felt very Christmassy.