Christmas Eve traditions?

[rachel]

Hehe hubby just asked what I wanted for my birthday dinner, and y'all inspired me to ask for Chinese!! We have a great buffet place nearby, so hopefully he goes there. yum yum!!

Rachel

[call me ishmael]

Strange sights:

Along the Juniata River, there is a place where mist rises from the warmer river water into the cooler night air. When the nights are cold, it freezes on everything it touches. It is especially magical on a full moon, such as we have tonight. We first discovered this in 2000, and have made it a Christmas Eve tradition. It is something that doesn't translate to photographs...it must be seen.

Along the river they lay their heads,
They heap up leaves to make their beds...

[Astoria]

Strange sights:

Along the Juniata River, there is a place where mist rises from the warmer river water into the cooler night air. When the nights are cold, it freezes on everything it touches. It is especially magical on a full moon, such as we have tonight. We first discovered this in 2000, and have made it a Christmas Eve tradition. It is something that doesn't translate to photographs...it must be seen.

Along the river they lay their heads,
They heap up leaves to make their beds...

WoW I wish I could see it.

[John Fitch V]

That is inspirational.

[Victorine]

We always have pizza for dinner and then open all the family presents. We open family presents on Christmas Eve & Santa comes on Christmas morning. My dad usually had to play at 5pm Mass Christmas Eve, so we started the tradition of pre-ordering half-baked pizzas and then we'd come home & cook them. Much easier to do when you had 3 girls clamoring to get to open their presents!

Oh my gosh, that's totally our tradition too! Even down to the half-baked part. Funny!

We also read the account in Luke and sing Christmas carols that go along with the Christmas story.

Vicki

[SheenahFreitas]

Since I was young, and my brother younger than I, we started to open our presents on Christmas Eve. All because of his persistent bugging and impatience, but it's fairly unique among my friends. That's basically it though

[CrystalMarcos]

I have a large family and we all gather at Mom's and Dad's for Christmas Eve. We eat appetizers and desserts. The past few years we started a tradition we call "Recycled Christmas" and play it as a game. Everyone has something they either don't want or need anymore and sometimes someone will bring something that has just been sitting in their home unopened. All these items are wrapped and we then draw numbers to see who goes first. The next person has the choice to take the gift or choose a wrapped gift from the pile. A gift can be traded up to 3 times. It is really fun and people usually go home with something they wanted. This year was really funny. Everyone wanted what they opened and no trades happened. You never know what to expect! To make it even more "recycled" we use paper bags, old gift bags, or newspaper to wrap gifts.