my sister, who is very creative and wonderful, in turn made stockings for my children when they were small enough to fit IN them

i haven't been such a great auntie... her son is now 8 and i haven't made him one yet. was thinking since my sweet grandbaby will be here i better make her one, and her stepbrother and daddy too.

and my son chad's girlfriend of 2 yrs will be here too, SO......

one of my dad's is that he has oyster stew every new year's eve no matter what.

one i used to do is take my grandmother some bittersweet every fall. she passed away several years ago but i still look for the wild bittersweet vines and remember...

one home that i used to drive by regularly has a light in each window on sundays and holy days. i suppose those little electric candles. i thought that was pretty neat and may start it myself.

One year we went I was about 7 or 8 we went in the woods and had to cross a railroad track over a creek. I got halfway across and got scared. Sat down on the tracks and refused to move untill someone came back to pick me up and carry me across.

Well my dad picked out a big pretty pine. Only when they trimmed it they got too trim happy on one side. My mom hung all her beautifull glass balls that had been collected over the years and then later that night the tree fell and we had hard wood floors!! Mom lost half her Christmas balls!!

She was mad!
Mom broke the Christmas tradition that next year and said no more chopped down trees. She bought one already trimmed as to salvage what Christmas balls she had left!

I guess that was a broken Christmas tradition story.

XMAS day is my birthday and this had not always been easy for me!! I remember spending my 18th birthday at Dunkin Doughnuts with my sister because it was the only thing open and i had wanted to go try to find a place to legally order a drink!

These days I usually have Chinese food every XMAS day. Did all of you know that the Chinese restaurants are open every XMAS day and that is what all the Jewish people do? Go to a movie followed by Chinese food? Our favorite Chinese restaurant here is so busy on XMAS there is a line out the door and we have to get there early!

I guess the Chinese must be Buddhists and this is why they don't celebrate XMAS either!!

This one year when Jess was young and I think it was Justin's first x-mass she picked out a tree with out having it unwrapped or shaken out. She was insistant, so as the rules go on the van it went. It was about eight feet tall. We placed it in front of a set of double french doors we had in our living room tht led to nowhere (actually another apartment) but these doors were oversizes. Well this tree dropped and dropped and dropped. It was at least 12 feet wide and toatally hid the french doors from halfway down. I have never seen such a big, full tree in my life. We kept having to move it out away from the wall further and further!

Another tradition we used to have when I was a kid but have since stopped was the suprise box:

There would be one big box with mine and my sister's names on it. This would appear twelve days before x-mass. Then every day we would get an impossible clue as to what was in it. The clue could be for either my gift or my sisters. Daily we would guess what both gifts were if we got BOTH right we would get them then. It was a blast. Some clues were just "lookie lookie, it's not a cookie"

Nice topic Loribelle, family traditions are very comforting.

When our son & daughter were about the ages of 4 & 5, on Christmas Eve night the decided they wanted to get up together at the same time in the morning to go in and see what Santa had left them under the tree.

So, they agreed they'd sleep in their sleeping bags and sleep in the same bedroom together.

Our rule was they could get up in the early am., go down and get their stockings to take up to the bedroom and see the surprises, but not come and wake mom & dad up until 7:00.

We actually start our Christmas season on Dec 6 with the feastday of St. Nicholas - the original Santa. It is custom for our kids to put their shoes out and if they have been good, St. Nicholas leaves treats - if not, they get coal. My kids have been known to find a piece of coal in the toe of their shoes mixed in with candy and treats.

Too bad we never thought of that and we could have kept our tradition. We did have alot of fun those years looking for trees exept for the RR track episode. I didn't like looking down at that water.

When I was growing up my father and I would go and climb giant white pines and saw off the top for our tree..made for funny looking trees, sometimes.

Living in the city from college through to a couple of years ago, I had to settle for the street vendors trees from Canada (usually)..but they were great, just mega bucks.

It was always funny in Manhattan, because you could see Christmas in certain apartment windows (in the neighborhoods, of course..all the stores and restaurants are all decked out for the holidays)..

Some of the pockets in Brooklyn neighborhoods were amazing, these neighborhoods are still very close nit and all share similar faiths, several different pockets and ethnic neighborhoods there..so the "Christmas" neighborhoods all light up about now. Elaborate..fun to see..

But then in Manhattan you could also see who was less than up on getting rid of their tree..

Inevitably, through Feb and even into March..you'd see a dried up old tree stuck out on the side walk for pick-up.

I have allot of NYC Christmas memories...like cooking "to go" turkey and cranberry sandwiches to bring to the neigborhood homeless on Thanksgiving and Christmas. In the late eighties they were everywhere..I took food to the park on 72nd abd Bway and they all were always there every night. Wonderful memories of that and conversations.

When Guliani "cleaned thing up"..many of the homeless moved to hidden locations..still now they live enbedded in the "wall" along the East River, you can see their "houses" if you go to the Upper East River promenade and hang over the edge..they live in nooks in the wall between the FDR and the East River..in the shadow of the Governor's mansion and all up and down the river.
They are deep in the subway tunnels as well, but too hard to get to for most anyone.

My last years there we hiked down to the river shacks with holiday food. I'll never forget those holidays. Profound. Never forget how lucky we are!!!!!

Uh..oh yea..the traditions..
well..as you can imagine since I'm here in LN, I am not up to climbing monster trees..so we have been going for hikes instead and finding ones at ground level.

They are pretty funny sometimes. Real Charlie Brown trees..this year's is a doosey. I'm trying to figure out which branch is the one for the star.

The star is the Sweedish star..Ryan's Farmor (father's mother)..is Sweedish, this is a simple star with and angel baby face in the middle, hand made of wire and tinsel.

I like that one.

What else..oh..my Dad does Santa for the kids, he has since I was little..and on
X-mas eve, when everybody's at home, he sneaks out and gets all costumed up in the basement (I help him now that I know )

..and he goes up on the roof and makes a bunch of noise first, and rings bells and all..for a long while, till everyones sufficiently rialed up..and then he comes in with presents.

This is for the littlest kids, when there's enough of them around. It's amazing to see their faces when they believe it's him.

One year Dad thought it would be better if I did it, one of the older kids was "on to him"..he was making remarks all night about "How come Uncle Chris leaves the room whenever Santas here"

I wasn't so sure ..but went ahead with the thing..got made over in the basement strapping on pillows and all the garb..

Did the whole thing, got the voice down well..ect..and that older boy was classic, he started to say "See, Uncle Chris isn't here!".. and my Dad meandered in ..you should have seen the classic double take action.

But that oldest one sure enough asked Santa why he had a long piece of red hair sticking out under his hat..we fudged it over somehow, but it was a close call..you have to watch out for the older ones.

Kris Kringle was a red head, and the second oldest remembered it from the Christmas claymation movies, and they started debating, leaving me enough time to pull out some loot..and they all forgot about the hair. Whew..

It's fun..this year we may do it for Emily, but we don't have a group of young ones together this time around..

Mo

I just love traditions.

My family always gave presents from each other and parents to kids on Christmas Eve.

My husband's traditon is each kids presents from Santa have to be wrapped in paper just for that kid.

Example all of Dominic's have to be in Power Rangers, all of Hannah's in Princess and Samuel's are all in Spiderman.

So Todd and I have combined together we give our kids their presents and let them give to each other on Christmas Eve and of course Santa has their presents all wrapped like my husband mom...hum Santa did.

And we started our own with a Birthday Cake for Jesus on Christmas morning. We wanted to start bring Christ back into Christmas.

Cootiegirl

I will have to go find some info about the feastday for St. Nicholas. Sounds interestering.

Thanks for all the sweet warm memories you brought up. That is not scarcasam I mean it. I am detirmined to NOT be a grinch this christmas.

PS Yes I knew jews went to the moveies and had chinees food :-) Bergen Beach is a or was a Jewish Italian neighborhoon so I had a lot of jewish friends. Jewish festivals are WAY cooler than christian ones too. Purim is a blast, a seder is awsome and purposful you learn about Moses et al. Every jewish holiday is associated with a particular food too, how cool is that???? Potato(e) pancake anyone???

We didn't have a Christmas tree for many years. Then we moved to our new flat on the 2nd floor with a mezzanine and a friend said that now, with all this open space going up until under the roof we ought to have a giant tree for Christmas.

We found this a very good idea and went to one of the dealers in the street. We choose the biggest, of course - why not, we had space, didn't we? Anyway, it didn't look THAT big. Strange though that the dealer was so enthusiastic. He said he never sold such a big one and helped us to bring it to the car. There we encountered the first problem. We had come with a small Twingo. Fortunately, it had an open roof and hubby and the dealer managed to push it through the opening. It filled the car and was full of snow.

On the way home I had to sit on the back bench while water was dropping on me. People were pointing with their fingers on us and laughed as we passed. It certainly was a strange picture: a tiny car and a huge tree standing in it. We also didn't consider that we had to go under bridges on our way back but the tree was still fresh and elastic, so no problem.

At home we managed to pull the heavy giant out of the car and we started to carry it up to the 2nd floor. At the first bending of the stairs we found out that there was no way getting it around the bend. No problem, we thought. We rang the people downstairs to ask if we could get in their garden and pull the tree with a rope over the balcony in our apartment. They were not there! I started to become a little desperate. Then hubby had the idea of pulling the tree through a little stairway window in the 2nd floor.

We got a rope and started pulling. The tree was surprisingly heavy and we just couldn't do it. I started to hate my friend. Why couldn't she keep her stupid ideas for herself? We rang another neighbour to help pulling - nobody there. So hubby constructed kind of a lever to make it easier and we managed finally to get the tree through the window. Some twigs got hurt as the opening was too small and we had to squeeze the monster. But finally we had it in our apartment. All we had to do still was to clean the fa�ade of the house which had now a green colour where we pulled up the tree.

When the tree was in its stand we cut the net. Slowly it unfolded and grew wider and wider and still wider. We also hadn't considered that a big tree is also big on the bottom. When it was unfolded it touched the couch table. No way to pass. So the table had to go in a corner where it stayed all Christmas. With outstretched legs hubby could touch the tree from the couch. But I must say that everybody who saw it was impressed and probably thought that we suffered from gigantomania.

Needless to say that next year our tree was far more modest.

Gabrielle

That's pretty hysterical .

Sir Sent..

I know the neighborhoods you mentioned ..

There are allot of pocket neighborhoods still standing as they were..in Queens and Williamsberg as well as other parts of Brooklyn..

In and around Williamsberg are some old Italian neighborhoods that may still have the flare similar to what your's used to be like. Wonderful places.

Hey, maybe you should be Santa? If I can do it..you can..