Every Christmas Eve, for the past few years, my family and I have gotten together in our holiday pajamas to watch The Sound of Music. This new tradition started a couple of years before an older tradition of all the extended family having Christmas day dinner at my grandparents’ came to an end. The pandemic saw many families alter or completely change traditions for a little while, some even found better ways to celebrate the holidays. With this holiday season being the closest to normal in a while, I decided to learn more about what my friends and peers do to celebrate the holiday season.
1. On Christmas Eve, a rice porridge similar to rice pudding is prepared with brown sugar and cinnamon. The porridge is paired with open-faced sandwiches. Hidden inside the batch of porridge is an almond and whoever finds it in their bowl, wins a marzipan pig.
2. Every Christmas, the family begins having dinner with paper crackers filled with goodies. When two people on either end of the cracker pull the ends, whoever gets the longest string wins a small prize and a paper crown as well as a joke or riddle. They also have a cookie-making tradition. Only in the month of December will the “Christmas Cookie Binder” be pulled out. The binder is filled with recipes their grandmother collected from magazines for over 50 years before she passed away and left the hefty binder to their mother. Every year, a selection of cookies is made from the binder and given out to family friends who get to guess which recipes they have been given that year.
3. Following Canadian Tire’s promotional efforts in Toronto on Inglewood Drive, the family has visited the event every year. This promotion began with the company giving each house on the street an inflatable Santa. Now when the holidays arrive, the street is renamed Kringlewood and lined with many inflatable Santas and other holiday decors.
4. An Eastern Orthodox tradition includes vasilopita or poopche, as many Macedonian grandmas call it. The family, in this case, the grandma, will prepare traditional bread with enough loaves for all the nuclear families within the extended family. Within these loaves are segments with enough for each member of the nuclear family, plus one to represent the house. A cleaned quarter is wrapped in tin foil and baked inside one of the segments. On New Year’s Day, each member of the household picks a segment as their own, starting with the youngest, and everyone dives into the bread to see if they have the quarter. Whoever has it is supposed to have luck for the whole year. The housing segment represents a lucky and sturdy structure as well as luck for all the residents.
5. When the family gets together for their Christmas dinner, gifts are opened from youngest to oldest. Each family member has their turn opening all their gifts as everyone gets to watch their reactions. This can take quite a while with their family of more than 20 people exchanging gifts.
6. A pickle has been hidden in their tree for as long as they can remember and possibly even before they were born. The family owns a set of German glass vegetable ornaments which includes a pickle that when found on the tree, indicates the winner. The family also has meat pies and opens one gift each on Christmas Eve.
7. Every year, the family would get new holiday pajamas and wait until midnight on December 25th to open one present. The following morning, stockings are always opened first.
Hopefully, these holiday traditions inspire you to learn more about how other families celebrate the holidays. There is also no reason why you can’t start your own traditions to be continued for many years to follow. My sister and I have made tobogganing at night on the first real snowfall a tradition of our own. These shared traditions have helped me reflect on the fact that holidays take on a different form for everyone and we should celebrate these diverse histories. The spirit of the season is truly derived from spending time with those you care about, and I hope these shared traditions inspire you to start some of your own with those who matter to you.