For me, the day of Christmas Eve is a cook and prep day. The more I can get done today, the more I’ll enjoy tomorrow.
Christmas Eve is the time to gather in the living room, read The Night Before Christmas or the Christmas story, and force the kids to drink eggnog. Yep, that’s right. I said “force.” No matter what recipe I try, they hate eggnog. Even if I add in a candy cane. Even if, now that they’re older, I add a bit of alcohol. They hate eggnog. But, hey, it’s a Ginger tradition. We have eggnog. They complain and leave their glasses for Dad to drink.
Last year, I gave up. No eggnog. No complaining.
I was wrong. They then complained that there was no eggnog to complain about. Turns out they hate eggnog, but look forward to the tradition of complaining about said eggnog.
Do you have Christmas Eve traditions?
That's funny!
ReplyDeleteOur tradition is a dinner of tasty snacks (so there's no cooking) and watching The Muppet Christmas Carol. We also exchange one gift tonight and open the rest tomorrow.
Merry Christmas to you, Helen! And you just keep on serving that eggnog.
LOL, hey - don't EVER stop with the egg nog! And yes, The Old Silly has a Christmas Eve tradition. It's called "last minute shopping" - I did a whole post about it today on my blog. It's a guy thang. (wink)
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas, Helen!
Marvin D Wilson
Merry Christmas to you both, Diane and Marvin and to your families as well.
ReplyDeleteDiane, I love the idea of tasty snacks. Now, if only I had some!
Helen
Straight From Hel
My wife and I both love egg nog. We always serve it at Thanksgiving with a spot of brandy.
ReplyDeleteWe don't seem to have established any Christmas traditions except for travelling. Family members are so scattered that it's difficult to get everyone together at the same place and time. Tonight, Christmas eve, we'll be breaking up our travels to stay in a hotel in Richmond, VA and most of tomorrow we'll be driving to East Tennessee.
Merry Christmas!
Lee
My usual Christmas Eve tradition is to run around in a panic buying ANYTHING that is available for Xmas presents!
ReplyDeleteI'm good at that!
Have a happy holiday, Merry Xmas and a kick-botton New Year, Helen.
We've always mixed it up. Never know what we'll be doing until the night of.
ReplyDeleteHave a Merry Christmas!
My mother gives us all pajamas that my husband and father then funnily (as if they've never done it before) put on over their clothing and profess grand excitement over. We put out the cookies and letters to Santa and prepare everything for my small children to wake with bright eyes early in the morning. We try to attend the candlelight service at 11pm, but it's not always possible with the young kids, so we'll see.
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas! Hope you have plenty of eggnog complaints to cheer your evening!
Michele
SouthernCityMysteries
Since it's usually just the 3 of us, we used to always go to a holiday movie on Christmas Eve. Now, our son thinks he's too old for those. :(
ReplyDeleteWe have a very similar tradition (of complaining & loving it) with my mom's fruit cake. *shudder* :)
ReplyDeleteI'm taking a quick break from baking, cooking & prep work too. Enjoy a wonderful Christmas!
It might be a UK thing but brussels sprouts are the Xmas bugbear here. Almost nobody likes them but you can't have Xmas Dinner unless you get a spoonful or two on your plate.
ReplyDeleteI kinda like them, but I'll eat anything.
Eggnog? I know the term. Heard it forever on TV and Film. No idea what it is. Okay, so there are probably eggs in it... but nogs?
Like you, I try to get it all done ahead of time. To that end, there's a cherry pie and an apple pie cooling on the stove. The creamed onions are chilling in the fridge and will have a warm up tomorrow. The bean casserole is ready for the oven tool. The garlic cheese bread just needs a short stint under the broiler at tonight's celebration at my husband's brother's house...and the fudge sauce is all set for dessert. Christmas Eve tradition? The best. Early church and then up the path next door to the brother-in-laws, yummy dinner, yankees swap and fun.
ReplyDeleteAnton, I think the nogs is the alcohol. I can tolerate brussels sprouts, but don't often eat them, so Christmas Eve seems like a good time to cook them.
ReplyDeleteMichele, I love the pj idea. What fun!
Bermudaonion, maybe this year everyone is the right age for Avatar?
Lee, be careful driving. I almost made plans to drive to east Tennessee, too, but worried about the snow and ice. I have no experience in driving in it since we don't get it much in central Texas.
Paul, you are just like my husband who at this moment is hitting stores.
Jemi, I miss fruit cake! My mother used to send us one.
Liza, we have quite a few Yankees around here. What do you swap them for? Floridians?
ReplyDeleteThis year we're doing everything completely different because we just came back into town this morning.
ReplyDeleteBut we'll be sure to put out some milk and cookies for Santa! :)
Elizabeth
Mystery Writing is Murder
Had to laugh about your egg nog. Kids are amazing. Need I say more?
ReplyDeleteAs for traditions. A long time ago we started having a big dinner on Christmas Eve and since most of our kids don't like the traditional dinner fare, we decided to have lasagna. Hubby makes the most amazing sauce, and my lasagna rivals any Italians. LOL
Some of my kids and I were in a church choir that did music at Christmas Eve services, so we would go to do that, then come home for the nice dinner. After dinner we would open one gift.
We've continued that tradition through the years, although this year we will do the lasagna tomorrow. Nobody could get together tonight, so we are all gathering tomorrow and will pretend it is Christmas Eve. LOL
I, like you Helen, am racing around baking and cleaning and occasionally popping over to a favorite blog.
ReplyDeleteYour post reminded me of a friend whose daughter spent every Christmas eve looking up the chimney for Santa. Until the daughter turned 10 and Mom realized that she was only "looking" from tradition!
Oooh, traditions! I'm rushing about, as well, baking, reminding myself to savor and enjoy.
ReplyDeleteWith our daughter starting her own Christmas traditions, and no other visitors this year, I nearly forgot OUR annual ritual of watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Always makes me cry, because I always remember how much my late father enjoyed it when it first debuted on TV.
Merry Christmas to all! May your hearts grow even larger.
Merry Christmas, Helen! Hope you find time to relax and enjoy the day.
ReplyDeleteIt's almost 8 p.m. here and I'm about to sit and have a mug of Buttered Rum, made from my recipe. We'll see how it tastes.
ReplyDeleteHappy Christmas Eve to one and all.
Why does your eggnog story sound so familiar. Are all families cast from the same mould?
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas, Helen.
Haha, that's awesome.
ReplyDeleteI grew up with the Christmas Eve eggnog tradition. Sadly, my husband isn't a huge fan and I forgot to put it on the shopping list. Not worth running out in the freak snow we got down here today.
Tomorrow is our big dinner, today we did cookies and we opened one present. My (awesome) in-laws got us a GPS. :D
Merry Christmas!
Ooh, GPS is great. I've been thinking about getting an app for my iPhone, but wonder how much I'd actually use it.
ReplyDeleteWe opened one present, too. My son chose since he knew what it was - a DVD, so we then watched Star Trek.
There are people out there that don't like egg nog? Crazy!
ReplyDeleteEvery Christmas Eve, we make a point to read "The Night Before Christmas" and let the kid open one present. On Christmas Day, we always take a winter walk in the afternoon. This year, we are eating no traditional foods--we're having a "White Trash Christmas" and trying our hands at 1960's-era casseroles!
Have a beautiful Christmas, Helen! And if you'd like to become a brussels sprouts convert (my favorite veg!), try the recipe I just posted on my blog this week! Yummmm.
My tradition is to plan to get everything finished by 8 or 9 pm on Christmas eve... But every year I'd be up at 2 am frantically wrapping presents while Midnight Mass from St Peters was on the TV. So much for plans. My uncle hated those "little cabbages" but I swear my mom made them every Xmas just to needle him. (He was her older brother.) I'm addicted to egg nog, even non-alcoholic. It was the first recipe I ever made by myself...one morning, before school. The recipe called for 12 eggs. Luckily I knew that was probably too many. (I was in 5th grade). Love Winnie's idea of 60's casseroles, I've got scads of them in my recipe file!
ReplyDeleteYour eggnog made me LOL
ReplyDeleteWe started- years ago- to have a candlelight dinner on Christmas eve. Believe it was a desperate attempt to quiet down 2 rambunctious boys. The tradition continued however. This year I had to work on Thursday. When I came home I found my 2 teenage boys (and their friends) had the table set w tablecloth, linen napkins, best china and candles. Salad made. Dad was making pasta and all I had to do was slide into my chair and be grateful
I make eggnog using equal parts of custard, cream and navy rum.
ReplyDeleteNobody else likes it, leaving more for me!