What are your Christmas and New Year's traditions?

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In Peru we typically stay awake until the wee hours of the morning. The day is casual, most people spend it cooking and shopping for last minute gifts. We eat dinner late, around 10 PM and it usually consists of a turkey that has been marinating in red wine all night along with potatoes, rice, salad, Paneton and hot chocolate. By the time we're stuffed and happy midnight rolls around. Since Christmas falls during the summer in Peru the kids are outside playing with each other, people light fireworks and we go to the neighbors house with a bottle of apple cider to wish them a Merry Christmas. Then... when all that is said and done around 1am, the young people go clubbing until 6 in the morning and spend Christmas day sleeping. I miss that!

Now that we're in the U.S. and it's freezing cold we have dinner at home and stay up late to open one present each. We open the rest in the morning and then head over to a family member's house for ham, stuffing, candied yams and lots of dessert. Of course, I still have to buy my Paneton and share it with my princess.

What are your traditions?

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Permalink Reply by Mary on October 15, 2008 at 7:28am: Oh my goodness! Tamales and Buñuelos from scratch??? Teach me! Teach me!

•Betty• said:
I like the hat on the tree! very cute!
My mom cooks Thanksgiving dinner & my husband cooks Christmas dinner so everyone ends up coming over to our house. My husband likes to experiment with the main dish every year, never the same. The one thing he does keep the same is that he makes tamales every year right before New Years. He makes everything from scratch, and he makes a production line out of my son & myself. LOL! My mom & grandparents make tamales for Christmas, so I eat tamales like there is no tomorrow during this time of year. My mom & grandparents also make Champurrado (Chocolate Atole), Arroz Dulce (Rice Sweet) y Buñuelos! I love it! Can't wait for all the yummy food! but aside from the food, we open presents in the morning, and then when everyone comes over when open some more again.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Crisangwich on October 16, 2008 at 8:56am: We celebrate Christmas on the 24th...with tamales. Yum! Christmas day is a day to rest for us.

For New Year's Eve, we get together and my mom makes Menudo...and lots of other good foods.

A few days ago, my little boy ate his first tamale...and he loved it! I was so proud!

Christina; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Gaby on October 16, 2008 at 1:57pm: We also celebrate Christmas on the 24th with tamales. My mom has 9 brothers and sister who all live nearby. So it's a lot of people that get together every year. We open gifts at midnight, but lately the younger kids have been getting their way and starting around 11pm. Christmas day is spent with individual families and visiting in-laws.

New years is pretty crazy. We live in Pasadena, so for as long as I can remember we have been camping out on Colorado Blvd. saving our spot for the Rose Parade. But with a 5 month old, I think we'll be skipping the camp out this year. On the 1st after the parade, my mom makes menudo for all the sleep deprived campers. Then we watch football and pass out!

Gaby; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mary on October 27, 2008 at 10:22am: We spend Thanksgiving at our parents and eat turkey for several days after :-) We also decorate for Xmas on this day.
For Xmas we make a big party and share tons of food, each of us cooks something special and then brag about it. I always bring the panforte! Our pride and joy is the setting of a Nativity scene in plaster and the youngest member of the family do the honor at midnight of placing baby Jesus on the manger. From December 24th to New Years day we keep a candle alight, it is supposed to be a log but b/c in PR chimneys are not necessary we only burn a candle. We place the xmas socks near the xmas tree so Befana (santa's wife) fills them with small toys! We also drive around to see other people's xmas decorations and depending on where we are living at that moment we might even celebrate three Kings day.

We also drink tons of hot chocolate with ball yellow cheese; ▶ Reply to This