[X] My Assistant

[ustrax]

This is really a topic that has nothing to do with Unmanned Spaceflight, or maybe we can find some links to it...

The question is more to see how we celebrate Christmas to see the differences between our national and local traditions.

Where do you, how do you, with who do you celebrate Christmas?
Any place for space in there?

I'll spend mine at my sister's home (the biggest of all) in Queluz, the city where I lived untill left my parents house, it's an opportunity to review old friends, smells and places, to walk through the palace gardens with my nephews...
The Christmas evening starts in the afternoon when everybody starts gathering, my sister, brother-in-law, nephews, my parents, my b-i-l dad and sister, me, my woman, my dog, my sister's dog...
This year there will be no grandparents, one died in August and the other is in the hospital and not very well and no one could convince my grandmother to gather for Christmas...I hope things get really better for 2007, that's one of my strongest wishes...
We eat a lot, as everyone, before dinner, talk a lot, laugh a lot, discuss a lot (we're latins you know...), watch all the classics, and for dinner the tradition is to eat this great codfish with tons of vegetables and potatoes and egg, all drowned in massive doses of olive oil...
Then the indispensable coffee with digestive and more talk, and more digestive, and more food.
At midnight we go to the church's ceremony in the middle of the cold with the kids protesting and, finally, in the return, we open the presents (there will be some Hawking book for me, and socks too...) and drink and eat and sing some songs...
Now it is time to each return to their houses, to have some sleep to gather again in the morning after with the kids displaying their new toys and clothes.
Everyone smells nice and we visit other relatives to...eat! This time lamb...
That's it...Untill we meet all again for King's Day (January, 6th) to eat King's Cake...
The New Year will be in the North of Portugal, in the Minho region, but that's another story...
Man...I'm hungry!...

[Marz]

Sorry to hear this is your first Christmas without the grandparents, ustrax. Life sure does bring changes.

As a child, we would always gather at my grandparents farm in the middle of Texas. Ususally, my brothers family would be there too. The tradition in the USA is Santa comes during the night on Christmas Eve and places gifts under a decorated tree (for good children, of course). So that night, us kids would have a hard time falling asleep, since we kept waiting to hear some fat man land on the roof in a sleigh.

Early in the morning, the kids would rush to the tree to see what was there, and then wake up everyone to get breakfast over fast! We'd open gifts and fill the house up with noise as the sleepy parents had to begin making the Christmas dinner, which was a roasted turkey and baked ham. That evening, we'd sing carols (badly), and then eat lots of cake and cookies.

As we grew older, my Mom had to be clever hiding the gifts so we wouldn't find them before Christmas morning. She would also label the gifts with each of us having a code name, so we could not tell which gift was ours. So a unique family tradition we had was The Guessing of Names.

My wife's family had a slightly different tradition, where presents were opened on Christmas Eve so that they could attend Mass on Christmas morning, and then come home for the big feast. That is also how my German cousins celebrate; except instead of gifts, you leave your shoes out so Kris Kringle can fill them with chocolate. Their dinner would be fish, except my aunt doesn't like it so now they eat pork roasted in a clay pot called a "romertopf"... which is probably a very old dinner tradition, since the word translates to "roman pot".

Happy Holidays and a wonderful new year to everyone!