This post by Jennifer Flaten
Merry Christmas Eve. I hope you and your loved ones are spending the day together making memories.
Last Sunday my husband and the kids spent some time making chocolate covered pretzel rods. I stayed out of their way, reading in the living room (so really it was an early gift to me). It was fun to hear them in there having fun and making a mess (and yes, they cleaned up their own mess).
Those pretzel rods served as snacks all week and the few remaining will appear at our Christmas Feast.
Yes, that is the official name of our Christmas Eve meal. It started several years ago when the kids we small. We have always kept Christmas eve just for us, mostly because my husband works retail and after dealing with the holiday rush and working on Christmas eve all he really wants is to come home and relax.
On the eve the kids are just so excited that they simply don’t want to sit still for a meal, so I decided that as a Christmas gift to myself I would serve a buffet of snacks and nibbles for our Christmas Eve meal.
The meal is simple and requires no cooking or baking, in fact I don’t even heat anything up. It is a variety of stuff that everyone (I’m looking at your picky eaters) would eat.
Now, that first meal seemed pretty simple to me, yes we do treat ourselves to shrimp and smoked salmon, but everything else is pretty basic cheese, crackers, and a veggie plate, but to the kids it was a FEAST. And, so it was renamed our Christmas feast.
The meal is eaten on paper plates, in the living room while watching A Muppet Christmas Carol. For me, every year, without fail, it is the best Christmas Ever.
What are your favorite traditions?
Writing Wranglers and Warriors 
I like how families like yours make their own traditions. And yours sound like good ones. I feel for your husband having to work retail. Back in the 1980s when I was a copy editor at a Florida newspaper, I was one of a skeleton crew who worked part of Christmas day putting out the newspaper. I was single and did it so my married co-workers could have Christmas with their families.
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Nice post Jennifer. You’ve definitely got the right idea. Kids remember traditions like your Christmas Feast long after memories of outgrown toys have passed. Our tradition has always been to celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. It started when we were kids and my father always got called in to work because we usually had a deluge of snow. At the time he was one of two people trained to run something called a Snow-Go in Michigan and one machine pretty much worked wherever the snow was the worst. We’ve kept the tradition alive all these years and to our family Christmas Day is a time for worship, family and relaxing. Merry Christmas!
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What a wonderful, relaxed way to just enjoy each other. Wishing you many more years of great memories. Doris
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Delightful post, Jennifer! Thanks for sharing your traditions … and giving me some ideas for future Christmases! Hope your holiday is merry and bright for you and your family!
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I enjoy your blogs sharing the uniqueness of your family’s activities. You are so creative. That sounds perfectly wonderful. Our tradition before I married someone who couldn’t stand the stuff, was to eat oyster stew on Christmas eve. We opened presents on Christmas morning then had lutefisk, lefsa, swedish meatballs and romegrot (a truly Norwegian meal) for noon with lots of relatives invited. We still have all the Norwegian foods, I may have oyster stew alone or with my oldest daughter if she’s around, and we open presents when we can. Being a Nurse, I worked many Christmas eves and days.
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We have out oyster stew on Christmas day in the evening. Luckily for those of us who can’t stand it, there’s also chili.
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Yum. Oyster stew sounds wonderful. I love oysters but have never had oyster stew.
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I can’t stand them! I’ll eat clam chowder by the gallon, but just the thought of oyster stew makes me queasy.
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What a fun family tradition! For me, it’s not completely Christmas without two things–the A Cappella Christmas concert at my school (I mentioned it in my post on Christmas day) and the Christmas Eve service at my church. I enjoy everything about the concert, but the procession in which they sing “O Come O Come Emmanuel” is just so hauntingly beautiful that it may be my favorite song ever. And Christmas Eve service, which ends with the entire sanctuary bathed in candlelight as we sing “Silent Night” just really puts a the whole holiday in perspective. And it’s my chance to say Merry Christmas to my church family.
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Sounds wonderful, Joe. Blessings to you too. Cher’ley
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Jennifer, thank you so much for taking the time out of your Christmas Eve to post if. I always get a blessing from reading your post about your family your kids are so wonderful and talented and they take after their parents I love you and hope your Christmas is wonderful. Cher’ley
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A Christmas Eve tradition for me has always been to open one gift on Christmas Eve.
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We don’t tend to do anything special in the eating department on Christmas Eve. Sometimes that’s because the food preparations for a Christmas Day get together are still happening so the evening meal is simple on Christmas eve.
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Sounds like a wonderful tradition the kids will remember and probably repeat with their children some day. Hope you and your family had a wonderful Christmas.
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