Casual Conversation

Lately we’ve ended up as the Christmas hosts for my side of the family. The day before everyone shows up, my kid and I make koláče - poppy seed filling for my brother, apricot for everyone else. Then we make my grandma’s cranberry fluff recipe to have with Christmas dinner. Once everyone’s over on Christmas Eve, we watch the Garfield Christmas special. We watch other Christmas shows and movies throughout December, but Christmas Eve is always Garfield.

With just my immediate family, after Thanksgiving we start Christmas baking and decorating. Sugar cookies, my grandma’s ginger cookies, and chex mix every year, plus the last few years my kid has asked for date pinewheel cookies too.

We always cut down a tree in the forest - the forest manager makes a map of which parts of the public forest they want the firs and spruce thinned out, so it’s like free forest management. After Christmas we put the tree out by our chickens, who enjoy sitting on and under it.

My mom’s side of the family gets together the weekend after Christmas, but most of us cousins don’t make it back. I miss us all starting up late talking and playing Uno, and everyone crammed into one house. Even when we do get together now we stay more spread out at hotels and such. It’s just not the same, but there are more people since there are spouses and kids in the mix now too. We don’t all fit in my grandparents’ house any more.

None currently.

My dad's side of the family hasn't done anything together regularly in decades, it's always more ad hoc.

My mom's side, after my grandparents died, fell apart as far as holidays go. Instead of everyone within driving distance (and sometimes further away) getting together at my grandparents' house and just enjoying the time, it got split up. Pretty much each of the families of the grandkids does their own thing now, and there's no real communication about holidays (we still talk and see each other, just not for this). The more distant relatives do their thing as wel. Sometimes, someone will send invites for something, and people will show up in smaller numbers. But it's never on the actual holidays and it's always obvious that it's not on the honeys holidays so that they can do things separate as well.

Not that that's a bad thing, but it feels different.

So, there are no traditions at this point. My household gets together with my sister's household pretty much to exchange gifts, and that's it. It isn't even anything special, it's just swap whatever, talk during the process, and then it's over because the only one that doesn't remember what it used to be like is my kid, because they were adopted after both my grandparents died, and weren't around at all when my grandfather was still alive. They end up visiting their biological grandparents either during, or right after, Christmas anyway, so even after I adopted them officially, there hasn't been much time to build new traditions.

It's fucking weird to be 50 and have those traditions just gone. Like, how we'd show up with hand made cards. That was a thing we did on my mom's side. Not just the kids, it was adults too, though the folks with no willingness to draw or whatever typically just wrote a nice note. We tried that, and it fell flat. It just doesn't work when there's not even a dozen people there.

I tried hosting a hotdog dinner on the 23rd, because that's what we used to do on Christmas eve, it would just be thirty to sixty people crammed into what was normally a slightly too big house, just shooting the shit, exchanging cards, and eating the dogs with our family toppings ( a family recipe chili sauce, home made chowchow, with fine chopped onions and slaw as options along with condiments), plus the usual snack options, with each household or person having their specialty.

I figured if we did it on the 23rd, it might work. Total fail boat.

Christmas day was the more sit down dinner day, plus santa and any gifts, though most of the crowd would have gone back home the night before, the most distant relatives. But it would still be two tables of people just hip to hip.

One of my cousins tried hosting that, and actually has a bigger house with an even bigger table, and it was still a fail because not even all of the 1st cousins showed up, much less the others. Her husband's family didn't show up because even though they were specifically invited, it wasn't what they usually did, so it fell flat across the board.

The closest thing I have to a tradition now is being sad and trying to not let it fuck anything up tbh. But I keep trying new things, I haven't given up. It just hasn't worked.

Everyone gets together to make lussekatter the first day off from school.

Christmas eve parents hide the pickle ornament on the tree. Christmas morning the kid who finds the pickle gets to open the first present.

Record video of kids opening presents, they love rewatching them years later.

We (my family) mostly stick to the local traditions. Both Christmas and New Year's Eve dinners got to have a potato-mayo salad, a fancier salad with dressing, some rice, another carb, one or two meats. Ah, and my fake tiramisù, folks love it. Drinks are generally beer or wine for the dinner, beer or sangria for the lunch (summer heat restricts it a bit), with either non-alcoholic cider or soda for my nephew.

I often prepare newer-ish dishes but always filling that template that I mentioned above. Moroccan couscous, for example. Never restricted by cuisine because that gets messy. This year I'm going to tweak Ur's palace cake to serve it as dessert alongside the tiramisù, my sister loves those cheese-based sweets.

New Year's Eve got to have sparkling wine. And rice with raisins for the folks here.

Typically we share gifts but we won't do it this Christmas, because we gifted ourselves with a family weekend in a city 600km from here.