Christmas Rituals

Hey everyone!

Sooooo... Remember when I said I'd try to post once or twice a week? Well, turns out I couldn't do that, which now leaves me with less time and more half-finished blog posts than I'd like to have...

But enough about me and my lack of self-discipline. IT IS CHRISTMAS TIME!! YAYYY! :D (Well, technically, it's already over, but let me have this!) Now as we all know, Christmas is celebrated in various extremely different ways all around the world, which kind of figures, since different parts of the world obviously have different cultural backgrounds, etc., etc.... But even within one single country or culture, where the festivities in general are more or less the same, Christmas can be celebrated in several different ways. Each and every family has their own, let's call them rituals, on December 24th and the days following. I've always found it quite interesting to kind of compare Christmas stories with my friends. To find out what rituals or habits we have in common and in what ways my own personal Christmas experiences differ from those of others.

So I figured why not make that into a blog post and tell the lovely people of the web (if there even are any who bother to read my unfortunately rather inactive blog ^^) a little bit about how my family and I usually celebrate Christmas.

When, where, with whom

On Christmas Eve - which, in Austria, is "the actual" day of Christmas - my parents, my siblings and I usually celebrate at my parents' house. It used to be just us, but a couple of years ago my dad's parents came over on the 24th to celebrate with us and it kind of became a tradition (can you call that a tradition?) for them to visit, so now were seven people instead of just five... The more the merrier, eh? ;)

Christmas Day is normally spent at my mum's parents' house together with my uncles, aunts and cousins. If everyone's there we're 15 people, so the tranquil, reflective holiday that is Christmas Day tends to get quite... lively... But it's always good fun and a nice opportunity for the whole family to come together and catch up.

"Christkind"

I am Austrian, so of course it's the "Christkind" who brings our presents. There's no Santa Clause, no "Weihnachtsmann", and no anything else. Go "Christkind" or go home! Us Austrians are pretty strict about that one, I guess... ^^

My parents still like to pretend Christkind exists, even though none of us, not even my eight year old sister, actually believe that anymore. They mostly do that to annoy us. Asking direct questions about who is going to buy/wrap/hide/etc. Christmas presents is an absolute no go, because "What are you talking about? Christkind brings your presents, I don't have anything to do with that! You're going to have to ask Christkind...". Me and my siblings have heard sentences like that out of my smirking parents' mouths more often than I can count. Usually they're followed by an eye-roll, annoyed glares and a lot of begging to "just please give me a serious answer for once"... As exasperating as those conversations might be, they, too, have become a part of our Christmassy rituals over the years. *sigh* ;)

[This isn't really connected to celebrating Christmas itself, but I happened to come across this on YouTube a couple of days ago and found it funny, so here's a video of Christoph Waltz rather aptly, if a bit exaggeratedly, describing the Austrian tradition of "Krampus" on an American talk show: ]

Church

Christmas is obviously a Christian holiday. Which is why it makes sense that for lots of people going to church is a really important part of celebrating Christmas. Personally, I am not that much of a religious person, so church usually isn't part of my Christmas routine. That may seem hypocritical to some people and they might argue that I shouldn't celebrate Christmas at all, if I can't do it in the religious, biblical way, but I'd feel like even more of a hypocrite if I went to church and pretended to believe in everything that's said there just for the sake of Christmas and meeting other people's standards. To me, Christmas is not so much about religion anymore as it is about culture and tradition. I think you don't have to believe in God or Jesus or whatever in order for Christmas to be a nice, happy and festive day spent together with your loved ones. Don't tell my grandparents I said that... ^^

Food

From what I've experienced there seem to be a couple of "typical" Christmas dinners. A lot of the people I know usually eat either fondue or raclette, which I've always found kind of weird, since neither of the two are typically Austrian dishes or strike me as particularly Christmassy... But for some reason they still seem to have established themselves as rather popular dishes for Christmas dinner.

But since me and my family are proper rebels, who don't just go with the flow, we don't have raclette or fondue for Christmas dinner, no, we have decided on a much more creative and luxurious dish. On the 25th of December we eat noodle-soup... Each and every year. I don't know what started the Noodle-Soup Tradition or even when exactly it started, but I suppose it might be because cooking for fifteen people is obviously a bit of a hassle... I'm not sure though, you'd have to ask my grandparents for the exact reason why noodle-soup of all things has become our traditional Christmas dish. Besides the soup there are tons of other things to eat as well - all sorts of snacks, ice cream and, of course, truckloads of homemade Christmas cookies - so after the 25th the whole family usually needs a day or two to just laze around and wait for the food coma to wear off...

Sooooooo, that's everything about my Christmas "rituals" that I can think of right now... If you have any questions, if you'd like to add something, if you agree or disagree with me on something I wrote, feel free to comment and I'll gladly reply!

I hope those of you who celebrate Christmas had a nice one! Enjoy the rest of your holidays! :)