In my family it is traditional to eat "cochinillo asado" (roasted suckling pig) on Christmas Eve. Of course the recipe is a family secret, but this one is close enough: https://www.spain-recipes.com/cochinillo-asado.html

On New Year's Eve, at midnight, we have the silly tradition of eating one grape with each bell strike of the clock (it's supposedly "lucky"). So, 12 grapes eaten at high speed (choking is a serious New Year's hazard). Nobody knows for sure how this started; legend says that around 100 years ago there was an extremely productive grape harvest and the farmers needed some excuse to sell the excess.

Gifts in Spain are traditionally given on January 6th instead of Christmas Day (it's the Three Wise Men who bring them). As with every festivity, there is a traditional food, in this case the "Roscón de Reyes". Here's a bilingual recipee: http://www.vivalanguageservices.co.uk/blog/receta-para-roscon-de-reyes-recipe-for-kings-cake/

My favorite Christmas song is Don't Shoot Me Santa.

Thanks for the giveaway, I'd like to be in and my wishlist is public.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw0D1vu2KeM

Croatian Christmas song
I'm in for giveaway

edit:
Wasn't in particular mood last time I posted this, soo, here's an edit:
Above is lovely Croatian Christmass song, and one I listen every christmass multiple times. It's very pretty & meaningful.

Traditional seasonal cakes are fritule - mini berliners...

Christmas is celebrated in many places here, though not always in a manner similar to Europe or the Americas.

Larger metropolises, with major Churches or cathedrals and popular festivals on streets offer more in terms of Christmas celebrations. In smalltowns, we mostly watch broadcasts of such celebrations on televisions and many visit the local churches. And also Christmas themed movies on TV.

One of the most popular aspect of the festival around here, however, are the cakes. Christmas cakes are hugely popular and the storeshelfs start to overflow with various types of cakes, though those with dry fruits are most popular. In recent years cake mixing events have also started to take place in larger cities.

Also, I like to eat fruit cake with ice cream.

Merry Christmas in advance!!

[since I have no recipe or song to share, I guess I will not enter the GA]

I haven't discussed that with skimmie yet, so this is just my personal opinion:

While I generally like the idea, it would make it much harder for us to manage the thread and the giveaway. We already have quite a number of gifts in stock and if more people would start giving away stuff on their own, it would make it next to impossible to keep track of who already got what. And in the end I wouldn't like it, if some people would get several gifts while other people get nothing.

If you really want to give things away, you could of course send the codes to skimmie or me and we could use them for the giveaway as well (and tell the people that they were donated by you).

Great festive giveaway! I'd like to be in for the giveaway.

Favorite Song : Silver Bells (Bing Crosby)

Favorite Recipe : Swedish "Pepparkakor" (Ginger Snaps) (It's actually all about the Cardamom)

Everything else is a traditional British Christmas, ie, you take the sprouts, boil them on high and if you can still count them they're not done enough yet... ;-)

dont have much of a christmas tradition anymore, getting a bit old in the tooth but if we do put up a tree hubby and me would occasionally decorate it in different ways, one of my favorites is to put only stuffed animals on it or weird non xmassy stuff. Like model microbs and pathogens (from his work), or collectible figurines. lol one thing we do every year or rather I do while he sits his lazy arse on the couch like a lord is to make a nice dinner. Ive cut out the fancy china and presentation but the feast is still made. I have to make him his sweet potato casserole or im in for it. :P



sweet potato casserole:

bake at 400 degrees 5-6 large sweet potatos in their skins till soft and caramelized. let cool and hand peel, mash in a bowl.

add to the mash: splash of Orange Juice, dollup of butter, squirt of vanilla, pinch of salt, shake of pumpkin pie spice. mix well and scoop into a baking dish.

make the topping:

in bowl mix handful of quick oats, shake of flour, generous sprinkle of cinnamon, drizzle of maple syrup, salt, handful of pecans, handful of walnuts, good handful of brown sugar, squares of softened but not melted butter. hand mix together into a crumble and then put the whole mess on top of the potato mash. level.

top the whole thing with marshmallows. bake in oven at 375-400 till the marshmallows are caramelized and the mash is bubbly.

take out and enjoy. pretend its not pie as you serve it as a side dish with regular holiday dinner.


In for pressies! have a wonderful holiday yourselves and dont stress, cheers!

Edit: NOT in.

My wife's family is 1st-gen Mexican, and Tamales are a big deal this time of year. Super labor-intensive and it's normally a family affair that takes the better part of a day.

But we don't do that at our place. Haha - sorry dear! Usually make Enchiladas instead.

And for us, the season brings a very easy dish: cranberry relish. About the easiest thing to make, assuming you have access to a food grinder:

12-16 oz of fresh cranberries
1 orange, peel on, cut into 8 wedges
1 apple, cored, cut into wedges.
1/2 C - 3/4 C sugar

Run the fruit through the grinder, add sugar, stir, chill.

If you like tart combined with sweet, this is an easy way to scratch that itch. Goes great with graham crackers. Good as a topping for vanilla ice cream, too.

Drinks-wise, Brandy-7 is big here in winter. Tom and Jerrys sometimes make an appearance, too: brandy, run, hot milk, and spices. Something like that. I'm not into frothy / foamy drinks but lots of others enjoy them around Christmas time.

Well, here in my town we sing these "villancicos" (xmas carols).
I still love that chirping bird sound they do, with a special whistle :D

Here a small selection:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPha9ynbBBQ

I hope you also can enjoy them ;-)

Just when I was wondering where did PaterAlf's holidays avatar giveaway get lost this year, BAM! :D

Thanks PaterAlf and skimmie for spreading good cheer this Holidays season! :)

As for the Christmas songs, I don't really have a favorite one but like them very much in general. I like unusual things and a song called Christmas Island by Bob Dylan is pretty different and original. Unfortunately good ol' Bob don't like to share his stuff on YouTube so here is a link to some dude who is doing his best to cover for him.

No Christmas dinner can pass without the delicious Sarma. Here's the recipe. And the general rule is your Mom's/Grandmom's Sarma is the best Sarma in the whole world. :D

The optional giveaway is a nice touch and I'll say I'm in but in one condition. If one of you nice champs decide to visit my Christmas stocking please do so before the 11th of December or after 25th of December due to (all) Secret Santa event(s) going on between those dates. If that isn't the option I'll just be happy for other people's stocking getting something while I give this nice thread an occasional visit. ;)

I'm fairly sure I post this every year, but there is only one Christmas song for me;

Fairytale of New York - The Pogues & Kirsty McColl

While I do enjoy a number of other Christmas songs its one of the few that actually stands out as a brilliant song, I'd listen to it any time of the year.
It's just beautiful.


As for traditions, most of me and my partner's revolve around food.
We spend Christmas Eve cooking, preparing all the stuff for Christmas day (veggies, stuffing, batter for Yorkshire puds) and cooking a ham (and the turkey itself these days, we just do a smaller turkey breast on Christmas day as it's far easier).
There are other little things we do, every year we buy one new bauble / ornament; something really nice (or funny or unusual). We've got a little box with them all in and they get pride of place on the tree.

Thanks to the both of you for a lovely event!

Christmas means very little to me personally, though it's a traditional event of being together with family; one of the few remaining moments where the world slows down a bit. When I manage to look past the "forced nature" of it, and just get to enjoy that being together and taking the time for reflection, I am quite appreciative of it all.

So my favourite song for this season is probably Vienna Teng's Atheist Christmas Carol (a "working title" which became the official title for the song on the advice of a Christian record producer who knew what would sell *g*). Vienna Teng is an amazing piano player and singer-songwriter. Her latest albums have tended to be a bit too produced for my personal taste (though I can respect what she's doing), but I always love returning to the... purity of her early songs, when it's just her voice and her piano.

And yes, I guess I'm in for a potential surprise. :) Hah, that's amazing! Nice to see such culinary cross-pollination between the Netherlands and Indonesia, as at least one positive outcome of a dark era of colonialism. (In the other direction, satay is an Indonesian influence which you'll find everywhere here, though it doesn't have any link to xmas or any other holiday for us. (But then, neither do kaasstengels. *g*))

Fairfox is running such a giveaway this year.

Thanks everyone for your contributions so far! I'm getting all christmas-y just reading this thread :)

I fully agree with PaterAlf here. While I appreciate your generous gesture (and I'm sure many other forum members will), it'll make it extremely difficult for us to manage this thread. Plus, I'd like to keep track of a 'fair share' of gifting here (a bit of joy for as many people as possible, you see). So, please either donate them to us (and we'll pass on to the recipients who get them that they came form you), or use one of the existing gifting threads (or start your own - the more the better, methinks :)

Don't really celebrate Christmas -although my birthday is on Boxing day- and there aren't really Christmas celebrations here, although in recent years stores have started selling artificial christmas trees and Santa Claus ornaments, I guess commercialism succeeds anywhere in the world.
Conveniently enough, however, the country's founder was born on Christmas day, so everyone gets a chance to celebrate, and the country's small Christian population can also not feel left out. Usually public buildings are lit up (like the Prime Minister's Secretariat and parks, as well as of course churches. There are christmas parades in some of the more historical cities as well.

Again, I don't really celebrate Christmas myself, but on occasions where I have been invited to some party, I usually take along some homemade fudge. People tell me I make excellent fudge, but I think that's just an excuse to not make it themselves, because the making of fudge is an incredibly simple thing- I boil some cream (usually around 500ml or less) along with the slightly less than the same amount of sugar, until it gets thick and brown, at which point I add a few drops of vanilla extract (sometimes, I personally prefer plain fudge), and cool it in a tray overnight- a delicious and incredibly unhealthy sweet-dish that's totally unrelated to local traditions, which have their own variety of incredibly unhealthy but delicious winter sweet dishes.

As for my two favourite Christmas songs, both have already been mentioned- O Tannenbaum, although I personally like the tune on its own without the lyrics, and A Fairytale of New York. Not really Christmas related, but me and my friend often harass my other friends by bawling it out randomly, with her doing the vocals for MacGowan, and me doing them for Kirsty MacColl :D.

Often on Christmas night (the night of the 25th, not Christmas eve), I invite my friends over for my birthday, where we celebrate with a bonfire, with music, and my beetroot/carrot soup and home-cooked fake-chinese food. Neither a local tradition, nor a particularly Christmassy one.

I'd like to be in for the giveaway as well, and Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it!

This is wonderful!

I have read through the first page of posts and listened to all the songs. I will read through more in time. Good memories, and good music!

I grew up listening to a Nat King Cole Christmas album. O Holy Night is my favorite Christmas song. And to hear Nat King Cole sing it practically breaks the bank in terms of nostalgia feelings for me. I have been known to belt this out during the season.

Courtesy of my dad's mom, we have a family traditional food. Called Kelly Holiday Salad, this is actually a fruit and marshmallow cream sauce diabetic attack in a bowl! It must be prepared two days in advance. It takes a whole family to put it together. The instructions are very precise. There's the particular kind of canned cherries that my dad searches high and low for every year. Sometimes he has to import them! And then there is the cutting of all ingredients into the right size. We actually cut marshmallows with scissors into quarters! Why, you may ask, don't you just get the little marshmallows that are already the right size? I'll tell you. The little marshmallows have a much higher ratio of powdered sugar due to them being powdered all the way around. Whereas a big marshmallow cut into quarters is only powdered on the outside of the big marshmallow. (I could explain better but I would need to use geometry.) Then you make the custard, using eggs, cream, and - baffling to all of us - ground mustard. Then you stir themixture all together and let it "mellow" in the fridge for two days. Christmas morning, you eat bowls of it until you are all sick and bursting!

Marvelous. Good times.

Since I have started my family, my parents have come to live with us, and some of my wife's family have moved down to near where we live. So we are fast becoming the gathering point for big holidays. This is nice for us with so many kids, since it means less traveling for us. It is also wonderful for my wife, who loves hosting company for meals and celbrations. I kinda like it because it means I get to do some things my own way - play the music I like, have some of the foods I like best, sneak off to my computer when the crowds overwhelm me... and sleep in my own bed at night!

I love Christmas very much.

I would like to be in for the giveaway, please.

Best of wishes to all of you!