What unusual just-your-family Christmas traditions do you have?

I'll start with some of ours...

My son's birthday is the 15th December (although he was due on the 24th). He's decided that we shouldn't get getting ready for Christmas before his birthday. We're allowed a "Birthday Tree" and to put up "Birthday Decorations" of course, but that's what they're to be called until 16th December.

When we moved into our house - about 6 years ago - we were handed some 4ft inflatable aliens and told that it was a tradition that had been going on for the last 30 years that the newest family in the street (of only 3 houses) get the aliens and displays them with their Christmas decorations.

I don't think we were being pranked. I cant find any photos unfortunately. We displayed them proudly until last year when we got new neighbours and handed them on. 

Fred27 said:

Anything that just you do and nobody else?

I'm not sure what everyone else does these days so it's a bit difficult to answer that

Decades ago my parents used to have the traditional Xmas Dinner on the day before so as to allow those doing the cooking to have more free time on Xmas Day itself. The dinner on Xmas Day was something quick to prepare using left-overs from the previous day's traditional turkey dinner.

These days I tend to go into 'winter hibernation' (sleeping bear  do not disturb until January...) and just get stuck into some courses or projects. I might put on TSO's 'The Ghosts of Christmas Eve' music video whilst having dinner (which will be something fairly light and tasty but definitely non-traditional).

I tend to avoid the broadcast TV stuff and usually have some box sets of older comedy DVDs on standby. However the 2020 movie 'Lost at Christmas' (trailer) recently made it onto the acceptable holiday viewing list

Fred27 said:

I don't think we were being pranked.

Sounds like a missed opportunity to attach 'lasers' and 'target' the neighbours in some form with an interactive light show.

'Lost at Christmas' looks like just my wife's sort of film. It might be useful to gain a few points lost by all those Korean zombie films and Sci-fi I've made her watch. 

Fred27 said:

looks like just my wife's sort of film

It looks like it's made a few more broadcast slots this year:

BBC 1 on the 11th, BBC3 on the 16th and BBC Scotland on the 23rd.

We still do all the usual things - tree, stockings, gifts after a big brunch, turkey dinner etc. but it is toned down a lot from when the kids were little. The main thing now is the dinner. The tree is up already, but not decorated yet. Christmas phone calls and video conferences are sometimes a thing, depending on where everybody is.

I take the last week of December off and it has now become a main time to work on electronics projects - in between family gatherings. This year I have a backlog of half a dozen projects to finish up. Including a road test, a design challenge and a Project14.

I'm starting to wonder if it's just my family that a bit weird. We've also had Christmas at Easter a couple of times. It's a long story.

It was all due to the time we first hosted a big family Christmas gathering at our house. My wife's family (a total of 14 of us) were staying in the days running up to Christmas. My side of the family (12 I think) for Christmas Day and Boxing Day. A big multi-day event that was well planned until. the moment that my oldest - 6 years old at the time - decided to spend Christmas in hospital with appendicitis. It was a bad case - he was in for 10 days.

Anyway, as he, my wife and I pretty much missed the event that our extended family hosted at our house in our absence we decided to do it all again at Easter. We had turkey dinner, mince pies, Christmas decorations, crackers, etc. A full-on Christmas event in April. It was so much fun we did it again the following year.

So nice that you guys had a make-up day for Christmas.  My mom floated the idea that we should have Christmas in July because she doesn't like the idea of everyone travelling hundreds of miles in unpredictable winter conditions.

beacon_dave said:

I tend to avoid the broadcast TV stuff

I am the opposite in that respect.  A couple of years ago I went out of my way to watch as many Rankin Bass specials as possible.  Also every year I make a special point to watch the Christmas special that Sesame Street put out in the late 70s.  It's bookmarked as a favourite on YouTube.