Holiday traditions

edenfalling's post got me thinking about this.

I didn't think we had very many traditions, but having read this I realize that we do have a few. One is that everybody gets a stocking. My sister and I started giving our parents stockings when I was about eight and she was 13, and we still do it. It's more awkward now that we don't all live together, because we have to bring the stockings into the house on Christmas morning (celebration is always at our parents' house), but there is usually an attempt to conceal them until they are hung up by the fireplace. My parents are in charge of the rest of the stockings.

My husband grew up with the venerable Jewish custom of going out for Chinese food and a movie on Christmas Day. So we have dinner at a Chinese restaurant with his mom after we're done with the celebration at my parents' house. Last year we discovered that our favorite restaurant is no longer open on Christmas and settled for a vastly inferior meal nearby. I hope we can do better this year.

The tradition I think is unique to our family is the Christmas Eve dinner, which started when my husband and I were first living together. I surprised him with a fancy home-cooked four-course meal on Christmas Eve, and then the next year he cooked an even fancier meal, and we've traded back and forth ever since (missing one year when we were in the middle of a kitchen remodel and another year when our daughter was a week old). Everything is very secretive, and the person who isn't cooking is banned from the house until dinner is served. Our daughter spends Christmas Eve with my parents, which is just as well because they have a tree and we don't. For a long time the bar was raised a little higher every year. We are now up to about an eight-course tasting menu with palate cleansers and cocktails and a cheese course. Planning and menu development can go on for months before-hand, and nearly always we have a major or minor failure of some sort. Last year I burned my hand badly when I stupidly grabbed the rim of a hot metal bowl while warming up the base for a chocolate soufflé. I was in a lot of pain, so even though my husband stepped in heroically and finished making the soufflé, we cut the meal short. In fact, I think the actual zenith of the tradition was several years ago, and it's possible that we have reached the natural limit of this particular custom; my husband was worrying a few days ago that he was behind on his planning, and I told him that if he really wasn't up to the usual extravaganza, it was okay. Maybe in future we'll change the custom to the two of us cooking for a larger group.