Christmas is coming up on Monday. As a household that celebrates both Chanukah (which was earlier this month) and Christmas, we have tons of traditions. And we also try to keep stress levels to a minimum. Our tree went up the first Saturday of December and for eight days, we had both the tree and our electric menorah in the living room. We also made two batches of holiday cookies, with the first being menorahs and gingerbread people and the second, candy canes, Christmas trees and MORE gingerbread people. The cookies are made with oats and sweetened with applesauce. We DO eat added sugar - those cookies come from stores (LOL).
We’re going to have Christmas dinner on the 23rd (today!), and I’m not cooking a thing other than cranberry sauce. The turkey is coming from one store and the sides from another. All I’ll need to do is put things in the oven. It’s just so much easier that way. Though I WILL be making the baked French toast for our Christmas brunch. That’s been an annual tradition for years. We always do one savoury one and one sweet. The latter usually uses coconut bread from a Hong Kong style bakery - gai mei bao who are familiar. The savoury French toast is made with a lower carb bread, often from a mix or made by me. I have some frozen dough I could thaw to make things a bit easier or I could make something on Christmas Eve. It’ll probably be a last minute decision.
What else do we do? We order in Chinese food on Christmas Day. December 25th is also my mom’s birthday, but we’re going to have cake on the 23rd instead. Actually, we’ll have cake both days as I bought a small panettone (Italian Christmas cake) a few days ago. Those things keep well and it doesn’t matter that it was purchased days ago. We also have a New Years’s Eve tradition where we order Indian take-out. That one goes back 14 years to before my husband and I were married. However, that year, we didn’t order in - we made butter chicken and rice ourselves.
The little guy is now off school and won’t be back until a week after New Year! We have some play dates set as well as possible trips to the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) and the Ontario Science Centre (I haven’t been to THAT place in YEARS!!! Probably not since I was a kid. The ROM, however, we’ve been many times in the last few years. The little guy LOVES that place since he has an obsession with dinosaurs).
What is everyone else doing for the holidays? What are YOUR traditions?
My Italian grandma always made pizzelle cookies so I started that tradition up again this year. As a family growing up we always opened presents on Christmas morning and then all went out to breakfast at a diner. In recent years my partner and I buy matching jammies for us and our two dogs and spend the day snuggled.