Winter Season Holidays

[ultraviolet]

(or summer season holidays, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere)

So it's about a week until Christmas and I'm pretty excited! I like Christmas, and I am curious to know what Christmas (or other holiday, like Chanukah) is like in everyone's homes because Other Countries Are Interesting.

Spoiler: tl;dr: uv blathers on about christmas I LIKE CHRISTMAS OKAY

In Australia it's super-hot (set to be ~38°C on Christmas Day) and basically none of the conventionally celebrated symbols in a Western Christmas are actually, y'know, around (snow, reindeer, sleighs, a temperature below zero in december, etc. etc.) but because a lot of Australians are European descendants, and Australia is a British colony, all of this stuff is still present. We decorate christmas trees, we decorate our houses with reindeer, and some places get that weird spray-on frosting that makes your windows look like they're snowing. There's also australian-based christmas stuff, too, like you can get christmas cards that have a sleigh being towed by kangaroos instead of deer and things like that, but they're kind of novelty things you send to family living in the northern hemisphere. Christmas lights are a huge thing here though, and there's usually local competitions for the best christmas lights. It's common to go driving through suburbia around christmas to look at people's lights.

In my family Christmas is a pretty secular thing and we basically take the opportunity to eat all day and give each other presents, which we open on Christmas day. There's usually a local Carols by Candlelight thing and probably a church thing too but we all kinda avoid that stuff. This year my parents are having people over for breakfast, and then we're seeing my stepdad's parents for lunch and my grandparents for dinner. My stepdad's parents are english immigrants and they usually have shitloads of decorations everywhere, but they make lots of traditional stuff like christmas pudding or turkey. For lunch though it's pretty common to have cold meats or seafood and salad because it's bloody hot, but we usually have an english roast for dinner.

Boxing Day we usually sit around and feel bad about overindulging the day before and maybe eat leftovers if we actually get hungry. Christmas and Boxing Day are considered National Holidays here, and sometimes people work on those days (though I'm pretty sure you can't open on Christmas Day unless you're a service or something). I'm working Christmas Eve which kinda blows but we don't really do much for Christmas Eve anyway.

Do you have any particular traditions around this time of year? My family insists on putting up decorations during the first twelve days of December and taking them down the first twelve days after Christmas (or it's bad luck next year or something). What kind of significance do the holidays have for you? I am really interested in what or how people celebrate this time of year in other places. :O If you don't celebrate anything in particular, you could always talk about what you do for New Year's if you want!

 

[Dannichu]

DOCTOR WHO CHRISTMAS SPECIAL! Evil snowmen! Sontarans declaring war on the moon! Time-travelling, sword-wielding, interspecies lesbians!

(I love Christmas TV and demand everyone in my house watch the cool shows and films with me)

 

[Tailsy]

Hogmanay (or New Year for heathens) is a bigger deal in Scotland than Christmas is! The first and second of January are bank holidays, so everyone has enough time to recover from the festivities. Although nobody here knows the words to 'Auld Lang Syne' either, I'm afraid.

Christmas is essentially the same as in the rest of the UK and ex-British colonies, though. We have the German Christmas market in Edinburgh from about mid-November, so that's always lovely! I usually spend Christmas Day hanging with my family -- when I was younger we went for midnight mass, but once I got confirmed that really kind of tailed off. Presents, Christmas dinner, nobody except my uncle eating the brussels sprouts, the usual. *g*

 

[Minish]

Wooow, uv it's so weird imagining Christmas without a bunch of the symbols being really heavily present :o I mean I feel like that ~Christmassy feeling is generally meant to be like, wanting to be cosy and cuddle up for warmth and wow that probably isn't something you want to do, is it ...


We don't really. do much!!! We're not a very close family so we just sort of idly put up a tree if we can be bothered. This year my sister randomly isn't going to be present on the 25th?? Soooo we're moving presents-day and food to the 28th? Or something. Usually we do make a meal, though! Since I'm a vegetarian my meal is usually Quorn and vegetables which is what I eat every other day. It's super-festive.

I guess we've always gotten up kinda early!! When I was younger whoever woke up first between me and my sister would go jump on the other's bed and then we'd mosey to my granny's living room at 5am to excitedly watch Christmassy kids' shows and tip over a sock. I'm not sure why a perfectly regular orange feels more awesome upon falling out a sock on Christmas morning, but it actually does.

 

[Scootaloo]

My family never does anything particularly special over the holidays (i.e vacation), but hey, at least vacation from school. (Besides, trying to think of any aunts and uncles from my dad's side that I'd would actually like to see is pretty difficult. There's like...two)
Catching up on lost sleep is fun though! I wish it was actually cold down here, but haha like that would ever happen.

 

[ultraviolet]

Wooow, uv it's so weird imagining Christmas without a bunch of the symbols being really heavily present :o I mean I feel like that ~Christmassy feeling is generally meant to be like, wanting to be cosy and cuddle up for warmth and wow that probably isn't something you want to do, is it ...

not really! idk sometimes people point out how ridiculous it is that we're celebrating snow and winter and everyone sorta eyerolls and goes 'yeah'. even though we do have our own traditions (lots of people go to the beach for christmas, for example), there is sort of this idea that we're all faking it.

 

[Ether's Bane]

Wooow, uv it's so weird imagining Christmas without a bunch of the symbols being really heavily present :o I mean I feel like that ~Christmassy feeling is generally meant to be like, wanting to be cosy and cuddle up for warmth and wow that probably isn't something you want to do, is it ...

You get used to it. (I live in the tropics, where it's ~27-36°C every day, including Christmas, so I can relate to uv on that one.)

Anyway, here's what it's like in this part of the world.

Malaysia is mostly Muslim, so not too many here celebrate Christmas. However, like Australia, Malaysia was a British colony, and this is one of the things they left behind. It is a public holiday here as well, and every December, there's a nationwide discount sale in every major shopping mall, and most of these malls will put up elaborate Christmas decorations and stuff, both outside and inside. (And it's not surprising that it should be that way - Kuala Lumpur is fairly well-known as a great city to shop in, and all of this would likely attract shoppers.)

Sometimes, due to the nature of the Islamic calendar, one of the Islamic holidays will occur on or near Christmas, making for a dual holiday. It's quite interesting when that happens, although it doesn't happen every year.

After New Year's Day, it's back to business as usual... until Chinese New Year! <3 (Which is my absolute favourite holiday, by the way.)

My family does celebrate Christmas, although we're not in any religion (except my dad, who is a Christian). We put up a Christmas tree and stuff, and most years we have ~30-40 people over for Christmas lunch (in Malaysia, such an event when held in conjunction with a holiday is known as an "open house"), but this year (and last year, in fact) we're spending Christmas week in Singapore.

And finally, "Selamat Hari Natal" is how you say "Merry Christmas" in Malay.

 

[Spoon]

Uhh, I don't think my family's all that interesting, but we'll see.

Christmas merchandise starts occurring at a somewhat noticeable frequency around the beginning of November, but hardly anyone starts seriously Christmas shopping until late November. The day after Thanksgiving is a fairly big retail day in the US and called Black Friday, which is accompanied by reduced prices and crowds. I've gone shopping the last two years and it's fun.

In early and mid December, Christmas lights and decorations start showing up. Like uv, it's not uncommon for people to drive around looking at Christmas lights. There's this one family that synchronizes their unfathomable amount of lights to a radio station in town. It's probably one of the most interesting things I've seen in my town. Oh and there's a giant fake tree that's fairly festive and neat. It has lights, but nothing too fancy other than its size.

My family joins in the fun, a bit later than most. We hang up lights and decorate inside, but we don't go all out like other households. We used to have a real tree, but we replaced it with a plastic one a few years back. However, the majority of my mom's side still gets a real tree so we go as an extended family event to a Christmas tree farm.

My mom makes some honey roast pecans that she gives to family and friends. And my aunt embroiders and gives these cute little Christmas tree ornaments every year. There's some from the 1980s if I remember correctly.

I have a few out of state friends, so I have to get their Christmas shopping done early so I can send their gifts on time. I also draw an individual picture for both my out of state friends and my in state friends, which, in total probably takes about 24 hours to draw in total. I don't have assigned times to meet up with my in state friends, so they tend to get their gifts somewhere around Christmas. All of my friends celebrate Christmas to some degree, but Hanukkah isn't unheard of. Kwanzaa and other holidays, on the other hand, are non-existent or extremely scarce.

On Christmas Eve, we go to my mom's side of the family. It's at my grandparent's house, and it's all the grandchildren (15!) and their parents. Instead of everyone getting everyone else something, the kid's and adults have a separate gift exchange where we're responsible for one person (drawn from a hat) and our godparent (or godchild.) Before the gift exchange, we go to mass because my family's religious and such. My grandparent's (real!) tree has candy candy canes on it as decoration, but we're free to take one if we want. The kids and adults usually do separate things, but as the second oldest grandchild, I'm at that awkward time where I don't really fit into either group well, do I kind of stay with the adults. There's a bit of drinking for those legally able and the atmosphere's fairly relaxed and friendly. We open gifts fairly late and it's technically Christmas day when we end up getting home by.

Even though it's been years since my little sister found out that Santa actually doesn't exist, my parents insist upon putting the gifts out after we're in bed. So that happens about 3am. My little sister's usually the first one up at 8am. My older sister's last at 10am where we forcibly wake her up. And I'm just a little bit after my parents and little sister. We open our gifts to each other first. And then open up our gifts from Santa! Delicious breakfast is always involved, but I can't really remember at what point. We have a bit of time to mess around with our new gifts, but we eventually go to my dad's side.

We've moved to going to my aunt and uncle's house instead of my grandma's as she's moved to assisted living. There's sparkling grape juice there, which by the way, is the absolute best thing ever. We have most of the grandkids there, but it depends for the ones who lived nothern Africa. They're in states now, so that will change. There's a lot less grandkids on my dad's side, and one of my cousins is already married with a few kids of her own, so the atmosphere's a lot more adult oriented and a tad less separated. We open gifts around 5pm, I think. We stay for a bit longer after than, too. Oh and my aunt makes the best Christmas cookies. Eventually we get home 8 or 9-ish.

Other fun facts: sometimes we get snow and sometimes we don't. It's probably a 40/60 shot of having snow or not. But the years we do have snow, it can get pretty rough. One year it was debatable if we'd actually be able to make it to my grandparents house. (We did!) We usually get a small gift for the dog, too.

(Holy wow, this is a lot longer than I thought it'd be.)