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What winter holiday do you celebrate?

What winter holiday do you celebrate?


  • Total voters
    51
  • Poll closed .
I celebrate Xmas in the commercial, capitalist pig-dog manner people supposedly have disdain for.
 
r?

...............

corsair.jpg
 
Is Solstice meaningful to you? It's meaningful to me without any kind of ceremony. Just acknowledging the return of the light......

I can't stand being outdoors and natural light is more of an inconvenience to me than anything else-- just one more stupid thing that keeps me from falling asleep when I've already been awake for three days. The ironic thing is that I usually use the tanning booth while the sun is shining because I like to hit the gym at dawn and I always tan afterwards.
 
I usually celebrate Christmas at my home every year but this year I am going to my mom's cabin in West Virginia. My parents had bought a beautiful cabin on a mountainside some years back and have been having it renovated over the years (our permanent home is in NC). This year, all the family is going to the cabin and the guest house there to be together for the first time in 8 years.

Normally, Christmas at my home starts with midnight mass on Christmas Eve. Usually my friends Rachel and Sean and I get sauced beforehand to make it a little more tolerable. After about an hour of Joshua glaring down his nose at us, we slip out the back and return home for a nightcap and then bed. Early in the morning some time, I get up and set out gifts, fill stockings and start breakfast. Everyone gets up and has breakfast, opens gifts and then they get ready to go see their families while I start making Christmas Dinner for that evening. Once everything is in the oven, I sit down with a bottle of Maker's Mark and watch "It's a Wonderful Life". By the time it's over, everyone starts arriving and Rachel and I finish dinner up and set it out buffet style.

I cannot recall anything that happens on Christmas after about 7 PM. It's usually a haze of booze, gluttony and, if its a good Christmas, some bad decisions.
 
I usually celebrate Christmas at my home every year but this year I am going to my mom's cabin in West Virginia. My parents had bought a beautiful cabin on a mountainside some years back and have been having it renovated over the years (our permanent home is in NC). This year, all the family is going to the cabin and the guest house there to be together for the first time in 8 years.

Normally, Christmas at my home starts with midnight mass on Christmas Eve. Usually my friends Rachel and Sean and I get sauced beforehand to make it a little more tolerable. After about an hour of Joshua glaring down his nose at us, we slip out the back and return home for a nightcap and then bed. Early in the morning some time, I get up and set out gifts, fill stockings and start breakfast. Everyone gets up and has breakfast, opens gifts and then they get ready to go see their families while I start making Christmas Dinner for that evening. Once everything is in the oven, I sit down with a bottle of Maker's Mark and watch "It's a Wonderful Life". By the time it's over, everyone starts arriving and Rachel and I finish dinner up and set it out buffet style.

I cannot recall anything that happens on Christmas after about 7 PM. It's usually a haze of booze, gluttony and, if its a good Christmas, some bad decisions.

Sounds like an enjoyable tradtion. You're a Catholic, Jallman?
 
If I'd grown up Catholic, I might be far more pro-religion.

I didn't grow up Catholic. I converted to Catholicism despite some mighty protests from my parents.

I had wanted to be a priest when I was younger. I always had dreams of going to the Vatican to study Canonical Law under the direction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
 
Yup. I am the only Catholic in my family, too. Everyone else is, I guess you'd say, heathen. :lol:

I'm a born-again heathen! :mrgreen:
 
Talking like a pirate is so three centuries ago – I'm TEXTING like a pirate.

Texting is so three minutes ago. All the cool kids use Ventrilo.
 
For the record, my favorite two holidays are:

1) Halloween

That's also not allowed at the Jewish Community Center. Something about it having started as a Christian celebration. :rofl

2) Talk like a pirate day

Tell me about this holiday, me hearty! ;)
 
We celebrate Christmas as a family and religious holiday.

In point of fact, it has been reasonably well established that Jesus would not have been born on Dec 25, based on the events surrounding the nativity story and the cultural norms of the time. However, it is the day set aside to celebrate this event, whether it actually occurred on that date or not.
(the forebearance of DP's militant atheists on this subject would be a pleasant change of pace...)

For Clan McGoshin, individual families hold their own private celebrations at home on Christmas Eve, which in many cases will include reading the relevant passages from the Bible as a family or going to a church event; spouses exchanging gifts and possibly children as well, unless they are required to wait until sunrise. :mrgreen:

On Christmas Day, the Clan will gather en-masse at the home of our remaining elder family member, my mother. We will number close to twenty people, possibly including some guests or more distant relatives. This will start before noon. The children will run around the house playing while the adults talk and catch up, or ready the various dishes that have been brought for dinner.

As oldest living male of the deceased Patriarch's lineage, I will say a few words and lead the family in a prayer of thanksgiving for the birth of our Savior, and then we will all sit down and eat far too much excellent food.

The kids will finish early and pester us to death to get to the opening of the presents. The adults will stall until we've had some pie. :mrgreen:

The exchange of gifts will take place, and then afterward we will have the traditional Paper-Ball fight, using wads of wrapping paper. :mrgreen:

Thereafter there will be much sitting around on the couch watching sports by most of the menfolk, while the women clean up and talk in the kitchen. Eventually the ladies will draft several men to carry out trash and load boxes of expended platters and covered-dishes into various vehicles, and people will begin to drift off according to their own inclinations. Possibly my niece will play the piano and we will sing some hymns or old Christmas songs, if we're so inclined.

That's a McGoshin family Christmas...

G.
 
We celebrate Christmas as a family and religious holiday.

In point of fact, it has been reasonably well established that Jesus would not have been born on Dec 25, based on the events surrounding the nativity story and the cultural norms of the time. However, it is the day set aside to celebrate this event, whether it actually occurred on that date or not.
(the forebearance of DP's militant atheists on this subject would be a pleasant change of pace...)

For Clan McGoshin, individual families hold their own private celebrations at home on Christmas Eve, which in many cases will include reading the relevant passages from the Bible as a family or going to a church event; spouses exchanging gifts and possibly children as well, unless they are required to wait until sunrise. :mrgreen:

On Christmas Day, the Clan will gather en-masse at the home of our remaining elder family member, my mother. We will number close to twenty people, possibly including some guests or more distant relatives. This will start before noon. The children will run around the house playing while the adults talk and catch up, or ready the various dishes that have been brought for dinner.

As oldest living male of the deceased Patriarch's lineage, I will say a few words and lead the family in a prayer of thanksgiving for the birth of our Savior, and then we will all sit down and eat far too much excellent food.

The kids will finish early and pester us to death to get to the opening of the presents. The adults will stall until we've had some pie. :mrgreen:

The exchange of gifts will take place, and then afterward we will have the traditional Paper-Ball fight, using wads of wrapping paper. :mrgreen:

Thereafter there will be much sitting around on the couch watching sports by most of the menfolk, while the women clean up and talk in the kitchen. Eventually the ladies will draft several men to carry out trash and load boxes of expended platters and covered-dishes into various vehicles, and people will begin to drift off according to their own inclinations. Possibly my niece will play the piano and we will sing some hymns or old Christmas songs, if we're so inclined.

That's a McGoshin family Christmas...

G.
sounds wonderful, and a bit like ours.
 
I don't really celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday per se, but I love giving friends and family tokens of what they mean to me, and how they are special in my life. Plus, I now have two grand-daughters (I never had daughters), so I have lots of fun buying girlie stuff.:mrgreen:
 
sounds wonderful, and a bit like ours.

That's how it was when I was younger and living with my parents. Something happened after Mama and Papa passed away and it seems like those family gatherings became directionless and then just stopped altogether.
 
That's how it was when I was younger and living with my parents. Something happened after Mama and Papa passed away and it seems like those family gatherings became directionless and then just stopped altogether.


Are Mama and Papa your grandparents? The only reason I ask is I thought you were going to your mom's cabin in WV, so .... I's a leetle confused.
 
Are Mama and Papa your grandparents? The only reason I ask is I thought you were going to your mom's cabin in WV, so .... I's a leetle confused.

Mama and Papa (pronounced Maw-maw and Paw-paw) were my maternal great grand parents.

I am going to my parent's cabin for Christmas.
 
Other than Christmas, Hannuka, and Kwanza, I have never heard of any of this other stuff. Heck, I thought Black Friday was a holiday sale. Being here is a teaching tool, even though I don't know what all this knowledge gives me, other than a headache.:lol:
 
That's how it was when I was younger and living with my parents. Something happened after Mama and Papa passed away and it seems like those family gatherings became directionless and then just stopped altogether.

Family gatherings stopped on my mother's side since they didn't like my wife and vis a vis. We only get together during funerals. My wife's family is great, though.
 
My Christmas:

Wake up as we please. Mother is drunk, father is tense with anguish, and brother is off, God knows where!

Perhaps some presents under the tree, but no one is sure where they came from or who they're for. A tentative and palpable awkwardness permeates the air, culminating in a volcanic eruption of raw emotion and unrestrained vitriol.

Shouting and violent sobbing; venomous insults and bitter reprisals; an empty whiskey glass, shattering in the fireplace...
 
Mama and Papa (pronounced Maw-maw and Paw-paw) were my maternal great grand parents.

I am going to my parent's cabin for Christmas.



Rivrrat called her grandfather papaw, I bet it sounds similar. Did you read her fabulous toast to her recently deceased papaw in the tavern?
 
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