#FlashbackFriday - Our Christmas Traditions

Disclaimer, or just a good excuse: Just before you read the post below please forgive me for not being able to tight my ideas together. Little guy  is in bed as I write this but because of a very blocked up nose he keeps on waking up every half an hour or so in such a way that made it impossible for me to keep a line of thought  Still here is my post for this week's Flashback.

My family - This pic was actually taken in June 2010

For a while now I've been meaning to write about Christmas. i know for some people November is just too early for that but the truth is that I just love this time of the year and  I "put my Christmas thinking cap on" rather early. Yes I know I'm sad but what can I do?
I haven't told you this yet but I'm the youngest of 10 siblings and Christmas in a rather large family can be extremely exciting. Growing up we always had a big dinner at midnight on Christmas eve, right after opening our presents.
Wait a minute - you will say - open presents on Christmas eve? Dinner at midnight?

Christmas in a tropical  country

Yap, in Brasil (sorry I cannot write that with a Z, no matter what language this text is being written on) we celebrate on Christmas Eve, that is usually when we will open presents and have our Christmas meal. I remember my mum waking me up from a kip in the sofa right after Santa's been, I have been trying to be sneaky to see him but just couldn't keep my eyes open.
You'll find that if the Christmas party is at my mum's house the normal thing is for the grown ups to play cards and chat all night and the kids will play with their new toys until they drop. On the next morning the same crowd will come back at some point to carry on the celebration and help polishing off the left overs. Growing up that really was our main tradition, to spend as much time as possible together as a family over Christmas, laughing, gossiping, eating, drinking...being merry.

6 Years ago when I moved to London I discovered this completely different idea of Christmas, what? no Christmas Eve party??? Presents on the 25th only? Christmas lunch is roast dinner? Boxing Day? thermometer showing 0 Celsius.  Yeah, I knew then I really was somewhere else.
As soon as we moved into a flat large enough to have anyone around -as suppose to the tiny studio where we lived for a couple of years - I made sure Christmas party was at ours. I knew there would be loads of cooking involved, a lot of work but I was so excited I didn't mind. On that year we had proper room for decorations and I went all out.
That was when my new tradition started. Every year i find myself the one special bit of decoration for my collection - yes, I now collect Christmas decorations. I might buy bits and bobs to complement what I already have but there will always be the one special decoration every year. Also when we travel and the other half buys shot glasses I look for something christmassy to add to the tree in the end of the year, a good way to look back and see where we've been.

Another tradition we've been keeping for the past few years is to gather the family on boxing day for nibbles and presents. This year as it is Harry's very first Christmas I invited the whole family over and am really excited organizing menu and so on.

I thought my very own turkey recipe was becoming a tradition but with Harry's arrival and since on the 25th this year it will be just the 3 of us I might just skip that one and go for something simpler/quicker.

One very special Christmas tradition a very dear friend and I developed a couple of years ago is to go down Hyde Park to visit the Winter Wonderland to see lights, people, listen to some Bavarian music, eat Knackwürste and drink mulled wine. On the very first year we went on Christmas Eve and it was just great. This year our very dear Q won't be spending the holidays with us so we will visit the fair this weekend as she is visiting us for a few days. I'm really glad she's coming as with little Harry around I was starting to think I would have to wait until 2013 see the talking moose once again.

As you can probably tell I can't have enough of coming up with traditions for Christmas.

Just FYI, I'm very likely to still bring the subject up for the next 4 weeks. Bring it on!!


This post is linked to Flashback Friday hosted by