7mo ago

Do you have a Christmas meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner) with your friends and family? If so, how was your experience this year?

These are the first holidays since dad brought his girlfriend home (he’s 47, she’s 24). My brother and I live with him. At this year’s Christmas meal besides the usual guests, mom and girlfriend’s parents were also present. Definitely an unusual situation but it was a nice event cause everybody was levelheaded.

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We hapily skipped all the over-hyped family diners with lots of drama and went for s pyjama party with cheese-fondeu with only one good friend coming over. Can recommend, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- That sounds like our thanksgiving! 10/10 would recommend.
Our tradition is to have Norwegian rice porridge for lunch on Christmas Eve. We add an almond to one bowl and the person who gets it opens the first gift.
- I love that! My wife got the recipe from my mother but didn't have time to make it for our christmas meal. Maybe we'll do it later.
Eh, kinda. We have been doing Chinese the last few years.
Just here at the house though.
It was good. My cranky communist granpa didn't start a massive argument for once, which was nice. He doesn't understand that everyone agrees with him, but that we still want to have a nice evening free from anger and bitternes.
For the last 35 years we have a roast pork, potatoes, gravy, corn, carrots, beans, red cabbage.
This year, after catching a plane and then driving for 9 hours, they said we’re doing a “cold lunch”. It was a salad and a few slices of ham out of the fridge.
I don’t really know how to express the disappointment.
- You win, lol. That's terrible.
  My mom used to be a great cook but now she just makes everything in the microwave, often in plastic containers. This year she seemed to forget half the things she was going to cook. We had plans to make beignets and homemade eggnog (we didn't). For Christmas dinner she made this elaborate meal plan and then changed everything at the last minute. She somehow didn't think about starting the rice until the chicken was done cooking... then suggested we have nasty precooked pouch rice. For Christmas dinner. It would be different if she didn't cook much or know how, but cooking is her whole thing! I'm honestly baffled. I've decided I'm just going to volunteer to cook the entire dinner next time. I've been a professional cook before. I can make something fancy, even if I'm the only one who will appreciate it.
- Lol :) That sounds absolutely horrible.
Having two dinners this year. My mother in law came over on Christmas Day, we had a Field Roast, garlic smashed potatoes, mushroom gravy, brandied cranberry sauce, and boozy nog, with plenty of cookies for dessert. It was a nice time, though a bit bittersweet as this is the first Christmas since my father in law passed.
This Sunday we are having friends over for another dinner, and I am making veggie pot pie, fondant potatoes, green beans in garlic butter, the rest of the cranberries, and ricotta cheesecake for dessert. It won't be a huge crowd, just doing dinner and some board games, so looking forward to that.
It was nice. We always do polenta on Christmas Eve and that's fun. Started a new tradition with aebelskiver on Christmas morning. Grilled a beef rib roast for dinner. Was nice, just us and our adult kids. 2 of them left for awhile mid day to go to the in laws, which gave us a chance to clean up and prep dinner. Tiring but fun. I still have to even out everyone's gift allowance - we have weird stuff going on this year with house repairs and limited space, so some wanted gifts and some wanted $ to spend when they're less cramped on space.
My wife and I stayed with her parents for Christmas this year. We had a lovely day with them and her granddad. Her mum made an excellent Christmas dinner.
We don't do Christmas, but had friends over for solstice pizzas. My wife announced a 'no politics' rule at the outset - not because of likely arguments, but just because it can get very repetitive and depressing.
It was a cosy and enjoyable evening after that - as they usually are.
Back a long way when I was living with my family we didn't talk about politics anyway: partly since it was widely understood that one didn't, but mostly since none of them were consciously political anyway. Christmas meals were generally free of arguments in general. The only point of contention was the mysterious presents that appeared for the children that actually came from dad's side of the family - with whom he had long-since fallen out and dropped all contact - and that consequently had to be disguised or kept under the radar one way or another. That didn't always work.
- I think we all should have a no politics rule... It's just turning people against eachother, when we have much more incommon with eachother than the politicians.
  Also it creates mind ghosts in dumb people. They go oh yeah, so you support genocide?" or" huh, you are a child molester right ".
  You can't argue with stupid people but you can choose to not argue at all. :)
  
  I have a strangely opposite situation. Politics is one of the safer topics in my family, even though I am a lot further left than the rest of them.
  If it’s movies, hobbies, travel, relationships, or anything else on the table, then I’m heavily outnumbered, and will inevitably be made to feel like shit about myself.
  So, in my case, I have very little in common with them except for being on the left side of politics, and the areas that we disagree there feel much less personal than them judging all of my life choices.
My mother in law doesn’t believe in germs or illness so she came over when she had the flu and now the entire house is sick. My wife’s got a high fever and I can’t breathe out of my nose. I’m exhausted with all the back-to-back dinners.
We’ve had a big family dinner full of high cholesterol low fibre food since a Monday and this won’t end until Jan 3 so I’m running on fucking fumes.
- Sounds awful mate. My body is still digesting that awful traditional food too.
We had some german regional meal. "Gefüllte klösse, kindskopfgross" My wife has made them. Loving it.
Translation:
Stuffed dumplings, child's head size
We live out of town (8 hours away) so we visit for a week over Christmas every year. My in-laws live an hour away from my parents so we attempt to split the time as best as we can. We are not allowed to stay at my in-laws because we have a dog that isn’t friendly. My family is super understanding and has worked really hard to gain her trust. My in-laws refuse to do anything except talk bad about her and complain that we don’t visit enough. The worst this year has been that my sister’s (24) boyfriend just broke up with her like 3 weeks ago (by dropping off her belongings and blocking her) so she’s going through it. She had a perfectly fine time for a day or two, went out with us, would have conversations, but then started locking herself in her room (she still lives with my parents). But there’s been a few uncalled for moments in my opinion, breakup or not, like telling my mom “I had a list for a reason” while opening presents because my mom got her something else she might like (especially since her entire list was hunting and fishing stuff, activities she did with her ex). Also my two year old was sobbing outside her locked door, begging to see her, and was ignored. We always do a sibling activity together (go out to a fancy restaurant, escape room, axe throwing) and this year she was hot and cold with it. We would discuss doing something and she wouldn’t say anything but only text us later that she was never planning on going. Finally last night I went off on her a bit. Told her I never get to see her and I wanted to go out and to spend some time with her. That I’m sorry she was having a shitty time but it wasn’t my fault. I’ve never had a great time visiting for holidays but I’ve never been more excited to go home that I am this year.

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