Miss Laura, that sounds YUMMY!

Since seriously dating and marrying my Czech husband, we have always celebrated the Czech traditions on Christmas Eve. In Czech Republic, Christmas Eve is an even bigger celebration than Christmas day. What traditionally happens on Christmas Eve night is that Czechs have a big dinner. It used to always be carp soup, carp, potato salad, and other goodies, but many Czechs rather eat pork schnitzel, nowadays, with potato salad and other goodies. The gift exchange is done after dinner on that day. As for kids, it is not Santa Claus that comes with presents on Christmas Eve, but "Little Jesus". "Little Jesus" also brings the decorated tree. Czech parents have the little kids take a nap while do do all of the decorating and putting out gifts. After gift exchange, Czechs will eat cookies and adults will drink nice liquors. On Christmas day, it's more laid back and many Czechs eat roasted turkey, chickens, or goose, and extended family and maybe friends stop by. Czech kids do get little gifts from Saint Nicholas, but that's on December 5th in the evening (the eve of the Feast of Saint Nicholas). Adult friends or family members of the parents will volunteer to dress up as an angel, the devil, and Saint Nicholas. The three come to the door together, and ask for the kids. The devil will ask if the kids were good. If not, they give coal. If so, they get little gifts (little ones). The angel just stands smiling and being nice.

My family is of Anglo-Irish background (early settlers in America), so is fairly "typical early American" in tradition. But for my family, we used to usually get our tree on maybe December 23rd. My paternal grandparents owned a small little forest of pine trees, so my dad chopped one down from there (with us kids present). On Christmas Eve evening, my siblings and I exchanged gifts. Then on Christmas Day (usually very early morning - waking our parents up) we went to see what Santa Claus brought. We always had stockings, too. Then in the afternoon, both sets of grandparents (and my great grandmother), and uncles and their wives (I had four blood uncles) would come for a huge dinner, which was usually a turkey dinner and maybe also a ham. And cookies. Unfortunately, many of my family members have died off, including my mother who mostly hosted Christmas dinner. Nowadays, we've gone our own ways. Sad! Neither my brother nor I ever had children. My sister had two sons. Her eldest is over 30 years old. Her youngest lost his life from suicide. Our remaining extended family have their own celebrations.

Do/did you used to celebrate the holidays with a big crowd of relatives and/or friends?