Main Forums > The Mess Hall

Christmas Eve traditions

(1/10) > >>

K Frame:
Anyone have any special foods/meals that they've always had on Christmas eve?

In my family we've always had shrimp of some form or another for Christmas eve. Maybe not always, but we've done it for a long time.

Some years it was just boil and peel shrimp cocktail (the years I made it with Alton Brown's cocktail sauce was a bit hit), one year was a shrimp dip with crackers and cheese (that was sort of disappointing, actually), and for many of the past years I've made shrimp scampi with either rice or pasta. Shrimp scampi was always one of my Mom's favorites. Even last year, when her memory was really failing, she enjoyed it and remembered it was one of our family traditions.

Now that Mom is gone, I'm not much in the Christmas spirit and I'm going to be solo Christmas eve, but I'm going to make shrimp scampi with angle hair for dinner. Some traditions are simply too tasty to abandon.

mtnbkr:
When my wife's maternal grandparents were still alive, the tradition was to go to their house on Christmas Even and have hors d'oevres before going to a late night church service.  Funny you mention shrimp because peel & eat shrimp with cocktail sauce was one of the items served.

Otherwise, we (my family or my wife's) had no specific Christmas Eve food tradition.  When I reached my teens, my folks preferred to do a Christmas Day brunch, augmented with various holiday snacks rather than a dedicated Breakfast and Lunch.  We'd get up, open presents, then have a brunch/late-breakfast consisting of some version of a breakfast casserole, then graze on the snacks until dinnertime.

Chris

K Frame:
I always wanted to introduce oysters into the holiday mix, but every time I tried to talk about it my Mom threatened to disown me. :)

Oysters were not her thing at all.

Come to think of it... maybe I'll spurge this year and make oyster stew. That's been a traditional Christmas Eve food in many cultures in the US for a long time.

mtnbkr:
Oysters were never a thing in my family despite us being mostly clustered near coastal NC.  I didn't care much for them until I reached middle age, and even then I have to be "in the mood" for them.  I've never heard of them as a Christmas food though.

That said, at least on my dad's side, my grandfather was very sensitive about eating foods associated with poverty (potatoes for breakfast being a good example..."we weren't so poor growing up we had to resort to eating 'taters for breakfast!").  I wonder if oysters were another "poor person's food" to him.  Probably not as he routinely ate stuff I'd place lower on the socioeconomic ladder than oysters (chicken gizzards for example).

Chris

RoadKingLarry:
I usually seem to end up working it and then working NYE as well.
Last year I actually had to work the night of Christmas day since the official company holiday was on Monday.
Oddly enough I didn't manage to get much work done.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page