Author Topic: Christmas Eve traditions  (Read 10921 times)

K Frame

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #25 on: December 22, 2017, 08:57:34 AM »
Are the Carolinas know for oysters in general?

I always thought it was more shrimp and other shellfish, but that the water was generally a bit too warm for good oysters.
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mtnbkr

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #26 on: December 22, 2017, 09:14:52 AM »
Are the Carolinas know for oysters in general?

I always thought it was more shrimp and other shellfish, but that the water was generally a bit too warm for good oysters.

Not "known for", but that never stopped folks from eating them as long as they were edible.

And that may be why we didn't have them often, instead eating a metric buttload of shrimp. :D

Chris

K Frame

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #27 on: December 22, 2017, 09:43:28 AM »
Well, judging by your metric buttload, you've eaten a LOT of shrimp over the years...

:rofl: :rofl:
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K Frame

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #28 on: December 22, 2017, 10:32:41 AM »
I just had something of a personal revelation...

I'm not making Shrimp Scampi with angelhair on Christmas eve...

I'm making shrimp in brown butter white wine sauce with the gnocchi recipe that Millcreek posted in this thread: http://www.armedpolitesociety.com/index.php?topic=55169.0

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Ben

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #29 on: December 22, 2017, 10:47:05 AM »
We've always done German Christmas, which means opening packages on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve/day food is sauerkraut, ham, homemade bread (ham and sauerkraut are put on the bread open faced style), and tater salad. It's meant to be early evening food to eat before everyone heads to the living room to start imbibing, watching the fire, listening to old timey kraut Christmas music, and opening gifts later in the evening.

The ham and sauerkraut starts slow cooking early, so it actually gets nabbed in bits throughout the afternoon. The family has been getting smaller, but the food is easy to adjust to any number of people, and is easy to turn into leftovers.
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mtnbkr

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #30 on: December 22, 2017, 10:51:32 AM »
Opening presents on Christmas Even is a German tradition?  That's what we did in my family until I got married and my wife insisted we do it on Christmas Day. 

Christmas Eve was family presents.  Christmas Day was "Santa Clause" (when we were little kids).

Chris

Ben

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #31 on: December 22, 2017, 11:41:58 AM »
Opening presents on Christmas Even is a German tradition?  That's what we did in my family until I got married and my wife insisted we do it on Christmas Day. 

Christmas Eve was family presents.  Christmas Day was "Santa Clause" (when we were little kids).

Chris

German and many European countries. Likely other parts of the world as well. Ukrainians and others in the Russian regions also do it. Hot Ukrainian ex coworker did so, plus did Krampus. Also St Nikolaus and getting gifts on the 6th. My parents had that too, but I don't think we ever did that here (maybe when I was too young to remember).


https://www.german-way.com/history-and-culture/holidays-and-celebrations/christmas/saint-nicholas/
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charby

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #32 on: December 22, 2017, 01:08:57 PM »
German and many European countries. Likely other parts of the world as well. Ukrainians and others in the Russian regions also do it. Hot Ukrainian ex coworker did so, plus did Krampus. Also St Nikolaus and getting gifts on the 6th. My parents had that too, but I don't think we ever did that here (maybe when I was too young to remember).


https://www.german-way.com/history-and-culture/holidays-and-celebrations/christmas/saint-nicholas/

Dec 6, St Nicholas Day was a bigger deal for getting presents emotionally than on Christmas. St Nick's gifts were usually small and was food of some sort, fruit, nuts, some candy but stuff my brothers and I really liked but didn't get much of the rest of the year. I used to love coming downstairs and there would be a bag of tangerines and couple cans of cashews for us. I think the whole leaving your shoes out for St. Nick to fill with treats was much of the fun.

Christmas was the typical presents of larger scale, but St. Nicks was more fun.
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BlueStarLizzard

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #33 on: December 22, 2017, 02:44:42 PM »
Opening presents on Christmas Even is a German tradition?  That's what we did in my family until I got married and my wife insisted we do it on Christmas Day. 

Christmas Eve was family presents.  Christmas Day was "Santa Clause" (when we were little kids).

Chris

Swedes too.
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BlueStarLizzard

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #34 on: December 22, 2017, 02:46:10 PM »
That's how my mom's side does Christmas.  That way everybody's free to go see other family on Christmas Day.  Other holidays, we do lunch to keep them free (though usually still full) at dinner.

Naw, it's like Ben said. Some families have retained the old world ways for Christmas.
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K Frame

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #35 on: December 27, 2017, 07:55:35 AM »
I caught up with an episode of Good Eats I'd not seen in years; it was about Christmas food and drink.

One of the things they talked about was oysters, and they mentioned that in the south, oyster pie was HUGE during the holidays for a long time.
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K Frame

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #36 on: December 27, 2017, 07:56:38 AM »
I made my shrimp scampi for Christmas Eve. It was very good, but when I was cooking it, I grabbed the wrong wine bottle and poured in a healthy glug of red wine.

Nothing like a big plateful of pink shrimp scampi.

It was, however, quite tasty.
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K Frame

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #37 on: December 24, 2018, 11:59:41 AM »
Thought I would resurrect this...

I'm spending Christmas with my friends at their new home on the water in Virginia.

Making shrimp scampi tonight to go with the crab cakes they are making. Decided not to pull oysters from their floats for tonight, but we're taking them with us to his sister & brother in law's tomorrow.

Interesting, because last year's discussion talked a lot about oysters, crabs, and shrimp.

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charby

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #38 on: December 24, 2018, 12:04:15 PM »
Having friends over for supper tonight. Wife's birthday is tomorrow so she picked the menu. Glazed ham, funeral potatoes, jiffy corn bake and a Dutch apple pie (which is currently in the oven). I got to pick the cocktails, so Old Fashions and Brandy Sidecars.

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K Frame

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #39 on: December 24, 2018, 12:06:16 PM »
Nice menu! I've not had a sidecar in forever.

We're thinking that we're going to pop some more champagne tonight with dinner. At Thanksgiving I got throughly wrecked on champagne before we sat down to dinner.
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charby

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #40 on: December 24, 2018, 12:26:59 PM »
Nice menu! I've not had a sidecar in forever.

We're thinking that we're going to pop some more champagne tonight with dinner. At Thanksgiving I got throughly wrecked on champagne before we sat down to dinner.

Me too, me too. I forgot, glazed carrots also. Can't be all grains and potatoes.
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Andiron

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #41 on: December 24, 2018, 03:35:30 PM »
We've always done German Christmas, which means opening packages on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve/day food is sauerkraut, ham, homemade bread (ham and sauerkraut are put on the bread open faced style), and tater salad. It's meant to be early evening food to eat before everyone heads to the living room to start imbibing, watching the fire, listening to old timey kraut Christmas music, and opening gifts later in the evening.


What's considered old timey kraut Christmas music?  My family is originally German, 100 years removed, and our Christmas eve is almost identical to yours.
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Ben

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #42 on: December 24, 2018, 05:51:34 PM »
What's considered old timey kraut Christmas music?  My family is originally German, 100 years removed, and our Christmas eve is almost identical to yours.

Just some old traditional songs mostly sung kinda choir-like on a couple of albums my parents brought over with them when they left krautland (I guess they thought they were going into the wild west, because they packed the kitchen sink - I'm surprised the ship didn't sink).

Anyway, albums from like the 40's that were all scratched to hell after decades of play. I digitized them and got at least a little of the noise filtered out just to keep the traditional music from when I was a kid. I searched the hell out of Amazon and everywhere for the stuff but no joy (songs are there but not sung the same), so better scratchy than nothing. :)

Here's a song list from one of them:

SIDE 1

O Tannenbaum
Stille Nacht Heilege Nacht
Kommet Ihr Hirten
Susser Die Glocken Klingen
Liese Rieselt Der Schnee
Wiegenlied
Vom Himmel Hoch


SIDE 2

O Du Froliche
Es Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen
Am Wiehnachtsbaum
Alle Jahre Wieder
Ihr Kinderlein Kommet
Transeamus
Kling Glockchen
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Andiron

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #43 on: December 24, 2018, 07:56:39 PM »
That's really cool.  Agreed,  better scratched up than gone entirely.  Thanks for sharing.

Merry Christmas!
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K Frame

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #44 on: December 25, 2018, 08:37:21 AM »
The shrimp scampi and the crab cakes, plus a bottle of champagne, made for a fantastic Christmas eve dinner.

There was even scampi left over for breakfast!
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Hawkmoon

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #45 on: December 25, 2018, 09:18:27 AM »
German and many European countries. Likely other parts of the world as well.

South America, also. As I learned the hard way.

My first Christmas with my late wife, we were in her native country and headed to her brother's house for a Christmas Eve dinner party. Not having been clued in (since it didn't occur to anyone there that we Americans might do it differently), I left her gifts in the apartment where we were staying, to be given on Christmas morning. I was extremely embarrassed when midnight rolled around and everyone [else] started passing out Christmas presents.
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41magsnub

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Re: Christmas Eve traditions
« Reply #46 on: December 27, 2018, 05:20:56 PM »
Our tradition is the MIL makes lasagna and we decorate cookies.  The lasagna is prego, cottage cheese, oven ready lasagna noodles, and mozzarella.  This year she bought mozzarella flavored Velveeta by mistake.

We all manage to choke it down, then laugh about it later.