Share with us about your Christmas story with your family and friends. What is it like at your house on Christmas morning. Do you travel for the holiday? How special is this holiday for you?
Cheers 
Hondo
Christmas in your home; your story
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Today marks the 7th year we lost my father to cancer. This does not diminish the holiday in any way, but it has really changed for all of us in my family. My brother's birthday is on Christmas Eve and we have his dinner that night. He opens his presents, we do the cake and ice cream (homemade). Then we prepare for the next day. That night around 11 pm we go to church to ring in the birth of Christ, listen to the sermon from the preacher, take communion, and end the service with Joy to the World.
I go to bed and get up the next morning to the smell of ham and biscuits. I get ready for all to come and get pumped up. When we all arrive, we pass out the presents. We take pictures and open the presents. When we finish, we start talking and laughing about all the blessings we have in the family. We continue to eat, drink, then everyone goes their different ways.
We come together that evening and share dinner together and either play games or watch TV.
These holidays are very meaningful to us, and we are blessed to have each other. I will admit that I do miss my father a lot, and I think of him often. I do have fond memories of him. I am not married, nor do I have any children. Maybe someday, maybe someday, I do have my family.
Happy Holidays Folks, and Merry Christmas.
Cheers Hondo -
christmas at home
well we start the day of at home and the little bloke (not so little now is 153cms tall) gets to open his gifts from his dads family, after this he either rings his grandma & grandpa (his dads parents) and wishes them a happy christmas and thanks them for the gifts that they have sent him, he gets his santa sack and goes through it and has a play for a little while. after this we get dressed in our new clobber and go to mum and dads place, this year it was for lunch, sit around show mum and dad what he got for christmas from "santa" and other grandparents then after a while we opened the gifts under the tree. this year we went to my brothers place for christmas dinner. we had a good time got there about 4:30pm, talked for a while then we opened gifts again, then we had dinner. after dinner the children and i played on the wii that the girls got from santa, we played bowling, we laughed and shouted and had a great time, my nephew won the game with the highest score of 175 pins down.
we had to leave there early as i had to work the next day so we all left at about 9:30pm.
so that is how my christmas went this year, hope you all had as a wonderful time as hondo and i did
cheers smokey -
Almost all of our Christmases have been at home (it would be a real big deal to drag along the gifts for 6 kids and 2 grandkids!). Anyway, we still have young ones at home, so I know that makes our Christmas a little different than Hondo's.
We share Christmas Eve with our good friends, the other grandparents of our oldest grandson. They live right up the street from us. We have a simple dinner together (often after having attended church services), exchange gifts, and enjoy each other's company.
Our youngest son and oldest grandson (12 years old this year) have a long-standing tradition. The grandson spends the night at our house so he can be with us the next morning. The past couple of years, the boys have added to their own tradition - they stay up all night (but they are NOT allowed to come out of the bedroom until morning, so they 'hunker down' with snacks and movies).
This year, our 6 year old grandson also stayed the night. He was VERY excited, and getting him to sleep was difficult. The Mrs. finally laid down with him, read him some stories, and he eventually fell asleep (so did she, but she woke up again to finish all the preparations).
It seems we (the adults) almost always end up staying up VERY late with last minute wrapping, straightening, stuffing of stockings, etc. I finally realized that happens because we don't have many good hiding places in our house, so many gifts remain locked in the car trunk until after the kids go to bed on Christmas eve.
We have cookies and milk with our old friend Santa when he arrives :teeth_smile:. After that, we go to bed for a couple of hours sleep.
Then, of course, the children wake us up at the crack of dawn to open gifts (they are quite excited, as you might imagine, but the ones who stayed up all night are the most insistent; they want to open their presents so they can go to sleep)! For as many hours as it takes to wrap everything, it is all over in a matter of minutes. Bleary-eyed, the Mrs. stumbles into the kitchen to prepare a breakfast casserole (she assures me it is VERY easy), then we sit around and enjoy our gifts and each other's company. The two who stayed up all night are, by now, fast asleep.
Around mid-morning, our adult children head over to our house for gift exchange, breakfast, and family fellowship. The major holidays are among the few times we have everybody together at one time, so that is precious.
Our oldest son and his girlfriend then head over to her parents' house for time together.
The rest of the day is fairly laid back. We usually have ham for dinner (little prep time), along with side dishes that require little time as well (the Mrs. puts all that food effort into Thanksgiving!).
We call family members that are scattered around the country throughout the day, to wish them a Merry Christmas. We watch our new movies (along with some old ones), play our new games, read our new books, try on our new clothes, . . . .
There is much napping throughout the day (to make up for the loss of sleep the night before).
Sometime during the afternoon, we have dinner, then munch on leftovers for the rest of the day. The older kids may wander off to visit with friends in the evening, and our one son went to work (he works swing shift at a local substance abuse recovery facility).
So . . . that's our day.
