I find it so funny how Christmas is different around the world. I live in Argentina and the biggest celebration is actually the night of the 24, where we have late dinner and wait up until midnight and open all the presents at that time. And then after a long night up, we all get together again for lunch and eat lots of leftovers all day, usually by the pool because it's super hot, but we eat traditional winter food from Spain and Italy. That allows a lot of people to spend the 24 and 25 with different parts of the family, which solves so many problems!!! Hope you guys have a great Christmas this year, I've been loving you vlogmas content.
In Iceland we celebrate christmas on the evening of the 24th - It's usually a family feast, dinner around 18:00 and many turn on the christmas mass on the radio, common food is smoked lamb, or smoked pig or Tarmagan or Turkey. For desert it's common to eat Ris a La mande and there's an Almond hidden in one of it and the one who gets the almond gets an Almond Present. After dinner things are cleared up and the dishes are cleaned and then we get to open our presents (books are very common gifts in Iceland) and the rest of the evening is spent enjoying our presents and eating candy and cookies and all kinds of goodies and basically enjoying each others company.
Really related to what you said about getting back to the idealistic Christmas of childhood. Every year was the same throughout our childhood right up until our 20s...presents in a stocking on the landing, church followed by one set of grandparents arriving, then big dinner followed by more presents with other grandparents arriving then the legendary Christmas buffet (that my mum prepares whenever Christmas makes it to her house...even in July!) but when we’re at my fiancé’s mums it’s not quite the same...it doesn’t quite feel like Christmas! I love Christmas so the first time we were there I felt a bit sad...it wasn’t quite as magical! Even if Santa did wave to us from the coastguards helicopter!
I love this! You two are adorable! My husband also got a stocking from my parents (aka Santa) from the first year he spent Christmas with us, until we had our first baby. Here is a rundown of my family's (Canadian) Christmas traditions (by no means a universal Canadian thing lol): We had Christmas Eve at my Dad's parents' house when they were still alive. When they passed, we had it at our house, usually with my one Aunt and Uncle and cousins who lived in the same city as us; a buffet of finger foods, cheese boards, crackers, charcuterie. We always got Christmas Eve PJs! Christmas Day: When we were little, our stockings were on our beds (I think Mom and Dad moved them to the living room when we were old enough to possibly try to fake sleep, but young enough that we still believed in Santa lol). My brother and I were allowed to open our stockings as soon as we woke up. Then we had to wait for Mom and Dad to wake up lol. Then we sat in their room (or in the living room, after the great stocking migration in the mid '80s lol) while they opened their stockings. Then we had to have breakfast; usually a fruit tray, cinnamon rolls/other pastries, coffee for the grown ups. Then Dad passed the gifts out, gifts from Santa and from family. Everything was wrapped. Santa presents were all in one type of wrapping paper, with our names just written straight on the paper. Once all four of us had our piles of gifts, we had to TAKE TURNS opening ONE AT A TIME lol. Then we'd get dressed in our new Christmas clothes, pile in the car and head to Grandma's (Mom's Mom). We had a big, extended family Christmas Dinner at my Grandma's (Mom has 6 sisters...so Aunts, Uncles, cousins, plus our Great Aunts and Uncles or even Great-Grandparents when I was really young). Tiny house lol. Always turkey, ham, stuffing, (plain boiled) potatoes, brussels sprouts, gravy and cranberry sauce and Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. Dessert was Grandma's trifle, and she probably made a couple of pies, too. While we were waiting for dinner, we all opened our gifts from the extended family that were gathered that year, and watched Grandma open her HUGE stocking (from Santa!) and gifts from everyone else. Christmas Eve on Sesame Street is one of my favourites! It came out when I was actually Sesame Street watching age. I made sure I bought the DVD for my kids, and we still watch it every year (my kids are 20, 17, and 14 now lol). Cookie Monster is the best! I love the Bert and Ernie "Gift of the Magi" interpretation, too.
Just wanted to add: The coolest thing about watching Christmas Eve on Sesame Street when I was little, was that it aired on TV in the evening! Sesame Street was a pre-noon morning show every day, but we got to stay up past our bedtime to watch it when it was on! I also get kind of nostalgic for the excitement of watching Christmas Specials on TV. Now we can get everything on DVD, or just stream whatever we want. My kids will never understand the excitement of getting the TV listings in the newspaper at the beginning of December, and writing down when all the Specials would air, and on what channels...and they were usually on at 8pm, so we got to stay up late to watch them (8pm was bedtime lol). For us, it was A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Garfield Christmas, Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman...these were all the typical TV Specials in North America. The 1951 Alistair Sims Scrooge aired on Christmas Eve, and it is my Dad's favourite, so we watched that. The movie Christmas Vacation (with Chevy Chase) became one of our favourites when my brother and I got a bit older, so we'd watch that as a family on Christmas Eve, too.
Okay Christmas traditions... So for Christmas Day, we always just spent it at home because more of our family live in England than in Scotland, and it was really rare for us to visit people or people to visit us. So it was typically just my mum, dad, brother and later sister at home together. We'd generally all be up by about 8am (our parents made us wait at least a bit so they could sort of sleep in), and then we weren't allowed to open presents until cups of tea were made XD Then we'd take it in turns opening presents. We had stockings from Santa but those were just little things, chocolate, tangerine and a pound coin. The actual Santa presents were wrapped under the tree, alongside our parents' presents, and there would be different wrapping paper on the ones from Santa! Then once presents were opened, we'd take our stuff back up to our rooms and have some breakfast, usually rolls with sausage or bacon. Then as kids we'd just hang about playing with our toys, watching whatever Christmas films were on the TV until we were ready to eat Christmas dinner, usually around... 3ish? We'd have soup or prawn cocktail to start, then the dinner so turkey with stuffing and gravy, pigs in blankets, brussell sprouts, parsips, carrots, broccoli, roast potatoes, bread sauce and cranberry sauce. Dessert was usually a yule log as most of us hate Christmas pudding! Then maybe we'd watch TV or a film together as a family, eat chocolate and have drinks, and then head to bed because we were way too sleepy to do anything else :') My husband and I haven't really discussed what traditions we'd like to have whenever we become parents, but our own tradition is to go and see It's a Wonderful Life every year at the Glasgow Film Theatre. Sadly we'll have to watch it at home this year, but it's a thing we always do and look forward to every year :)
I looooved this video!! One of the things I adore hearing about is how people do Christmas. Do you have any Christmas Eve traditions too? I always have to make sure my entire house is tidy (for some reason) and watch The Polar Express on Christmas Eve 🙌🏻 on Christmas Day itself it would just be me and my parents until I was 12, then every year after that my entire family would go to my Grandparents’ house and all cram into a space far too small 😂 This year is VERY different in that I won’t be with my family at all, so I think it’ll be interesting to see which traditions/habits stick around even when the situation is different!
Yeah, I feel like this year we’re sort of treading the line between - is this tradition going to make things feel warm and cosy, or actually just remind us that we’re on our own and things aren’t quite as happy this year?? Our Christmas Eve routine changes depending on where we are, at my parents’ my mum does all her baking & sometimes we do a Carol service. More recently we’ve done a big lunch with friends at the Harvester & got drunk on Christmas Eve, which is a great way to start the celebrations! I’ve never seen the Polar Express 🙈😂 is that sacrilegious??
So nice to see a bit more of Will on camera, you guys are both so lovely and have great senses of humour :) merry christmas and I hope you have a great 2021
Really loved watching you two chat about Christmas it's given me a real feelgood feeling (?). When my kids were little we started a tradition of having Christmas Dinner on Christmas Eve to take the stress out of Christmas Day, and they could play with their new toys without being dragged away for a huge dinner they could barely eat. Now they're grown up and live away but me and my husband (and whoever else is here) have a tradition of champagne (or prosecco) with smoked salmon bagels for breakfast and we each take turns at opening a present while everyone watches. Hope you both have a fab first Christmas in your new house, you deserve it. Much love
I love that you talked about profiteroles as a dessert and then mentioning m and s as we were the same. Growing up that was always a really special part of Christmas as there would be no other time of year where we could have m and s and I remember the year we tried something different and for desert and we all agreed never to try that again
Fun piece. The Snowman & It's a Wonderful Life, The Bishops Wife, National Lampoon Christmas Vacation for tv; Christmas at our house with family throughout the day; stockings first & presents as early as possible on Christmas morning all from Santa; turkey, ham, stuffing, cranberry sauce,, sweet potatoes, green beans, rolls for early dinner; chocolate yulelog, chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies & chocolates for dessert. Way too much, but so much fun.
In Spain, traditionally we get the presents on January, 6th. The 3 Wise Men bring them so we have to wait till the very end of Christmas and then as children, we had very little time, just one day , to play before going back to school. These days, many children get presents both on December, 25TH and January, 6th. My kids always get something to play with on Christmas Day and then all the other presents in January. I love all the preparations so I really like November and getting in the mood. We watch Christmas films, old ones and newer ones, play Christmas songs, go out for walks to see the lights and decorations, etc. We have a big dinner on 24TH, in the evening, and then lunch on 25TH. We don’t have Boxing Day and we eat 12 grapes on New Year’s Eve at 12 o’clock at night. One tradition we have created with my children is to give them a book when they start their Christmas holidays, on the same day they finish school.
Love the grapes tradition! One of my colleagues is Spanish and she didn’t eat her grapes right at New Year, so has been blaming the bad luck of 2020 on that all year 🤣 we’ve told her to practice hard for this year!
Thank you so much for mentioning me and doing this. Our Mam's are very similar in doing too much but complaining 😂 Normally we would open our stockings (yes we still have them), go to church, have a drink/mince pie. Open presents, have dinner then veg out in front of the TV, play board games and eat our weight in cheese.
Growing up my immediate family always did Secret Santa amongst the siblings (I have two sisters and a brother) and we got to open our sibling presents on Christmas Eve, which was always exciting. All the kids also used to sleep on a pallet on the floor of my sisters' room (probably because it allowed my parents to put the presents under the tree undisturbed). I tried to get everyone to sleep in the same room on Christmas eve the last time we were all together, but now we all have partners and families of our own and live all over the country so it's difficult to get together in a normal year. I think the last time we had christmas all together was 2017.
Im my house the kids have the santa presents on the sofa (just a couple of gifts)and a stocking then the gifts from me are under the tree. We don't really have any family so I always get really anxious that there's not enough because there's no gifts from anyone else. We do have Christmas eve pjs, bath bomb and hot chocolate but thats to convince them to go to bed lol So our day starts when the kids wake up so about 8.30 (they love their sleep lol). I go make a coffee and then we go and open the presents. Santa's first then the tree presents. Then we chill out and the kids play (my kids are 15 and the twins are 10). At about 12 I make a buffet of sausage rolls and other party food. We don't do Christmas dinner because nobody eats it. We do have a roast dinner on Christmas Eve though. The buffet just works for us. Then we play games and eat. Might watch a movie but usually we just play with what they got. Then at 9 they go upstairs and I get the gin out lol
Great idea for a blog - lovely! Once we had kids it was easier hosting (although we're not at all this year). We take turns and have one family over Christmas day and one family over Boxing day. Turkey for both. My mom brings one over in the morning and my husband and her "do the turkey". I do the sides/dessert except potatoes because I have no patience for peeling potatoes. On my husbands side my MIL makes the turkey at her house and brings it over. As for presents - kids get up and find a stocking and presents from Santa by the tree (they aren't allowed to go downstairs and peek without us). Then we open all the rest (if we're lucky we can squeeze in making a coffee). Then we have breakfast :). Is fruitcake a thing in the UK still? My grandmother was from England (met my Canadian grandfather when he was a soldier in WW2- she came to Canada after they were married) and she always used to push a fruitcake on us kids. We did not fully appreciate the fruitcake, lol Merry Christmas!
Fantastic video! We had a Santa 'sack' under the tree and were only allowed to open 2-3 pressies before heading off to the morning church service on Christmas Day (which us kids hated haha). Our family always cooked roast, but it's super common here in Australia for people to have seafood. As for dessert we always had Christmas pudding, pavlova and trifle or cheesecake with the day rounded out with some beach cricket and a swim if it wasn't too hot 😂 Hope you have a lovely Christmas this year!
The inconsistencies between families' practices was how I sussed out what was going on at about 4 years old. My inquisitions were very frustrating to my poor mother. My parents also gave gifts which were wrapped under the tree, but all the Santa gifts were either in the stockings or under the tree and they were always unwrapped. There were three big gifts for each of us from Santa under the tree and they were the big exciting wishlist type gifts. Santa is always depicted with loose toys spilling out of his bag so why would any of his gifts be in wrapping paper? My dad is an artist so he used to make these cool North Pole esque name tags to attach to the gifts to be sure there wasn't confusion as to whose was whose. As adults we now take turns unwrapping presents so everyone can see and enjoy the special moments, and we do a LOT of presents and a lot of special gifts or handmade gifts with stories so it takes quite a long time to get through because we eat in the middle, take Christmas phone calls and Facetimes, work on the timed components of the Christmas dinner, greet visitors who also come with more gifts, etc. We're at a weird point where there aren't a lot of kids so everything can be done in a much more relaxed way but it's an all day affair. Once the unwrapping is done, the Christmas meal prep gains momentum and that's when most of the visitors start pouring in in waves. And those visitors always come with more gift exchanging. And the cleanup throughout the day... there's so much cleanup!!
I get such a crack out of these Christmas food traditions! Adding Brussel sprouts as a Christmas special sounds exactly like the opposite of what Christmas food is about in France (to me)! As in brussel sprouts might be the most hated yet easy to find vegetables here, and on Christmas the rule is kinda go for gourmet, expensive crap you don't eat the rest of the year! xD So around the table you tend to have foie gras, smoked salmon and/or oysters for entrées, before that there were appetizers obvs, then fancy poultry, fancy anything really, for main! And dessert is the traditional log (either sorbet, chocolate or butter cream). I'm a vegetarian so things aren't as traditional for me now, . Although I try to have chestnuts somewhere on the menu (it's gonna be in our veggie roast this year, yum!) and just go for something not necessarily fancy, but tasty and that might take a little longer to make. We usually spend christmas eve with just my parents, opening the presents before dinner because my mum is the one who can't wait (kid you not!) then on Christmas day we go to my great aunt and uncle for some slightly more hearty fancy lunch. Also wine, red, white and bubbly, duh!^^ My fav tradition tho is probably more the lead up to Christmas, with the lights in the streets, and the songs, and me pretending I'll bake all those German Christmas cookies but never do (and then the years are do bake these are extra special!) And it was solely Santa (Père Noël) who used to bring all the presents to us, until it wasn't. I love the compromise of having stockings filled with Santa's gifts and the rest is family!
I just love you 2! :) Love hearing about family traditions - mine is a read of ‘The Night Before Christmas’ every Christmas Eve (30 years old and I still phone my mum for her to read it!), for the past few years there’s been a big family gathering at my husbands parents’ every Christmas Eve where Santa makes an appearance. My personal tradition is watching Love Actually as I put the tree up :) Hope you & Will have a wonderful last Christmas as just the 2 of you! Ceri x
We’re opening presents on Christmas Eve here so my favourite thing is the absolute calm on Christmas morning when my parents slept in and we snug down really early to play with all the toys. ❤️
Sesame Street Christmas is one our favorite holiday movies!! My daughter used to call it ‘Skating ‘round the Christmas tree’ 🎄 Merry Christmas to the three of you!
I loved this ❤️ just watched it with my fiancé and when you mentioned Father Christmas we both cheered at the TV 🎉 watching Father Christmas is something we both did with our own families and then discovered the shared tradition on our Christmas together 😊 Our families are also very dessert heavy, Christmas isn't Christmas without at least 7 puddings 😂
We constantly quote Father Christmas at each other all year round 😂 our fave is the milkman saying ‘still at it mate, eh?’ Genuinely though, what’s the point of Christmas if you’re not eating puddings til you’re sick???
@@LaurenWade 😂 I can't believe how similar we are! Our favourite quote is 'you're alright, you're alright' (which he says to the cat and dog when he comes into the house) - it gets dropped into conversation all the time 😂
Such a lovely video. Funny listening to you both chat about what Santa brings and which presents are from Santa 🎅 You might need more discussion on this so you've both got your stories straight 😉🎅 We were also stocking from Santa in the bedroom into our late 20's 😍
You both with make great parents as I can hear the love ❤️ of families from this video and you can see the love between you both ..... 🎄🎅🏻🎄merry Christmas to you both 🎄🎅🏻🎄 you should make more videos together 📚💞📚maybe you could both make a video of the books you both have read this year 📚📚📚
My partner and I have done Christmas by ourselves for a few years now, we have our dinner traditions *down* (there is a spreadsheet with timings), and funnily enough dessert is usually the one thing that changes each year. First time I did panna cotta (never again), then it was bread and butter pudding (pretty good, but almost made us die it was so heavy), sticky toffee pudding (guess we didn't learn about avoiding a heavy dessert) then it was baked alaska (excellent, but stressful and also too much for just two people) - I think this year might be a pavlova of sorts or a yule log!
I saw you watching White Christmas in a vlog about two weeks ago and watched it myself that weekend - and now I’ve been singing and dancing and watching everything by Danny Kaye for two weeks. 😂❤️🎄
Lauren I'm so excited to tell you my French Canadian Christmas! It's different to yours, but similar too :) It all starts Christmas Eve. My mom and step dad get home from work, my sister and I put on pretty outfits, and then we eat lobster, charcutery, scallops, and champagne. We then get to open one present each (in turns). When I was young we either opened all the presents, or went to mass at 7 or 9, or both presents and mass. Then we drive out to my mom's sister's for a big family party called a Reveillon. It's typically a party after midnight mass, but mass in our township ends at 10, so we play a gift exchange, drink lots and be merry. Then the 4 of us drive back to town, sleep, and wake up christmas morning. If we opened all the gifts, then in the a.m. we open our stockings, which are filled with toiletries, gift cards, and chocolate. Then we have an eggs Benedict brunch and lounge a while. When I was very young we'd get ready to drive to another aunts house for a big turkey dinner potluck, and an uncle would dress as santa (once my sister did it and no one could guess! with a house filled with 50 people, it's hard to tell who's missing sometimes). After all that, my sister and I drive over to my dad's house and spend the christmas evening with him, opening presents and watching simultaneously The Sound of Music playing on the CBC, and the major junior hockey tournament. On boxing day my sister and I go over with my dad to his extended family's turkey dinner, still with lots of hockey on tv. I'm detailing all of this out to you because for the first time in my life, I'm gonna miss all of this! My family lives in another province with a locked down border (because the rest of the province's are too infected), so they're safe but I'm stuck in my house in Ontario. Could be worse; we've sent our presents to each other in the mail, and have the internet to see each other, so it will just be different. Anyway, Merry Christmas! I'll have to check out that Sesame Street special :D
Such a lovely vlog, loved hearing all about your Christmas traditions! I'm yet to have a Christmas where I just stay put all day, so quite looking forward to when little ones arrive so we have a proper excuse to do this 😊 My finance and I tend to part ways on Christmas eve to spend the night at the parents and meet up again on Christmas day in the afternoon - neither of us want to give up the Christmas morning with families just yet. Presents are opened first thing in the morning swiftly followed by bucks fizz and a sausage roll. I'm also a huge Father Christmas and the Snowman fan, I've watched them both twice so far this December and they will most definitely be getting put on at some point on Christmas day! Looking forward to the next vlog x
In The Netherlands we actually have two Christmas days, they're literally called First Christmas Day and Second Christmas Day lol. Nowadays it's really handy, because on one of the days we go to my family, and the other day we'll visit my boyfriends family. The days are just very casual, we have a nice breakfast (but not too elaborate, just some "fancier" bread, eggs, juice), then we open presents during the day but we don't have a specific moment, we play games or watch movies, and in the evening we have dinner, which most of the time is 'gourmetten'. This is basically a hot stone on the table where you cook small pieces of meat/fish/whatever, and there are little pans under it as well where you can cook vegetables (we do mushrooms, onion and cheese), maybe an omelette, or even pancakes! I found an article in English with pictures: dutchreview.com/culture/food/gourmetten-gezellig-evening-classic-dutch-dining/.
I've hardly ever heard anyone else who knows about the Mousehole cat but it's one of my Christmas favourites too! Me and mum watch it every year although not this year sadly! I'll have to try and find a copy and introduce my boyfriend to it 😂
Loved this. Bread sauce is the devil but everyone else in my family loves it. I'm concerned about Will's ambivalence around puddings - we always have a chocolate Swiss roll filled with cream, mandarin oranges & bits of flake. As children all of our presents were under the tree - the unwrapped ones were from Santa because obviously he is too busy to wrap presents!!
🤣🤣🤣 a bread sauce lover who doesn’t care for dessert? WHO HAVE I MARRIED?? We were exactly the same, Father Christmas didn’t have time to wrap presents, which is how we knew what was from family and what was from him ☺️
Ahahaha, I live for your husband's somewhat negative input! Honestly, we need to talk about how Christmas also includes arguments and stress. Anyway, sending you lots of love. 🎄❤️
In the area of the country where I live, on the night of the 24th, we hit a tree trunk with a stick and it (sorry) shits sweets or gifts. That trunk "arrives" to your home some days before Christmas and you feed it every day with fruit or whatever. 🙆 All it explained is absolutely ridiculous . I'm pretty normal, I promise. 🤣 You can read about it here: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ti%C3%B3_de_Nadal
Like many, I can't see my family this year so it'll be my first time with my boyfriend and his family. I'm quite excited though as I'll actually get to experience his Christmas first hand instead of him telling me on the phone (after having forgotten all the details!) 🤦♀️
Traditions are nice, but I think it's best not to get too hung up on them, it only makes it too disappointing if you can't see them through every year. And sometimes you end up doing things just because it's tradition rather than because you enjoy it.
I find it so funny how Christmas is different around the world. I live in Argentina and the biggest celebration is actually the night of the 24, where we have late dinner and wait up until midnight and open all the presents at that time. And then after a long night up, we all get together again for lunch and eat lots of leftovers all day, usually by the pool because it's super hot, but we eat traditional winter food from Spain and Italy. That allows a lot of people to spend the 24 and 25 with different parts of the family, which solves so many problems!!! Hope you guys have a great Christmas this year, I've been loving you vlogmas content.
We do it the same in Poland, except for the super hot and pool part!
German Christmas is very much like that too! So interesting.
In Iceland we celebrate christmas on the evening of the 24th - It's usually a family feast, dinner around 18:00 and many turn on the christmas mass on the radio, common food is smoked lamb, or smoked pig or Tarmagan or Turkey. For desert it's common to eat Ris a La mande and there's an Almond hidden in one of it and the one who gets the almond gets an Almond Present. After dinner things are cleared up and the dishes are cleaned and then we get to open our presents (books are very common gifts in Iceland) and the rest of the evening is spent enjoying our presents and eating candy and cookies and all kinds of goodies and basically enjoying each others company.
Really related to what you said about getting back to the idealistic Christmas of childhood. Every year was the same throughout our childhood right up until our 20s...presents in a stocking on the landing, church followed by one set of grandparents arriving, then big dinner followed by more presents with other grandparents arriving then the legendary Christmas buffet (that my mum prepares whenever Christmas makes it to her house...even in July!) but when we’re at my fiancé’s mums it’s not quite the same...it doesn’t quite feel like Christmas! I love Christmas so the first time we were there I felt a bit sad...it wasn’t quite as magical! Even if Santa did wave to us from the coastguards helicopter!
I love this! You two are adorable! My husband also got a stocking from my parents (aka Santa) from the first year he spent Christmas with us, until we had our first baby.
Here is a rundown of my family's (Canadian) Christmas traditions (by no means a universal Canadian thing lol):
We had Christmas Eve at my Dad's parents' house when they were still alive. When they passed, we had it at our house, usually with my one Aunt and Uncle and cousins who lived in the same city as us; a buffet of finger foods, cheese boards, crackers, charcuterie. We always got Christmas Eve PJs!
Christmas Day: When we were little, our stockings were on our beds (I think Mom and Dad moved them to the living room when we were old enough to possibly try to fake sleep, but young enough that we still believed in Santa lol). My brother and I were allowed to open our stockings as soon as we woke up. Then we had to wait for Mom and Dad to wake up lol. Then we sat in their room (or in the living room, after the great stocking migration in the mid '80s lol) while they opened their stockings. Then we had to have breakfast; usually a fruit tray, cinnamon rolls/other pastries, coffee for the grown ups. Then Dad passed the gifts out, gifts from Santa and from family. Everything was wrapped. Santa presents were all in one type of wrapping paper, with our names just written straight on the paper. Once all four of us had our piles of gifts, we had to TAKE TURNS opening ONE AT A TIME lol. Then we'd get dressed in our new Christmas clothes, pile in the car and head to Grandma's (Mom's Mom).
We had a big, extended family Christmas Dinner at my Grandma's (Mom has 6 sisters...so Aunts, Uncles, cousins, plus our Great Aunts and Uncles or even Great-Grandparents when I was really young). Tiny house lol. Always turkey, ham, stuffing, (plain boiled) potatoes, brussels sprouts, gravy and cranberry sauce and Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. Dessert was Grandma's trifle, and she probably made a couple of pies, too. While we were waiting for dinner, we all opened our gifts from the extended family that were gathered that year, and watched Grandma open her HUGE stocking (from Santa!) and gifts from everyone else.
Christmas Eve on Sesame Street is one of my favourites! It came out when I was actually Sesame Street watching age. I made sure I bought the DVD for my kids, and we still watch it every year (my kids are 20, 17, and 14 now lol). Cookie Monster is the best! I love the Bert and Ernie "Gift of the Magi" interpretation, too.
Just wanted to add: The coolest thing about watching Christmas Eve on Sesame Street when I was little, was that it aired on TV in the evening! Sesame Street was a pre-noon morning show every day, but we got to stay up past our bedtime to watch it when it was on!
I also get kind of nostalgic for the excitement of watching Christmas Specials on TV. Now we can get everything on DVD, or just stream whatever we want. My kids will never understand the excitement of getting the TV listings in the newspaper at the beginning of December, and writing down when all the Specials would air, and on what channels...and they were usually on at 8pm, so we got to stay up late to watch them (8pm was bedtime lol). For us, it was A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Garfield Christmas, Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman...these were all the typical TV Specials in North America. The 1951 Alistair Sims Scrooge aired on Christmas Eve, and it is my Dad's favourite, so we watched that. The movie Christmas Vacation (with Chevy Chase) became one of our favourites when my brother and I got a bit older, so we'd watch that as a family on Christmas Eve, too.
Okay Christmas traditions...
So for Christmas Day, we always just spent it at home because more of our family live in England than in Scotland, and it was really rare for us to visit people or people to visit us. So it was typically just my mum, dad, brother and later sister at home together. We'd generally all be up by about 8am (our parents made us wait at least a bit so they could sort of sleep in), and then we weren't allowed to open presents until cups of tea were made XD Then we'd take it in turns opening presents. We had stockings from Santa but those were just little things, chocolate, tangerine and a pound coin. The actual Santa presents were wrapped under the tree, alongside our parents' presents, and there would be different wrapping paper on the ones from Santa! Then once presents were opened, we'd take our stuff back up to our rooms and have some breakfast, usually rolls with sausage or bacon. Then as kids we'd just hang about playing with our toys, watching whatever Christmas films were on the TV until we were ready to eat Christmas dinner, usually around... 3ish? We'd have soup or prawn cocktail to start, then the dinner so turkey with stuffing and gravy, pigs in blankets, brussell sprouts, parsips, carrots, broccoli, roast potatoes, bread sauce and cranberry sauce. Dessert was usually a yule log as most of us hate Christmas pudding! Then maybe we'd watch TV or a film together as a family, eat chocolate and have drinks, and then head to bed because we were way too sleepy to do anything else :')
My husband and I haven't really discussed what traditions we'd like to have whenever we become parents, but our own tradition is to go and see It's a Wonderful Life every year at the Glasgow Film Theatre. Sadly we'll have to watch it at home this year, but it's a thing we always do and look forward to every year :)
I looooved this video!! One of the things I adore hearing about is how people do Christmas. Do you have any Christmas Eve traditions too? I always have to make sure my entire house is tidy (for some reason) and watch The Polar Express on Christmas Eve 🙌🏻 on Christmas Day itself it would just be me and my parents until I was 12, then every year after that my entire family would go to my Grandparents’ house and all cram into a space far too small 😂 This year is VERY different in that I won’t be with my family at all, so I think it’ll be interesting to see which traditions/habits stick around even when the situation is different!
Yeah, I feel like this year we’re sort of treading the line between - is this tradition going to make things feel warm and cosy, or actually just remind us that we’re on our own and things aren’t quite as happy this year?? Our Christmas Eve routine changes depending on where we are, at my parents’ my mum does all her baking & sometimes we do a Carol service. More recently we’ve done a big lunch with friends at the Harvester & got drunk on Christmas Eve, which is a great way to start the celebrations! I’ve never seen the Polar Express 🙈😂 is that sacrilegious??
So nice to see a bit more of Will on camera, you guys are both so lovely and have great senses of humour :) merry christmas and I hope you have a great 2021
Really loved watching you two chat about Christmas it's given me a real feelgood feeling (?). When my kids were little we started a tradition of having Christmas Dinner on Christmas Eve to take the stress out of Christmas Day, and they could play with their new toys without being dragged away for a huge dinner they could barely eat. Now they're grown up and live away but me and my husband (and whoever else is here) have a tradition of champagne (or prosecco) with smoked salmon bagels for breakfast and we each take turns at opening a present while everyone watches. Hope you both have a fab first Christmas in your new house, you deserve it. Much love
I love that you talked about profiteroles as a dessert and then mentioning m and s as we were the same. Growing up that was always a really special part of Christmas as there would be no other time of year where we could have m and s and I remember the year we tried something different and for desert and we all agreed never to try that again
Fun piece. The Snowman & It's a Wonderful Life, The Bishops Wife, National Lampoon Christmas Vacation for tv; Christmas at our house with family throughout the day; stockings first & presents as early as possible on Christmas morning all from Santa; turkey, ham, stuffing, cranberry sauce,, sweet potatoes, green beans, rolls for early dinner; chocolate yulelog, chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies & chocolates for dessert. Way too much, but so much fun.
In Spain, traditionally we get the presents on January, 6th. The 3 Wise Men bring them so we have to wait till the very end of Christmas and then as children, we had very little time, just one day , to play before going back to school. These days, many children get presents both on December, 25TH and January, 6th. My kids always get something to play with on Christmas Day and then all the other presents in January. I love all the preparations so I really like November and getting in the mood. We watch Christmas films, old ones and newer ones, play Christmas songs, go out for walks to see the lights and decorations, etc. We have a big dinner on 24TH, in the evening, and then lunch on 25TH. We don’t have Boxing Day and we eat 12 grapes on New Year’s Eve at 12 o’clock at night. One tradition we have created with my children is to give them a book when they start their Christmas holidays, on the same day they finish school.
Love the grapes tradition! One of my colleagues is Spanish and she didn’t eat her grapes right at New Year, so has been blaming the bad luck of 2020 on that all year 🤣 we’ve told her to practice hard for this year!
@@LaurenWade It really needs practice. It’’s not that easy to eat 12 grapes in 12 seconds! It’s lots of fun, though!
We also had stockings from Santa to keep you going while mum cooking. Then family presents after lunch
Thank you so much for mentioning me and doing this. Our Mam's are very similar in doing too much but complaining 😂 Normally we would open our stockings (yes we still have them), go to church, have a drink/mince pie. Open presents, have dinner then veg out in front of the TV, play board games and eat our weight in cheese.
Growing up my immediate family always did Secret Santa amongst the siblings (I have two sisters and a brother) and we got to open our sibling presents on Christmas Eve, which was always exciting.
All the kids also used to sleep on a pallet on the floor of my sisters' room (probably because it allowed my parents to put the presents under the tree undisturbed). I tried to get everyone to sleep in the same room on Christmas eve the last time we were all together, but now we all have partners and families of our own and live all over the country so it's difficult to get together in a normal year. I think the last time we had christmas all together was 2017.
Im my house the kids have the santa presents on the sofa (just a couple of gifts)and a stocking then the gifts from me are under the tree. We don't really have any family so I always get really anxious that there's not enough because there's no gifts from anyone else.
We do have Christmas eve pjs, bath bomb and hot chocolate but thats to convince them to go to bed lol
So our day starts when the kids wake up so about 8.30 (they love their sleep lol). I go make a coffee and then we go and open the presents. Santa's first then the tree presents.
Then we chill out and the kids play (my kids are 15 and the twins are 10). At about 12 I make a buffet of sausage rolls and other party food. We don't do Christmas dinner because nobody eats it. We do have a roast dinner on Christmas Eve though. The buffet just works for us. Then we play games and eat. Might watch a movie but usually we just play with what they got. Then at 9 they go upstairs and I get the gin out lol
Great idea for a blog - lovely!
Once we had kids it was easier hosting (although we're not at all this year). We take turns and have one family over Christmas day and one family over Boxing day. Turkey for both. My mom brings one over in the morning and my husband and her "do the turkey". I do the sides/dessert except potatoes because I have no patience for peeling potatoes. On my husbands side my MIL makes the turkey at her house and brings it over.
As for presents - kids get up and find a stocking and presents from Santa by the tree (they aren't allowed to go downstairs and peek without us). Then we open all the rest (if we're lucky we can squeeze in making a coffee). Then we have breakfast :).
Is fruitcake a thing in the UK still? My grandmother was from England (met my Canadian grandfather when he was a soldier in WW2- she came to Canada after they were married) and she always used to push a fruitcake on us kids. We did not fully appreciate the fruitcake, lol
Merry Christmas!
Fantastic video! We had a Santa 'sack' under the tree and were only allowed to open 2-3 pressies before heading off to the morning church service on Christmas Day (which us kids hated haha). Our family always cooked roast, but it's super common here in Australia for people to have seafood. As for dessert we always had Christmas pudding, pavlova and trifle or cheesecake with the day rounded out with some beach cricket and a swim if it wasn't too hot
😂 Hope you have a lovely Christmas this year!
The inconsistencies between families' practices was how I sussed out what was going on at about 4 years old. My inquisitions were very frustrating to my poor mother. My parents also gave gifts which were wrapped under the tree, but all the Santa gifts were either in the stockings or under the tree and they were always unwrapped. There were three big gifts for each of us from Santa under the tree and they were the big exciting wishlist type gifts. Santa is always depicted with loose toys spilling out of his bag so why would any of his gifts be in wrapping paper? My dad is an artist so he used to make these cool North Pole esque name tags to attach to the gifts to be sure there wasn't confusion as to whose was whose. As adults we now take turns unwrapping presents so everyone can see and enjoy the special moments, and we do a LOT of presents and a lot of special gifts or handmade gifts with stories so it takes quite a long time to get through because we eat in the middle, take Christmas phone calls and Facetimes, work on the timed components of the Christmas dinner, greet visitors who also come with more gifts, etc. We're at a weird point where there aren't a lot of kids so everything can be done in a much more relaxed way but it's an all day affair. Once the unwrapping is done, the Christmas meal prep gains momentum and that's when most of the visitors start pouring in in waves. And those visitors always come with more gift exchanging. And the cleanup throughout the day... there's so much cleanup!!
I get such a crack out of these Christmas food traditions! Adding Brussel sprouts as a Christmas special sounds exactly like the opposite of what Christmas food is about in France (to me)! As in brussel sprouts might be the most hated yet easy to find vegetables here, and on Christmas the rule is kinda go for gourmet, expensive crap you don't eat the rest of the year! xD So around the table you tend to have foie gras, smoked salmon and/or oysters for entrées, before that there were appetizers obvs, then fancy poultry, fancy anything really, for main! And dessert is the traditional log (either sorbet, chocolate or butter cream). I'm a vegetarian so things aren't as traditional for me now, . Although I try to have chestnuts somewhere on the menu (it's gonna be in our veggie roast this year, yum!) and just go for something not necessarily fancy, but tasty and that might take a little longer to make.
We usually spend christmas eve with just my parents, opening the presents before dinner because my mum is the one who can't wait (kid you not!) then on Christmas day we go to my great aunt and uncle for some slightly more hearty fancy lunch. Also wine, red, white and bubbly, duh!^^ My fav tradition tho is probably more the lead up to Christmas, with the lights in the streets, and the songs, and me pretending I'll bake all those German Christmas cookies but never do (and then the years are do bake these are extra special!)
And it was solely Santa (Père Noël) who used to bring all the presents to us, until it wasn't. I love the compromise of having stockings filled with Santa's gifts and the rest is family!
I just love you 2! :) Love hearing about family traditions - mine is a read of ‘The Night Before Christmas’ every Christmas Eve (30 years old and I still phone my mum for her to read it!), for the past few years there’s been a big family gathering at my husbands parents’ every Christmas Eve where Santa makes an appearance.
My personal tradition is watching Love Actually as I put the tree up :)
Hope you & Will have a wonderful last Christmas as just the 2 of you! Ceri x
We’re opening presents on Christmas Eve here so my favourite thing is the absolute calm on Christmas morning when my parents slept in and we snug down really early to play with all the toys. ❤️
Sesame Street Christmas is one our favorite holiday movies!! My daughter used to call it ‘Skating ‘round the Christmas tree’ 🎄 Merry Christmas to the three of you!
Aww just thinking about the skating bit makes me cry! 😍
I loved this ❤️ just watched it with my fiancé and when you mentioned Father Christmas we both cheered at the TV 🎉 watching Father Christmas is something we both did with our own families and then discovered the shared tradition on our Christmas together 😊 Our families are also very dessert heavy, Christmas isn't Christmas without at least 7 puddings 😂
We constantly quote Father Christmas at each other all year round 😂 our fave is the milkman saying ‘still at it mate, eh?’ Genuinely though, what’s the point of Christmas if you’re not eating puddings til you’re sick???
@@LaurenWade 😂 I can't believe how similar we are! Our favourite quote is 'you're alright, you're alright' (which he says to the cat and dog when he comes into the house) - it gets dropped into conversation all the time 😂
Such a lovely video. Funny listening to you both chat about what Santa brings and which presents are from Santa 🎅 You might need more discussion on this so you've both got your stories straight 😉🎅 We were also stocking from Santa in the bedroom into our late 20's 😍
You both with make great parents as I can hear the love ❤️ of families from this video and you can see the love between you both ..... 🎄🎅🏻🎄merry Christmas to you both 🎄🎅🏻🎄 you should make more videos together 📚💞📚maybe you could both make a video of the books you both have read this year 📚📚📚
My partner and I have done Christmas by ourselves for a few years now, we have our dinner traditions *down* (there is a spreadsheet with timings), and funnily enough dessert is usually the one thing that changes each year. First time I did panna cotta (never again), then it was bread and butter pudding (pretty good, but almost made us die it was so heavy), sticky toffee pudding (guess we didn't learn about avoiding a heavy dessert) then it was baked alaska (excellent, but stressful and also too much for just two people) - I think this year might be a pavlova of sorts or a yule log!
I saw you watching White Christmas in a vlog about two weeks ago and watched it myself that weekend - and now I’ve been singing and dancing and watching everything by Danny Kaye for two weeks. 😂❤️🎄
Lauren I'm so excited to tell you my French Canadian Christmas! It's different to yours, but similar too :) It all starts Christmas Eve. My mom and step dad get home from work, my sister and I put on pretty outfits, and then we eat lobster, charcutery, scallops, and champagne. We then get to open one present each (in turns). When I was young we either opened all the presents, or went to mass at 7 or 9, or both presents and mass. Then we drive out to my mom's sister's for a big family party called a Reveillon. It's typically a party after midnight mass, but mass in our township ends at 10, so we play a gift exchange, drink lots and be merry. Then the 4 of us drive back to town, sleep, and wake up christmas morning. If we opened all the gifts, then in the a.m. we open our stockings, which are filled with toiletries, gift cards, and chocolate. Then we have an eggs Benedict brunch and lounge a while. When I was very young we'd get ready to drive to another aunts house for a big turkey dinner potluck, and an uncle would dress as santa (once my sister did it and no one could guess! with a house filled with 50 people, it's hard to tell who's missing sometimes). After all that, my sister and I drive over to my dad's house and spend the christmas evening with him, opening presents and watching simultaneously The Sound of Music playing on the CBC, and the major junior hockey tournament. On boxing day my sister and I go over with my dad to his extended family's turkey dinner, still with lots of hockey on tv.
I'm detailing all of this out to you because for the first time in my life, I'm gonna miss all of this! My family lives in another province with a locked down border (because the rest of the province's are too infected), so they're safe but I'm stuck in my house in Ontario. Could be worse; we've sent our presents to each other in the mail, and have the internet to see each other, so it will just be different.
Anyway, Merry Christmas! I'll have to check out that Sesame Street special :D
Such a lovely vlog, loved hearing all about your Christmas traditions! I'm yet to have a Christmas where I just stay put all day, so quite looking forward to when little ones arrive so we have a proper excuse to do this 😊 My finance and I tend to part ways on Christmas eve to spend the night at the parents and meet up again on Christmas day in the afternoon - neither of us want to give up the Christmas morning with families just yet. Presents are opened first thing in the morning swiftly followed by bucks fizz and a sausage roll. I'm also a huge Father Christmas and the Snowman fan, I've watched them both twice so far this December and they will most definitely be getting put on at some point on Christmas day! Looking forward to the next vlog x
In The Netherlands we actually have two Christmas days, they're literally called First Christmas Day and Second Christmas Day lol. Nowadays it's really handy, because on one of the days we go to my family, and the other day we'll visit my boyfriends family. The days are just very casual, we have a nice breakfast (but not too elaborate, just some "fancier" bread, eggs, juice), then we open presents during the day but we don't have a specific moment, we play games or watch movies, and in the evening we have dinner, which most of the time is 'gourmetten'. This is basically a hot stone on the table where you cook small pieces of meat/fish/whatever, and there are little pans under it as well where you can cook vegetables (we do mushrooms, onion and cheese), maybe an omelette, or even pancakes! I found an article in English with pictures: dutchreview.com/culture/food/gourmetten-gezellig-evening-classic-dutch-dining/.
“They’ll be lucky if they get a lump of coal” 🤣🤣🤣 love this.
Btw I had phase 1 and phase 2 of Christmas as well! So strange lol.
I loved this video it was so festive! I’m pregnant too and we will not doing elf on the shelf no way lol 😂
Yes! Why create a rod for your own back? 🤣
This was such a lovely video! Brought back a lot of childhood memories :)
I've hardly ever heard anyone else who knows about the Mousehole cat but it's one of my Christmas favourites too! Me and mum watch it every year although not this year sadly! I'll have to try and find a copy and introduce my boyfriend to it 😂
My mom and your mom must be twins separated at birth Lauren!😂 Also I love Christmas Eve at Sesame Street. I had the book as a kid.
This is so cute! Love hearing about your Christmas traditions.
We always went to my Aunts house for Xmas when I was growing up
This was lovely ❤️
Loved this. Bread sauce is the devil but everyone else in my family loves it. I'm concerned about Will's ambivalence around puddings - we always have a chocolate Swiss roll filled with cream, mandarin oranges & bits of flake. As children all of our presents were under the tree - the unwrapped ones were from Santa because obviously he is too busy to wrap presents!!
🤣🤣🤣 a bread sauce lover who doesn’t care for dessert? WHO HAVE I MARRIED?? We were exactly the same, Father Christmas didn’t have time to wrap presents, which is how we knew what was from family and what was from him ☺️
Ahahaha, I live for your husband's somewhat negative input! Honestly, we need to talk about how Christmas also includes arguments and stress. Anyway, sending you lots of love. 🎄❤️
Haha, exactly! He wanted to keep the convo grounded
This was lovely Lauren. I must ask, is Will’s brother called Edward? Are they Bill and Ted?! Excellent.
Hahaha yes I guess they are 😂 they were always very much William and Edward growing up though, I wonder if they’ve ever noticed this??
In the area of the country where I live, on the night of the 24th, we hit a tree trunk with a stick and it (sorry) shits sweets or gifts. That trunk "arrives" to your home some days before Christmas and you feed it every day with fruit or whatever. 🙆 All it explained is absolutely ridiculous . I'm pretty normal, I promise. 🤣 You can read about it here: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ti%C3%B3_de_Nadal
Oh my god I love this 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Like many, I can't see my family this year so it'll be my first time with my boyfriend and his family. I'm quite excited though as I'll actually get to experience his Christmas first hand instead of him telling me on the phone (after having forgotten all the details!) 🤦♀️
Traditions are nice, but I think it's best not to get too hung up on them, it only makes it too disappointing if you can't see them through every year. And sometimes you end up doing things just because it's tradition rather than because you enjoy it.
I still get a stocking and I’m 23 in a few weeks 😂
We had to sit our mum down and tell her to stop 🤣
Wait, I'm very confused, you have DINNER in the afternoon??
Christmas dinner is lunchtime!
@@LaurenWade Ohhh, how interesting! But what do you eat at dinnertime? Or are you so stuffed that you don't need any more food haha
@@Larissa_KD oh there’s alllllways room for more! If you have dinner for lunch, then you have tea for dinner!
Yes, we did. Just too anxious to wait. Plus, after dinner you can rest & enjoy yourself.