Christmas Eve

So now that John and I are married, we are trying to decide what family traditions from each of our families we want to incorporate into our new family as well as starting some of our own traditions.  Some things we are keeping:  opening a gift on Christmas Eve and giving each other pajamas.  The other gift we open is from "Pie" and this year those gifts were given by John's parents.  John's grandma used to send the grandkids on a hunt for their gift and would bake the clues into a pie, which is how the tradition started (at least that's what John remembers, someone in the Cutler family please fill in the missing details).  Last year was our year to have Christmas Even with John's family and he said something about pie and I just assumed we were going to eat pie. Silly me.

Latke aka potato pancake

Anyway, the other tradition we are taking from my family is to have a Bethlehem dinner on Christmas Eve.  The idea is that we eat foods that would have been eaten at the time of Jesus' birth and we eat with our fingers, on the floor, by candlelight.  For our dinner, I wanted to incorporate some traditional Jewish food so we made latkes which are eaten during Hanukkah.

I found the recipe here but in trying to find the link for the recipe I came across one that sounds better and doesn't make such a large batch, here, that I am keeping on file for next time.  I also found a bunch blog posts by people who do something similar, so that was pretty cool.

We also made some shredded chicken based some info I read here under "Cultural Setting/Daily Life: Food", but we used a crockpot so we cheated a little (although it said the meat was seasoned and boiled or stewed, so it may not be too much of a stretch). I also made some flat bread and we had some raw veggies, brussels sprouts, nuts, dried fruit, hard boiled eggs, and a few cheeses.  Overall, I think it turned out great and of course we had way too much food for just the two of us, but it was fun to have our own little dinner, even though we were sad we couldn't be at the one happening simultaneously in Utah at my sister's house with my family.

the flatbread

The spread

Our new Cutler family tradition is to watch "A Christmas Story" on Christmas Eve.  I usually watch some of this movie every year, but it's been a long time since I sat through it start to finish and I forgot how funny it is.  I'm sure it will be awhile before we have kids that will appreciate the humor, but at least we enjoyed it.  I would love to hear about traditions your family has!