Does your family have Christmas traditions?  Ours does.  It is an interesting characteristic of our family  traditions is that we modify them from time to time.  The reasons for modification can be as varied as children growing up and moving away to grand children being born to moving to new homes.

When our children were small we instituted several traditions.  One was to attend a Christmas Eve candlelight service at church.  Another was allowing each of the children to open one present on Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Day, before opening our presents, we would have aebliskivers for breakfast.  We aren’t Danish but we fell in love with these little globes of batter with the surprise filling inside and included them in our Christmas morning celebration.

When we lived in Germany we visited the CristKindlemarkt every year and came to enjoy lebkuchen and gluhwein which were always sold from booths at these festive markets.

When we lived in England we learned about the holiday called “Boxing Day.”  It is the day after Christmas and is a designated holiday in England and Canada and several other countries.  We established a tradition of hosting a “Boxing Day Party” every year on December 26th.  We always served the German gluhwein at the Boxing Day party.  So we created a truly international tradition.

Now that our children are grown and have families of their own these traditions have changed.  Church is still a part of Christmas Eve but the aebliskivers are now shared later in the day when the children and grand children come over to the house after opening their presents at their homes.  The Boxing Day Party is now hosted by our children or their friends and we just attend.  The gluhwein is still featured at this party.  Sometimes I am asked to make it but more often now someone else is in charge of it.