mse new christmas traditions

codemonkey

Hello Christmas board. My H2B and I are spending our first Christmas together. We've declined family invitations and aside from paying visits to the parents, we will be munching our Christmas dinner in our house, just the two of us. I don't want it to feel like just another day of us sitting watching tv together so wondered if any of you lovely people had any lovely traditions that we could [STRIKE]steal[/STRIKE] ahem, adopt.

I should also mention that we're getting married next year so have no money whatsoever, so anything cheap would be brilliant.

sarah*a

One tradition that my OH and I have is that on the years when there is just the two of us we don't do the turkey and trimmings for lunch we have something we really enjoy instead - for us it's a nice piece of steak with peppercorn sauce and chunky chips

Neither of us ends up spending the entire day in the kitchen, there's not much washing up and we're not so 'overfull' that we can't do something 'energetic' in the afternoon

LJM

what is it if anything that you enjoy doing together that you dont often get the time or chance to do

cdsmiler

SugarSpun who is on here somewhere - she has a rather unique tradition with her hubby! hehe

codemonkey

At the moment we're planning a dinner of roast beef instead of the traditional Christmas dinner, assuming I don't burn it all. I'm a reasonable cook but its a standing joke that I managed to burn anything I tried to cook for OH when we first got together and I'm not very experienced with traditional food. Hehehe.

There isn't really anything we like doing together that we don't do regularly anyway which is why I'm concerned about it just being another day. We already spend a lot of time, when I'm not in the gym and he's not been banished to his computer room, curled up on the sofa together watching movies or box sets or whatever, so that's the norm rather than a special treat.

Its been a big year for us - buying our first house, moving in together and getting engaged and I'd quite like to make some traditions that we can carry on if our family gets bigger in the future. H2B keeps saying that Christmas doesn't mean anything without children around, but that's out of the question at the moment. Plus, H2Bs beloved granda recently passed away, so I'd like to make Christmas nice for him.

cdsmiler

What about board games? Hubby and I try to make Saturday evening (while DD's asleep) our game playing night. It's amazing how much fun we've had playing board games - the Scene it games are quite good! Trivial Pursuit. Scrabble too. ANYTHING really. Even multiplayer console games - we either have a go on the Wii or the Lego Indiana Jones game.

Plan a film on DVD that you've both been wanting to watch and turn your living room into a cinema - pop corn, soft drink, lights off.

Go for a walk in the afternoon. Look at people's decorations on their houses, or walk through frosty parks and fields.

Are you doing a mini stocking for each other in the morning too? You could decide between you to get 3 little gifts (and a chocolate gift) - doesn't have to be expensive - shower stuff, under wear , a new diary or something, even satsumas....

Ummmm. I'll keep thinking.

lilac_lady

If you're spending Christmas day on your own why not visit relatives/friends on Boxing Day or have them round for a little while? You don't have to have expensive catering for them and it's a probable tradition that will preserve your own Christmas day plans in the future.

red_devil

we are on our we just enjoy the day off as oh has had a very busy week at work.
We cook the full meal and we plate up another meal for another day. Anyone who says its not worth cooking for 2 is wrong.

In afternoon we chill out and watch a film on sky. Later on we have a nice buffet tea and we will be watching the Royle family at 9pm. We may play a game who knows. The day goes ever so quickly anyway by the time you know it its over.

mary-op

Not sure if this will be of any interest but a friend of mine and her OH the other year had a little 'competition' to see who could buy the most items for £1 - i.e. 1 brillo pad, 1 chocolate sweet (if you've a sweet shop that sells them from the jar) -bits and pieces like that. Can't remember who won out of the two of them but they found it a lot of fun especially as they left the totting up of each others 'bargains' till after christmas dinner.

SugarSpun

cdsmiler wrote: »

SugarSpun who is on here somewhere - she has a rather unique tradition with her hubby! hehe

We, um, express our love physically on Christmas Eve, under the tree (or as close to under as we can manage) with just the pretty lights on.

Failing that, how about a long walk once it gets dark so you can admire everyone's Christmas decorations? Board games? Maybe you could each write down a series of questions you want to ask the other and ask them, or write each other loving letters and either read them together or read them out to each other. If you want to do something more proactive and you live somewhere that has one, you could volunteer at a homeless shelter in the afternoon.

scottishchick27

We always have a family christmas but this is what we sometimes do on a saturday night. We play You Tube jukebox, basically we take turns in putting on songs on You Tube. It can be quite fun thinking of songs from years ago, especially silly ones like Star Trekking. A few glasses of wine makes this more fun though.