Dear readers, I must call in a favor. Next week is the last of the semester before Christmas break, and I’m putting together a lesson on American X-Mas traditions.
Here is my request: either in the comments of this post or via the Contact page on this site, tell me about traditions, meals, activities, or any other stray Noel-esque thing that you and your have to celebrate the holidays. Tell me about your church’s activities, your school club’s charity drive, your office’s Secret Santa, your new age commune’s nightly poinsettia rituals. Spill the beans!
Now listen folks; when you get to writing this down, you’ll be thinking to yourself, “Surely I don’t need to mention such-and-such, everyone knows about/does that.” Untrue! Each detail could be a revelation. Leave nothing out!
My professors and students have made it clear that they are deeply interested in specifically Appalachian culture; they hadn’t heard of it before I got here, so it’s still new and exciting. So if you have any memories of great-grandparents or some such doing Christmas in a particularly Tennessean way, do share.
I can’t promise that everything will make it in the lesson, but I can promise to try.
Merci beaucoup in advance!
Bises,
Allison
Flan in France 
This is a New Years tradition for my fam but every year we have black eyed peas and collard greens for good luck in the new year!!
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Excellent! Noted and added to the lesson; I’ll be talking about New Year’s as well.
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Forgot to say that my brother and I always watch Die Hard on Christmas Eve and have since we were little kids. It’s also a tradition for us (as a fam) to watch our old home videos from previous Christmases and reminisce
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We have twp different christmas celebrations at church. First is appalachian christmas where we sing songs like grabdma got run over by a reindeer and try to out shout each other with the twelve days of christmas. People wear goofy christmas hats and ugky christmas sweaters. It is the best feel good sing along ever!!! Then we have a separate christmas eve service of traditional hymns, communion and end with silent night and everyone holding a candle in the dark church. Dont forget about parades and christmas caroling.
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More thoughts-angel trees at area businesses where we shop for things for someone in need. Dirty santa gift exchanges. Traveling, lots of traveling. And another big meal like thanksgiving…
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We like to drag an enormous dead bush into the house, drape it with high voltage electric lighting, and then hang flammable objects near the lights. Fun!
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Popular foods and drinks: Hot cocoa with marshmallows, milk and cookies and pies. My family all gather at my moms house and we sit and eat while talking about what ever is going on. Afterwards we open gifts. One thing that’s popular is Santa. To us Santa is a jolly fat man who falls down our chimneys to give all the children on the good list gifts, meanwhile all the children on the naughty list got coal (not actually more like chocolate to look like it) When he comes down our chimney’s we leave him milk and cookies since he’s done so much in so little time. Another popular thing is the Elf on the shelf. He is one of santas spies who lets santa in on who’s naughty and nice. He moves place to place as well. Most of the time there is snow so we go outside and play by sledding, making snowballs or making snow angels. Some churches do plays on the christ (not sure what about) We hang up stocking and fill them with candy or trinkets of some kind. Music, there are quite a few Christmas songs and people listen to those, Christmas pajamas. A tree with really pretty lights and ornaments with a star on the top. We also make gingerbread houses which are super cute . All i have as of right now 🙂
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And drinking eggnog
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My grandma started buying snow globes at Christmas for her great grandchildren. With my child being the first great grandchild. The snow globes were to be opened on Christmas Eve. After her passing I continued to give our son a snow globe every year. He’s 31 now and I still give him one every Christmas Eve. I now do this with my grandchildren.
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One rather Appalachian tradition is Christmas lights in a cavern. Some of the caverns around here have people come set up a bunch of Christmas lights and displays. Imagine a bunch of stalactites and stalagmites covered in rainbow lights with a walkway bordered by tinsel.
There are multiple areas in the cave for holiday activities too. You have an area set up with a big chair for pictures with Santa or the Grinch. Another area has a projector and screen with lots of chairs for people to watch whatever Christmas movie they are showing. Once you are done with your underground cave Christmas, they serve hot chocolate at the top entrance.
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Long time ago when your mom was real young–don’t know how much she or Aunt Gayle would remember–we spent every Christmas at Papaw’s parent’s house in Pikeville. We would first get up early open presents at home then start the hour trip to Nanny and Papaw’s house–winters were colder and we had a lot more snow–making the trip tricky sometimes. We would arrive around lunch time–had to wait until everyone arrived –Your Papaw’s brother and family–then big dinner as big or bigger than Thanksgiving dinner. They always had one small tree usually pine which was cut and brought back to the house by Papaw. No elaborate decorations–just a few–but remembered how Christmassy the whole house smelled. Adults sat in one room to eat, and children sat in the kitchen at a smaller table. Shopping where they lived was limited so I do not ever remember getting a store-bought gift for Christmas or birthdays, everything was hand-made gifts such as knitted gloves. caps and scarves as you got older the gifts were handmade furniture (cedar chests, desks or wooden storage tables) and hand-made quilts. They were a generation of waste not–so if for some reason you could no longer wear something–it would go in the closet dedicated to cloth scraps for quilts. After eating, the men went to the living room sat around the coal burning stove and talked. The women to the kitchen to clean up from dinner and kids usually brought one gift from home to keep them occupied. I remember in the afternoon going out in the woods looking for mistletoe to gather. Since it is a parasite living high in trees, it had to be shot down with a shotgun–then it was the kid’ job to go pick it up and carry it back. Younger kids did not get to go (your mom would have been one of them). We would go back and hang the mistletoe over the door openings. Tradition I believe is that you catch someone under the mistletoe you could kiss them–it was just used as decoration at their house. We ate again and Uncle Wendell and family went on to his wife’s family to celebrate and we usually spent the night, then go back home the next day. Oh, I almost forgot for dessert was always -fruit cake. She would spend 2 weeks letting it set in a cool dark room so all the flavors would soak in. Now, as back then, I cannot stand fruit cake. YUCK!!
One thing to remember that back then–your great-grand parents had no TV so the entertainment when there were gatherings was conversation with each other–mainly stories of when they were younger and things they did-centered mainly around fishing and hunting adventures. Sorry I wrote so much but maybe you can use some information about Christmas 60+ years ago.
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