Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Pauleen's Christmas Meme

Randy Seaver has another great SNGF this week. Our instructions are:

Pauleen Cass (Cassmob), who writes the Family history across the seas blog started a Christmas meme in 2012 - see Deck the Halls - 2012 Christmas GeneaMeme. So we will use that for SNGF this week (since very few readers did it in past years!):

1)  Copy and paste the meme questions into your blog or word processor, and then answer the questions.  You could use short statements, long paragraphs or provide a link to one of your earlier posts.

2)  Tell us about your meme answers in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter.

3)  Be sure to leave a comment on Pauleen's blog post about your entry in this Christmas 2017 Geneameme.  She'll be surprised!

Here's mine (questions in green, answers in red):

THE 2017 CHRISTMAS GENEAMEME

1. Do you have any special Xmas traditions in your family?  Growing up when the children believed in Santa Claus, presents came on Christmas morning. We couldn’t open them until after we got back from Mass. There was one present from Nana that could be opened the night before: pajamas! As an adult, Christmas eve always means potato soup or clam chowder, though I think we’ve had crab once or twice.
2. Is church attendance an important part of your Christmas celebrations and do you go the evening before or on Xmas Day?  Always went on Christmas Day.
3. Did/you or your children/grandchildren believe in Santa? I was the oldest, so apparently when I found out there was no Santa, I told all my three younger brothers and sister. My mother was furious. We did better keeping the secret when the next two children came along. Our children probably believed until about seven or eight.
4. Do you go caroling in your neighbourhood?  No, but my daughter’s Girl Scout troops did a few times, caroling along Main Street.
5. What’s your favourite Christmas music?  I love both the traditional and modern Christmas music. I spent all day last week loading up my iTunes with all of my Christmas CDs. I have much more, but they are on vinyl.   
6. What’s your favourite Christmas carol?  O Holy Night, Drummer Boy, Carol of the Bells, and Sleigh Ride. The girls’ high school band played a great Sleigh Bells. And I loved my high school A Capella group singing Carol of the Bells.
7. Do you have a special Xmas movie/book you like to watch/read?  I watch Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer every year. I love Burl Ives’ voice singing the songs. 
8. Does your family do individual gifts, gifts for littlies only, Secret Santa (aka Kris Kringle)?  Some years to family, some to individual. My sisters and I exchange “sister gifts” which are small inexpensive tokens. We do this during my youngest sister’s birthday party (she was born just days before Christmas).
9. Is your main Christmas meal indoors or outdoors, at home or away?  Indoors, sometimes as home, sometimes at another home. When young, my mother always did the Christmas dinner (with 8 people in our house, who would want us all?). My grandmother, grandfather, and great-aunt would come, bringing pies and cookies. Once married, we started the every-other-year dinners with our parents. Sometimes my mother-in-law had Christmas on the Saturday after Christmas so everyone could come.
10. What do you eat as your main course for the Christmas meal?  My mother always had ham, yams, maybe potato salad, plus all the cool hor d'oeuvres like smoked baby oysters, olives, onion dip and potato chips.
11. Do you have a special recipe you use for Xmas?  My grandmother always made this green Jello salad with cottage cheese and walnuts, topped with cream cheese and cherries. I loved it, and pecan pie. I liked making gingerbread and I had a tree-shaped pan I used.
12. Does Christmas pudding feature on the Xmas menu? Is it your recipe or one you inherited?  We've never had Christmas pudding. It's not part of my mother's southern culture.
13. Do you have any other special Christmas foods? What are they?  Our girls loved decorating sugar cookies.
14. Do you give home-made food/craft for gifts at Christmas?  Some years I have made fudge or cookies to give. I’m not too crafty, though I have made family calendars.
15. Do you return to your family for Xmas or vice versa?  See no. 9. With our parents gone, we’re usually alone. Christmas is then celebrated when we can get together.
16. Is your Christmas celebrated differently from your childhood ones? If yes, how does it differ?  Yes, it’s much quieter now, with a smaller tree and fewer gifts.
17. How do you celebrate Xmas with your friends? Lunch? Pre-Xmas outings? Drop-ins? I have already been to several Christmas get-togethers this year. My two German classes had parties. Our genealogy society has a yearly a pot-luck party with the local FHC. The local historical society has a party for all the volunteers. We might go to an open house or two at friends’ houses.  
18. Do you decorate your house with lights? A little or a lot?  I have lights in the windows, much easier than getting out the ladder.
19. Is your neighbourhood a “Xmas lights” tour venue?  Nope. We live on a dead-end street. However the road leading into our street is lined with houses that decorate.
20. Does your family attend Carols by Candlelight singalongs/concerts? Where?  When the girls were in Girl Scouts, they used to attend the Christmas Revels in Oakland and then one of my troop parents had a Santa Lucia party afterwards at their house. It was always a nice festivity.
21. Have any of your Christmases been spent camping (unlikely for our northern-hemisphere friends)?  No...
22. Is Christmas spent at your home, with family or at a holiday venue?  Sometimes, sometimes and no.
23. Do you have snow for Christmas where you live?  No snow in our area, though one year at the piano teacher's home where she had an informal recital in December, there were snow flurries that melted before landing.
24. Do you have a Christmas tree every year?  Usually. My mother had artificial trees until we were older. She liked Scotch pines. She would place the balls and tinsel perfectly on the tree. Later we talked her into having interesting and homemade ornaments and no tinsel. Our trees were always real. We’d cut them from the local tree farm. We now have a dog, who would bother the tree, so our tree is fake and small enough to fit on the piano.
25. Is your Christmas tree a live tree (potted/harvested) or an imitation?  see no. 24
26. Do you have special Xmas tree decorations?  I have lots of different kinds of ornaments, but am drawn to brass musical instruments and birds.
27. Which is more important to your family, Christmas or Thanksgiving?  Christmas. 

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