In honor of @mrschicken and tillie in the confessions thread, and for my own benefit too...a question for you non-parents...what do you do to make the holidays (winter holidays or any other special days) special?
Make good food, splurge on fancier food/drink things, spend time with family and friends, watch Christmas movies, put up a tree, take walks/drives through areas with pretty lights, do silly things with the dog like taking her to see Santa at pet supply stores, go to holiday parties, get a nice dinner out, etc.
Not Christmas, but on New Year's Day, DH and I always go on a hike. On our first Christmas together, he bought me a book that had 60 hikes within 60 miles of Chicago. It happened to be really warm that NYD so we did one of the hikes. We have continued the tradition now every year. Since it is Chicago, the weather doesn't always cooperate. Sometimes our hikes have been short! Still fun for us though.
Otherwise, we still do all of the typical things even though we don't have kids, i.e. put up a tree, go to a Christmas market, drive around and look at lights.
For Thanksgiving, we are almost always on vacation so we don't really celebrate it. This year, we will be around though.
Post by crashgizmo on Nov 22, 2014 12:31:54 GMT -5
Interestingly enough, there are no children on my side of the family and haven't been since my brother and I were kids, so all of our traditions are adult-like, I suppose. On Christmas, we play Trivial Pursuit during the day and drink a lot. DH and I put our Christmas decorations up the day after Christmas and have appetizers for dinner. My mom and I always watch the Dog Show on Thanksgiving while my dad and DH BBQ the turkey outside.
We do more gifts because of DS (only grandkid on both sides for the last five years) but otherwise do the same thing. My family is not religious so we focus a ton on the food. Then there is fun drinking , board games, walks outside to look at lights, more food. If anything I thought holidays were easier and more relaxed before kids. Now I can't drink as much and can't relax like before.
Post by RoxMonster on Nov 22, 2014 14:03:56 GMT -5
H and I have our own traditions we've started since being married. We just put our tree up last night, and every year when we do this, we sip hot cocoa, put on XMas music, and reminisce about all the ornaments as we put them on (many were given to us by people we love and many are from our past travels).
We try to watch one Christmas movie per week from around now up until Christmas. I think Home Alone will be first on the list this year.
We go all out with putting up outside lights and find that fun--to acquire more lights each year (those things are damn expensive!) On Christmas Eve, we pile into the car with our dog, sip coffee, and drive around looking at the lights in the fancy neighborhoods in town (we also go through our town's Festival of Lights, which is pretty impressive). The last two years, we spent Christmas Day just us two and did Christmas with family on the weekend after. We made a huge feast for ourselves and just lazed about in pajamas all day.
I don't feel like I am missing anything at all around the holidays being childfree. I still really love this time of year and we get to do fun things with our families and start traditions as our own little family.
In honor of @mrschicken and tillie in the confessions thread, and for my own benefit too...a question for you non-parents...what do you do to make the holidays (winter holidays or any other special days) special?
Xmas tips particularly welcome!
Whatever the f... hell we want!!!!
That's the awesome part, if we want to travel we do. If we want to stay home and drink mimosas, we do. When we lived in Florida and had no family coming into town we usually would go for a nice Christmas morning run with some other DINK's that we're friends with. I will cook a nice (but small) meal for us and we usually just watch football and drink all day.
This year since we don't have any family coming or any friends to invite over we'll probably sleep in, I'll go for my normal run, DH will cook a big breakfast, exchange gifts and then go for a hike and then drink.
Decorate the house and play music Bake goodies Get together with friends Spend time with family (no kids on my side, lots on MH's side; it's fun to get thoughtful gifts for them and our friends' kids and to see them get excited) And we take a trip every year right after Christmas
Forgot - our big Christmas party! Apps, booze, ugly sweaters
There haven't been children in either of our families since we were children... So really, I have no clue how people who do have children even celebrate.
My favorite holiday day traditions include drinking, family poker nights, parties, eating excellent food, and putting up treasured but not kid-friendly decorations.
Thanks for starting this @shoegal! I love all the ideas. I hate how curmudgeonly this holiday season is making me feel.
So far, we are making a massive thanksgiving meal for just the two of us. Our efforts to invite people over have come up empty. Maybe we'll drive up to Yosemite and do dinner on Friday.
We will decorate the on the 8th (the day after my birthday.). I'm attempting to plan a birthday get together, but it sucks to hear so many people say they have holiday parties/Christmas parties/football commitments :/
Christmas we will probably go over to MIL's to watch the kids open up their presents.
For NYE we meet up with our friends at 2 pm, have a glorious time, tumble into a cab at 7, and go home to take and bake pizza before we pass out on the couch at 8.
We have always done everything people with kids do (well, except for Santa visits!). We'll drive around to see the best lights, we go to an old movie theater to see White Christmas every year, we go downtown to see the Macy's windows, we bake, etc.
Decorating: we pick a Friday night, get a few bottles of wine and put up the trees and decorate the house.
Christmas Parade: we go downtown a little early, get a few drinks, then go watch the parade. Afterwards we go to dinner. This year two other couples are joining us.
Christmas events: we go to Biltmore every year and go downtown to the festival of trees.
Christmas morning: we make mimosas, open presents, have a special breakfast and enjoy the time together, before we have to deal with family.
Post by sarapocalypse on Nov 22, 2014 15:54:40 GMT -5
We usually spend Christmas with family (traveling 5ish hours) but we spend NYE just me and DH. We typically get a party tray from Chick Fil A and a bottle or 2 of really good champagne. Party!!
We visit family, drink lots of alcohol, eat lots of good food, put up a tree and let the ki--, I mean, dogs tear open their gifts. Our dogs are the kids of our family and my parents spoil the crap out of them. We are nutty dog people though. I really want a pic of them with Santa lol.
Post by pantsparty on Nov 22, 2014 16:07:01 GMT -5
I love our holidays! I don't get the whole "holidays aren't as special without kids." Our holidays are AWESOME! We watch tons of Christmas movies (my H rather begrudgingly, LOL). We usually check out a few holiday events. This year we have Universal passes, so we'll probably go some time before Christmas. Dana Point has a lights festival we want to check out. We usually host either Christmas Eve or Day with friends and their kids. And we love being lazy Christmas morning, I always make a casserole the night before and we make mimosas and hang out.
Basically, during the holidays we're kids ourselves. That can drink booze. LOL.
ddi741 - Are you talking about Biltmore Estate? Do you live near?
Yes, about an hour and a half away. We're season pass holders and go up a few times a year
Oh! We're only 30 minutes away. We use to have season passes too but we used it way too much and it got old lol. I loved going to see the flowers in the spring and seeing all the lights during Christmas!
We do the same thing for Christmas we would with kids. Trees, presents, etc. The only difference is on Christmas Day H and I sleep in, spend the day in our pjs, and drink a boat load of wine while watching Christmas movies. Thanksgiving/Christmas Eve were are with my parents/siblings/nephew.
We usually go to Florida in Nov/Dec to see my parents--I love the holiday lighted boat parades, but this hear we are going Up North to see FIL. We haven't seen snow in 10 years, so we are going to TRY and make the best of it....hang with friends, we've done Friendsgiving before, we usually do Christmas with the nieces and my sister. We do trips overnight and/or day trips for light displays and holiday events. There's a big display near Austin we are going to meet nieces to see that this year. We been to the Natchitoches, LA light festival many, many times. ---the festival filmed in Steel Magnolias. I love that town so much. www.christmasfestival.com/
Our HOA does an awesome light contest and we just got our new golf cart, so I foresee lots of night light cruises in the neighborhood.
We spend them with family and friends? I have never thought that they were less special or devoid of tradition because we don't have children.
I'm not insinuating that, just curious to specifically hear from traditions that don't include "kid stuff."
Take out Santa and the stupid elf on the shelf and whatever else is trending on mommy boards on Pinterest nowadays, and I'm pretty sure our traditions are no different from what they'd be with kids. We eat a traditional turkey dinner with family and friends on thanksgiving, and have a nice meal and open presents while sitting around a tree with family on Christmas, and after eating we eat lots of Christmas cookies. These are nice, traditional holidays.
And in fact, on the holidays we spend with my family, kids (my sister's)are there. But really, it isn't any different tradition-wise from when we spend a childless holiday at my in-laws'.
I find this discussion really odd, honestly. Most holiday traditions are age-neutral