One tradition we have it may not be unusual to some but we make homemade apple butter the day before Christmas. I know it may not be much but it's what we do.
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Turduckin - semi-boneless turkey that is stuffed with a deboned chicken that is stuffed with deboned duck breast. A layer of Cajun dressing is placed in between each bird to create six flavorful layers of stuffing and poultry.

Yes, it's very very very very yummy!
Source(s):
http://www.ask.com/bar?q=Turduckin&page=1&qsrc=0&ab=0&title...

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Every year on Christmas the grandmother of my family always makes baked beans. Everyone loves her famous baked beans. Sorry, I don't know the recipe. One year she left them in the microwave and remembered that she did after everyone was finished dinner. Nobody was hungry anymore and this was so disappointing because we enjoy her famous baked beans so much.

My family has now made a tradition to check the microwave before we start Christmas dinner so that we don't miss out on those delicious beans. Last Christmas she left them in the oven instead and we all forgot to check there.
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When I was six, I used to hang around the kitchen when mom was baking so I could lick the bowls, but that Christmas it clued on me that in spite of all cooking going on, there was not much sweet stuff being made other than cranberry sauce... all the shortbread cookies and Norwegian fruit cake had been made days earlier, so I said, "Hey mom, if Christmas is Jesus's birthday, then how come we don't have a birthday cake?"

She stopped, looked at me funny, and laughed, and said, "Well then I guess we should have one, shouldn't we". ("Yipee", I thought, "bowls to lick!") She noted how she was already very busy making the meal, so it had to be something fast and easy (*after* she got back from making a quick call to her friend in the church to say, "guess what my son just said!"), so it was a rectangular one-layer cake.

In a couple years it evolved into a family tradition where a one-layer rectangular cake with red, white, and green icing was whipped up, usually something like a pineapple upside-down with icing-sugar/yogurt frosting served out of the pan and topped with several boxes of birthday candles carefully placed by us kids in a long and careful process (usually dominated by my sister) to form the numbers of the year representing what we figured to be His age.

Then, at desert time, the candles would be lit, the lights would go down (it was a lot of candles and was very bright) and we'd sing Happy Birthday to Jesus. Then all four kids would stand around and try to put it out with one huff, and puff, to blowww the candles out, and then we'd all go "Happy Birthday Jesus... yeah!".

The catch was that my parents expected His birthday present to be that we would be nicer to each other and not hellion rats during the school break between Christmas and New Years, which mom would sometimes invoke from another room with a, "HEY! Remember your birthday present!" (And yes... we caught the double meaning of how it could also imply the birthday presents we'd be hoping for on our own birthdays.)

Even to this day, warm from the meal's wine, it gets a good group reaction for everyone to pick up a toast and sing Happy Birthday to the Being who's birthday it is, after all, the reason why we're gathered.
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A congealed black cherry and Coca-cola salad. My aunt made it one year for our after-Christmas dinner we always had the day after at my grandmother's house. It was so good, it became a tradition in our family, and was passed down by my mother to me. Here's the recipe:

2 packages black cherry Jello
8 oz. cream cheese
1 cup pecans (has to be pecans, or it just doesn't taste right)
1 can bing cherries
16 oz. of Coca-Cola

Soften cream cheese and mash up with a fork
Drain cherries, reserving the juice, and cut each cherry in half (this is seriously tedious work, but it is necessary for the traditional dish)
Mix the cherry juice with water to make 2 cups and heat to boiling.
Dissolve Jello in hot water and pour over the mashed up cream cheese. Mix together as well as you can with a fork, breaking the cream cheese up into tiny pieces.
Add two cups of Coca-cola in place of the cold water, mix well, and place into the refrigerator until soft set.
When Jello is soft set, the cream cheese will have settled to the bottom. Don't worry about this, because you're about to fix it.
Add the cut cherries and the pecans and mix very well. Smooth the top with a spoon, and set back into the refrigerator to set.

That's it! It's delicious, if a little expensive to make, but you will get raves from it.
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I've begun making a maple and clove ham for the holidays that my family loves and we have a little running joke.

Last year, Ryan wanted to make a 'fancy' dinner for the holidays, and he was making pine nut stuffing and Cornish game hens and he was using the fancy crystal and the china and tablecloths and all the frilly stuff that goes with a 'fancy' dinner.

It was the first holiday dinner for a rather large family that he was taking on by himself that year, sort of a passing of the torch from his parents to him (he's a 40 year old man!), but it was the first year he would be 'the man' of the house in his home with everyone coming to his new family (me and my kids), instead of being his parents running the show.

So he was stressing over this, and he's a bit OCD. So to try to take some pressure off of him, I offered to help by making a signature dish of mine, a special type of mashed potatoes with sour cream, bacon, onions, cheese, and spices. He turned around and responded, "I don't want to serve trashy potatoes at my dinner."

I was being a woman that day, so I sat there and tried not to cry. My little lip quivered and I sniffled, and a little tear slid from my eye.

He felt like a total ass.

So now, he asks me to make him 'trashy potatoes' for every fancy meal we have...LOL

So this holiday season, I would imagine we're going to have trashy potatoes and maple ham, and somehow, I think trashy potatoes are going to become our family's 'holiday tradition'.
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I was 18 when I got married, and decided I would do Christmas Dinner that year, just to prove to myself I could. We invited the entire family, aunts, uncles, granparents and in-laws. I slaved all day on the turkey, side dishes, homemade cranberry sauce, etc.

Everything smelled wonderful. The turkey dinner was an exact copy of Norman Rockwell's painting. When dinner came around, my 19 year old husband did the honors and carved the turkey with the new knives I'd gotten as a wedding gift. He cut into it and hit something. I thought, "Yeah, OK it's the bone." He struggled to get through the turkey.

After what seemed like forever, he opened up the turkey to reveal the bag of giblets, liver and neck. I was horrified to say the least! To make matters worse, I dropped the top of the cream of mushroom soup can in the Green Bean Casserole! Everyone had a good laugh on me. To this day, whoever cooks the turkey either leaves something in it for old times sake, or replays the whole story over and over again. I will never live that one down.

There is hope for the culinary impaired. Surprisingly, I went on to open a wholesale bakery and catering company years later. I still make the turkey and the green bean casserole, but without the secret ingredients. I almost forgot, we're still married even after that 1st Christmas Dinner disaster!
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We have a very strange little tradition..almost similar to Spatulas...My Grandmother is a fan of all holidays so she likes to hide something little from them... i.e. Thanksgiving, 4th of July, Easter, New Years, Halloween and Christmas of course. Last year we found candy corn in the center of the turkey, a plastic easter egg in the punch, a plastic firework was in the marshmellow fruit salad, a turkey coin was buried under the olives, there was a happy new year coin taped to the bottom of my grandpas plate and last but not least a plastic santa in the apple pie. Whoever finds the most things gets a special goodie bag she puts together. It's always interesting to find where she stuffs things every year. I'm, 20 and I still look forward to finding things, it's exciting.
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Watch this family having Christmas dinner http://movieplugger.com/christmas-dinner-traditions_1.php
Source(s):
http://movieplugger.com/christmas-dinner-traditions_1.php

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Festivus
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My family is vietnamese so for dinner its double the feast!!

I cook the turkey, potatoes, ham, green bean casserole.
Basically, the american spread!

My mom makes the spring rolls, egg rolls, crepes, lemongrass soup, and fried rice!

Its great to have two cultures celebrating two traditions!
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Starting your own family tradition is very important! Cultural and more personal family traditions usually serve the purpose of telling and remembering an important story either in your family's history or in a culture's history. such as the telling of Jesus' birth or the telling of the Jews mass exodus out of egypt. Starting your own tradition that involves a bit of family history would be really exciting for future generations. you can write down an interesting piece of family history maybe about the strugles of your grandparents to come to america or maybe a specific moral that you want passed on if you can link it with a food perhaps an ethnic choice from your familys home country that would help to connect you and your family with the past at least once a year when you sat down for dinner. Many families used to have there own specific family traditions but this is not really the case anymore. For my family since we are not particularly religious we take christmas as a time to honor life, and be appreciative for all living creatures on earth, so once a year (sometimes twice as we may do this on thanksgiving as well) we eat a completely vegan feast. The idea is to make the sacrifice of eating any animal products to help teach the children and to remind ourselves of how sacred life is, to think about the lives that were sacrificed for our sustenance. We have learned some really wonderful non-meat recipes and it helps us eat healthy as a family at least once in a while. REspect for life is a big theme in our family, the idea is to find something that makes sense to your family that helps reinforce a story or a philosphy or moral that will remind everyone once a year so as to keep you on track.

I recomend the vegan yum yum website as she has some great ideas listed under "thanksgiving" for a feast that did not involve taking the life of any animal.
Source(s):
http://veganyumyum.com/index.php?s=thanksgiving&searchbutton=Go!

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