OP, perhaps you could invite other families over for Christmas or Christmas Eve dinner. We have always lived far from family so we have often spent holidays with other families that don't live near extended family. Maybe even a friend of your kids. Then your boys would have someone to hang out with.

1443 you forgot to mention that you do all of this while driving an electric car, or maybe even a bicycle, so as to limit your carbon footprint.

But seriously, you start making holiday pies in October?

When my siblings and I were teenagers my parents handed over Christmas dinner to us. We were given a budget and the family cookbooks and told to make it work. We had to decide on the menu, bake the desserts, make the dinner the whole shebang. It was empowering to be trusted with this. And it was great adulthood training. We were proud of it too, but it wasn't perfect ( I thought you were supposed to baste with water and just used the squirted from the sink to "baste" the turkey)

14:43 - food and being thankful! I am in YOUR camp PP!

A cruise vacation works for us.

Those sound like lovely traditions, pp. BTW, do you have teenagers or college kids?

Anonymous wrote:So, pp, how do you make Christmas special?

For ourselves, we cook traditional meals on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. In the month before I go around to the farmers' markets and collect the meats, because I like to support local farmers (all year, but particularly during the holidays as they're heading into the lean winter months). I bake and freeze pies ahead of time, and anyone in the family is welcome to join me in making them. Often a friend comes over to help and we share the pies we make. Along these lines, we visit pick-your-own farms through the fall for apples and peaches and I can treats for the holidays (typically cranberry sauce and mincemeat); the kids are more interested in helping prepare and put out the dinner when they have been involved in acquiring the ingredients. We limit the amount we spend for each other, so we also spend some time trying to creatively acquire or make gifts that fall within the defined limits. We also go to events around DC, like another PP mentioned, at the Kennedy Center or embassies. I really like the Revels performance at GW, and the sing-a-long aspect can make it fun (albeit a bit corny) for all ages.

For our friends and neighbors, we have an open-door policy for all of our holiday activities at home. Cookie baking, tree trimming, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners. Our kids are expected to be around for the big ones (they're excused from baking) but their friends are also always welcome. We have a late Christmas Eve tradition, where we eat and sing carols until midnight, so people sometimes stop by after they go to church (or just later in the evening after their dinner). We also go to events that friends invite us to: a holiday house tour, a potluck dinner, and a fair trade gift fair are the few that happen nearly every year.

In terms of our additional charitable behavior around the holidays, we make sure to donate any winter items that we've outgrown early in the fall so that it can be distributed by the time its needed. We purchase gifts for a family at our local battered women's shelter (the kids really like having input into what they think the children in these families would like) and we make additional monetary donations to the Capital Food Bank. We also donate bedding and toiletries to the local churches who have a rotating program to house the homeless through the winter months. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day we take food to Town Hall for the police officers and public works guys who are on duty, and we donate to the annual fund for their holiday bonuses.

Our family traditions center around sharing food and around being grateful for what we have. We always say a version of grace that thanks all the people who grew and transported the food we're eating and remembers those less fortunate. This is true all year, but we really emphasize how lucky we are to have a warm safe home to celebrate in.

So, pp, how do you make Christmas special?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Volunteer to help those in need through your church, a food bank or the Salvation Army.

This is funny. I come from a family of real do-gooders. They're at the soup kitchens every Friday through freezing rain and blizzards, etc., etc. Anyway, you should hear how the "real" do-gooders make fun of and resent the "one timers" who come out on Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Really? That is truly ironic. I guess they're not such good people after all. Anyone who would mock another for being moved by a volunteer spirit ANYTIME and for ANY REASON is not a good person.

Ha. You must be the family who shows up one or two days a year and expects that to get you a gold star and a front table at the volunteers' banquet.

Again: only people who themselves care about getting recognition at "the volunteers' banquet" would ascribe such negative motives to other people.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Volunteer to help those in need through your church, a food bank or the Salvation Army.

This is funny. I come from a family of real do-gooders. They're at the soup kitchens every Friday through freezing rain and blizzards, etc., etc. Anyway, you should hear how the "real" do-gooders make fun of and resent the "one timers" who come out on Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Really? That is truly ironic. I guess they're not such good people after all. Anyone who would mock another for being moved by a volunteer spirit ANYTIME and for ANY REASON is not a good person.

Oh, they're terrible: 40 years of volunteering through the icy snowy northeastern winters, feeding homeless, working with elderly, always welcoming the poor and blind into our home, tithing more than asked by the church, spending vacations on missions to Haiti (before it was popular to do so), teaching for no pay to cover the cost of one student's tuition. You must be right; they must be bad people.

They may be generous with their time and money, but they do sound miserly in spirit. It's one thing to "do good" toward the poor downtrodden masses unlike you, it's another to have compassion and appreciation for the people who surround you every day. It's rare that "sanctimonious" is properly used on DCUM, but it certainly applies to the people you describe who behave in an (I assume) Christian manner only than feel entitled to mock and judge others who they believe do less than they do.

Well if they're bad, I wish I could be so bad. I'd love to know what you've done lately in terms of sharing your time, money, vacations, holidays, dining table with the truly poor.

So you can judge me? Case in point.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Volunteer to help those in need through your church, a food bank or the Salvation Army.

This is funny. I come from a family of real do-gooders. They're at the soup kitchens every Friday through freezing rain and blizzards, etc., etc. Anyway, you should hear how the "real" do-gooders make fun of and resent the "one timers" who come out on Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Really? That is truly ironic. I guess they're not such good people after all. Anyone who would mock another for being moved by a volunteer spirit ANYTIME and for ANY REASON is not a good person.

Ha. You must be the family who shows up one or two days a year and expects that to get you a gold star and a front table at the volunteers' banquet.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Volunteer to help those in need through your church, a food bank or the Salvation Army.

This is funny. I come from a family of real do-gooders. They're at the soup kitchens every Friday through freezing rain and blizzards, etc., etc. Anyway, you should hear how the "real" do-gooders make fun of and resent the "one timers" who come out on Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Really? That is truly ironic. I guess they're not such good people after all. Anyone who would mock another for being moved by a volunteer spirit ANYTIME and for ANY REASON is not a good person.

Oh, they're terrible: 40 years of volunteering through the icy snowy northeastern winters, feeding homeless, working with elderly, always welcoming the poor and blind into our home, tithing more than asked by the church, spending vacations on missions to Haiti (before it was popular to do so), teaching for no pay to cover the cost of one student's tuition. You must be right; they must be bad people.

They may be generous with their time and money, but they do sound miserly in spirit. It's one thing to "do good" toward the poor downtrodden masses unlike you, it's another to have compassion and appreciation for the people who surround you every day. It's rare that "sanctimonious" is properly used on DCUM, but it certainly applies to the people you describe who behave in an (I assume) Christian manner only than feel entitled to mock and judge others who they believe do less than they do.

Well if they're bad, I wish I could be so bad. I'd love to know what you've done lately in terms of sharing your time, money, vacations, holidays, dining table with the truly poor.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Volunteer to help those in need through your church, a food bank or the Salvation Army.

This is funny. I come from a family of real do-gooders. They're at the soup kitchens every Friday through freezing rain and blizzards, etc., etc. Anyway, you should hear how the "real" do-gooders make fun of and resent the "one timers" who come out on Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Really? That is truly ironic. I guess they're not such good people after all. Anyone who would mock another for being moved by a volunteer spirit ANYTIME and for ANY REASON is not a good person.

Oh, they're terrible: 40 years of volunteering through the icy snowy northeastern winters, feeding homeless, working with elderly, always welcoming the poor and blind into our home, tithing more than asked by the church, spending vacations on missions to Haiti (before it was popular to do so), teaching for no pay to cover the cost of one student's tuition. You must be right; they must be bad people.

They may be generous with their time and money, but they do sound miserly in spirit. It's one thing to "do good" toward the poor downtrodden masses unlike you, it's another to have compassion and appreciation for the people who surround you every day. It's rare that "sanctimonious" is properly used on DCUM, but it certainly applies to the people you describe who behave in an (I assume) Christian manner only than feel entitled to mock and judge others who they believe do less than they do.

*to then

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Volunteer to help those in need through your church, a food bank or the Salvation Army.

This is funny. I come from a family of real do-gooders. They're at the soup kitchens every Friday through freezing rain and blizzards, etc., etc. Anyway, you should hear how the "real" do-gooders make fun of and resent the "one timers" who come out on Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Really? That is truly ironic. I guess they're not such good people after all. Anyone who would mock another for being moved by a volunteer spirit ANYTIME and for ANY REASON is not a good person.

Oh, they're terrible: 40 years of volunteering through the icy snowy northeastern winters, feeding homeless, working with elderly, always welcoming the poor and blind into our home, tithing more than asked by the church, spending vacations on missions to Haiti (before it was popular to do so), teaching for no pay to cover the cost of one student's tuition. You must be right; they must be bad people.

They may be generous with their time and money, but they do sound miserly in spirit. It's one thing to "do good" toward the poor downtrodden masses unlike you, it's another to have compassion and appreciation for the people who surround you every day. It's rare that "sanctimonious" is properly used on DCUM, but it certainly applies to the people you describe who behave in an (I assume) Christian manner only than feel entitled to mock and judge others who they believe do less than they do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:but a lot of what I do is selfish for myself.

Finally. Someone who grasps the true meaning of Christmas.

11:01 here. Hopefully you understood what I was saying, and aren't mocking my use of the word "selfish". I guess I meant that I want to enjoy the holidays as much as anyone else. So if I can do things that make me happy as well as others, then that's goodness. It doesn't all have to be hard work for others who might or might not appreciate it, unless it brings you joy and happiness.

Ignore scrooge. We know exactly what you mean.