Christmas Topic!

Well, Christmas is not quite a widespread celebration in Russia(compared to the New Year), and it happens on 7th January. Thus I won’t be doing anything special during these days. And, because I’m sooner an atheist than a christian, the same applies to the 07.01.2019…
However as it still is such a important day abroad I wish everybody merry Christmas :grinning:.
P.S. I’m not part of any team and just felt like using this opportunity to be the first one to write something here this year :grin:

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Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! I posted a bit about my Christmas in the other thread as part of the Winter Festival, but it’s nice to read about others days! This topic hasn’t been used in a while it seems, but it’s nice to see it back!

Its a lot different to experience Christmas in Japan vs. Canada. It’s my second year here now having Christmas and its very much like a couples holiday than a family one. But that makes sense, as New Years the the huge family one in Japan.

I don’t know where the tradition of fried chicken came from, but yesterday night my partner brought home one piece of fried chicken for us both from the convenience store, Hehe. It’s not quite a KFC feast as I hoped, but it’s good and I was happy none the less!

It was a good Christmas Eve and a good Christmas day! I missed my Mom and sister a lot, but it was also relaxing too to enjoy a quiet Christmas. Now soon I’ll be thrust into the wild world that is Japanese New Years and the rush associated with it… Doubly since I’m working at our shrine. Thankfully our shrine is a smaller local one, so it doesn’t get too wild, but it’s still a very busy time of year!

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This is a relatively boring Christmas for me, but that’s because we didn’t quite celebrate it with the extended family as we usually did during Noche Buena. My mom felt like cooking Korean food for reasons :stuck_out_tongue:

They were tasty, but I was also reminded that… Kapampangan cuisine is crazy good holy crap. Ate Sipo Egg (mixed vegetables and quail eggs in a creamy sauce) for lunch yesterday and had Bringhe (a variant of paella usually served as side dish) just earlier. They were :amorous:

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(Er, I think we’re supposed to post in here for the winter festival, rather than in that topic, right?)

First, my family has a bit of a tradition of having a Ukrainian Christmas Eve dinner on, well, Christmas Eve (we used to wait for Christmas Eve on the Julian calendar for that particular feast, but with my older brother moving out and our generally just not having as many family members around after we moved across the country we’ve rescheduled to regular Christmas Eve), so yesterday my brother and I helped Dad make pierogi, and we had a meal with cheesy potato-stuffed pierogi, prune pierogi, salted garlic cloves, and a few other things as usual. It was delicious!

Then, today was Christmas itself. Not much happened for most of the morning since my brother’s a late sleeper - I ended up spending some time chatting and playing Smash Bros with some online friends - but once he was up, we opened presents (I got a T-shirt with a stupid pun on it, because my dad and I both love terrible puns and it’s become a bit of a tradition for him to find silly T-shirts for me since I’m never really sure what to ask for now that I’m making money and buying things I want on my own, and my older brother gave me a copy of Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5+2.5 remix and a copy of Final Fantasy X/X2 HD remaster.) After that, at 2 PM we invited my uncle who lives nearby to our Christmas dinner - prime rib, with scalloped potatoes as a side. (Honestly, apart from having family around, the food is probably my favorite part of Christmas, even better than the Christmas music.)

After that, we all went upstairs to watch a movie together; we watched My Brother Where Art Thou, which my older brother got as a present for our dad. It was pretty fun; a silly comedy with lots of music in it.

Finally, after that was over, we went back down to have some ice cream before my uncle left and we split up for the evening.

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So I know the topic says to post what we did on the 25th of December, but where I come from, the celebration really starts on the eve of christmas. This year, I spent it with my in-laws, and it was pretty quiet but pretty close and fun as well :ahaha:

We had waaaay too much food for Christmas eve dinner, which is kind of a given for celebrations like these :yahaha: My wife also made an amazing cake for the evening!

It was a chocolate hazelnut cake, topped with Kisses and Ferrero~ After passing the time just hanging around and talking, we went to opening our presents~

I got some joycon grips!

And a swimming cap! Me and my wife have been getting into swimming lately as our main form of exercise, and I’ve been wanting a new one for a while :umu: these also have the same initials as my name, so that’s an added bonus.

With the eve done, and after giving ourselves a nice rest, we hit the pool on the morning of the 25th to try these babies out~

Fits pretty well, and I like that the shape doesn’t interfere with my ears :happy: with our morning workout done, just a bit of rest and preparation for the next event: the family gathering! It’s kind of a tradition to spend lunch on the 25th with mt dad’s side of the family… which is a pretty big family considering he has 6 siblings :yahaha: and such was our lunch

Waaay too much food again orz but yeah just usual family gathering of eating, talking, and some Smash with my cousins, followed by some more gift giving!

Picture is me with my dad enjoying our gift to him :ahaha: well after all gifts were given and goodbyes were said, we just retreated to a relaxing night with a light dinner and me and my wife watching some Durarara

And that’s my christmas celebration :happy: just the usual family stuff but it’s moments like this that I treasure greatly. Hope you all enjoyed your holidays, too!

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My Christmas was a really good one! It’s not celebrated so much in Japan, but I did have a fun time!

As I was asleep, Santa came and dropped off a few gifts for me! I woke up to a nicely wrapped present beside my pillow.

I opened it, and it was a cardboard-made Switch! It was really cute, and I actually cherish it a lot, Hehe. There’s a lot of inside jokes that led to its creation :laughing:

But when I pulled the front screen tab on the cardboard switch, it said “under your bed” - under my bed!? And I looked and… A big santa bag!!

I opened and… I got a switch and splatoon 2!!! :sob: As well as a screen cover and joycon covers with grips too!

It was more than I expected ;; and then after, I got some lovely gifts from my friends! @Aspirety got me a 1 year subscription for nintendo online too!! I was so thankful

I’m so thankful for all the love and support from my chosen family.

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I shit you not it literally came from KFC. They used it as a marketing tactic for expats living in Japan who couldn’t get turkey for Christmas and it just clicked, I guess? Coming from a country where every fast food has fried chicken, spending December in Japan is a joy because I can suddenly get the good stuff from convenience stores~

You must bring some on our next PH Kaza Meetup ;_; (at least, whenever that is)

It’s funny how I find the cardboard switch more entertaining than the actual switch XD

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My Christmas was pretty laid-back. My immediate family and I spent the day in pajamas, enjoying our gifts. My personal favorites were a copy of Pop Team Epic on Blu-ray from my parents and a heated blanket from my stepbrother and his wife. And sweaters. I got like 5 sweaters, no joke. :shock:

So it was nothing special, but it was nice just spending a day with family and relaxing.

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This year’s christmas is pretty lax because my merrier cousins and aunts were not around. Our feast is a bit of everything from lasagna to shabu-shabu to morcon. There’s also plenty of ham and sweets! (the usual cake, leche flan, ube and fruit salads, which I’ve been eating for the past three days nonstop, they never seem to run out gah).

My sister made fun of my brother, my brother ate everything, my youngest cousin sliced some oranges. The usual. We hung around until 12 eating and watching The Good Place. Real simple.

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My Christmas and Christmas Eve was pretty intense but I made it that way so…

Recently I’ve been trying to read through the Old Testament of the Bible. I started last month and because I was making a lot of progress, I figured I’d make it a goal to finish before Christmas because that’s how the New Testament starts with approximately 400 years between the two. So anyways I ended up reading for over like 9 hours within the last two days which was pretty insane and kinda made it so I couldn’t do anything else but it was fun.
Later at around 7, my siblings came home so we went out to eat with them and then I played some smash with my brother. After 12am I decided it would be a good idea to start work on writing for Crossover Meeting and actually it was a terrible idea. I realized that I forgot to write letters for my family for their gifts so I went to do that and oh it’s 4am now.

After I finally slept I woke up at around 10 and had breakfast and then we opened presents. I got a ton of good stuff this year which I was super surprised about. I got the Planetarian anime + movie set that I really wanted!


My sister also got me, my brother and my dad matching hoodies that have our family name embroidered in the back in Chinese which is super cool. Then finally my sister also gave me a picture frame with my favorite Bible passage, 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, in it. While I haven’t gotten my Kaza secret santa present yet, I definitely look forward to posting that up whenever I get it

After we opened presents we spend most of the afternoon preparing for our relatives and then we had Christmas dinner as normal. I forgot to take pictures of the food actually… :yahaha:

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Outside of the family drama (which there usually is some of since a lot of energy gets spent around the holidays and everyone has a different take on life in the family), I would say it went well! I’ll put more of the Secret Santa information on that topic, but I did receive some very nice gifts that I was able to use right away and thank you very much! XD

That cardboard Switch gave me a very neat idea for something to use for my father’s birthday too and that’s such a “why the heck did I never do something nice like that?” reaction so thanks Bern! :slight_smile:

Christmas Eve was not as busy as it usually can be for the holidays dealing with a lot of last day cleaning as this Christmas was mostly about the immediate family and none of us went overboard with preparing or cooking to exhaustion. We may still go to a pizza place today to celebrate some of what we didn’t do on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day though but that’s not completely decided yet!

As you might have guessed by now, we kept the meals really simple this time around. My mother and I made a very thick chocolate chip pound cake on Christmas Eve, and the meal festivities for Christmas Day included ham, simple mashed potatoes, Cobb’s corn, some crescent rolls, and pineapple casserole. :yumm:

Since I had quite a bit (too much hehe) of that pound cake Christmas Day morning I skipped out on the pumpkin pie dessert after our big lunch.

We ended up giving out gift cards for an upcoming vacation for the most part and I would like to see if there is still a particular outfit my mother would like to buy at a local clothing shop for when she just wants to wear something nice for herself so I don’t think the shopping and gift giving is over yet.

I went for practical items and gifts and received a Philadelphia Eagles winter coat so to help with walking outside assuming it isn’t icy outside during the winter season (I like to walk in the snow <3 ) and also got some mental food/stimulation:

I even tried to get the cat involved in the gifting even though she was more interested in taking it easy by that time:

I hope everyone else enjoyed their holidays as much as they could! :happy:

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OK, living alone I don’t really “do” Christmas, so I expect I had the most mundane holiday of anyone here! It was fine - I enjoy a quiet day TBH.

The only special thing was Christmas lunch as I like to have something I wouldn’t have any other time so it was confit of duck leg in orange/juniper berry sauce with roast potatoes and veg ( oven ready - all I had to do was warm it all up!)

Then spent the rest of the day vegging out slumped in front of the TV

Starting with Ponyo
ponyo

Then quite possibly the least festive thing ever - Akira
akira

And ending the day by sobbing my eyes out with Kanon
kanon

And sipping a fine malt whisky, apart from a couple of phone calls to friends and distant relatives that was my day!

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Dang, your whole post reminded me of the Christmas I spent alone in Japan :uee: I know how tough it is to spend such a holiday alone, so I am glad to see you made the most of it. More power to you!

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I had a really nice and quiet Christmas. It was just me, my husband, and our 2 dogs all day. We keep our celebration pretty small, but we are do decorate a bit. We are both into anime and video games, so that includes some of the Amibos getting Santa hats, and Nendos on the tree.


My favorite new Nendornment this year is Jack Frost. He got rereleased this year, and I was really happy I was able to buy one this round. He works particularly well on the tree. We also had a curious Isabelle watching over the gifts :slight_smile:

This year we started a new tradition of marking the gifts we got from each other as being from Fate’s Santa Alter.

For presents I got some Yuri on Ice stuff and a plushie Zorah Magdros from Monster Hunter! The Yuri on Ice art book is really cool - all of the colored art pieces also feature the under sketch! I wish more art books did that.

We got my dog Gilgamesh a plush piece of meat which he has been proudly prancing around the house with since.

Lancelot, my other dog got two pigs ears. He was only supposed to have one originally, but Gil was too busy protecting the fake meat to care about the real food.

We ended up playing a lot Smash during the rest of the day and then had a slow cooker beef roast for dinner.


Pleasant, calm and quiet :happy: which is everything I could want. We will be going to see each others families over the weekend for Christmas, which is a bit more chaotic - especially since I have a large extended family and the gatherings get pretty chaotic. But it will still be nice as this one of the few times of year I see some of them.

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Hey! I see posts with photos and like, I only have a boring story to tell.

First off, december 25th and 26th have been very boring this year. I was with my family, got up early for breakfast, I was very tired. Early but very a lot of good food for lunch I headed to work on both if these days.

More interesting is Christmas Eve, which is traditional the one that is celebrated here.
It usually Hey! I see posts with photos and like, I only have a boring story to tell.

First off, december 25th and 26th have been very boring this year. I was with my family, got up early for breakfast, I was very tired. Early but very a lot of good food for lunch I headed to work on both if these days.

More interesting is Christmas Eve, which is the one celebrated here.
Not much was happening for a until about 4 pm, which is when my family went to church. I did not join them for that.
When everyone returned I was with my parents, my brother and my grandmother. We had a good feast, that’s about the same each year. A lot of fish on toast. I stuffed my belly a lot.
After that, it’s time for Bescherung, which is the german name for the gift giving. We usually start out with singing a few christmas songs, that my brother plays on the guitar and we sing.
We then exchange gifts. The biggest thing I got this time was a new chair for my room.
After that, my mom usually gets a board game that the 5 of us play for a bit in the night.
Which was a quiz game that also utilized google. It is called know! I think. That was fun. We played until about 11 pm and then my grandmother was driven home by my brother and I went to play some video games for the rest of the night.
Was a good night in general.

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I guess I could say my Christmas went as a three-parter haha~
I spent my 24th/Christmas Eve with my dad’s side of the family, had some dinner and stuff.

Me and my cousin had a bit of a manga exchange/sharing session, had the chance to read his collection of RWBY manga while he had the chance to read some of my random manga (that I borrowed lol).

But that night was very stressful because it was also the very night I tried baking for the first time, and it was a complicated one at that. I tried baking choco cornets. (#japan)

For Christmas day, I went to my mom’s side of the family. Traveled to the province for that, but it was nice that I had time to sleep (during travels) after mixing family stuff with winter festival stuff.

And for the 26th, I hung out with my batchmate from school and one of my other cousins to a local anime convention! Perfect timing to spend the money I got from Christmas.

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So after Christmas I also got a gift from @bionic when we were hanging out with our friends. This is not the Kaza secret santa though. Actually this wasn’t even a gift exchange, he just got us all stuff. So we were hanging out by the bonfire we made and we open up our gifts. The pictures were taken later since bonfire isn’t very easy lighting. So here’s my thought process.

(Actually idk what happened with this picture. There’s absolutely no reason why this was blurry.)
Oh it’s a Switch box. There’s no fricken way he got this for me. It’s heavy though so like what the hell even is this??

And so I open it and…

Lol wtf. So it’s apparently a Minecraft creeper onesie with a bag of water inside for weight to make it seem like it was a switch. We were sleeping over at our friend’s house so I got a chance to try it out and it was actually pretty comfy.

So anyways I finally got my Kaza secret santa gift. I was tracking it for like forever because I needed to get it before I went back to school. And so I opened it along with bionic again.

First was this Nagisa pillow.


I don’t actually know what people do with these things cuz it’s kinda very small… I like it though!

The second was this Yumemi art!


I believe this is the official art from the anime which I really enjoy. I’ll probably find a place to put this in my room somewhere. So yeah, thank you secret santa! I don’t really have an idea who to guess because the package was from a Japanese retailer so it doesn’t really have a trace of the actual purchaser.

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That’s a signed shikishi! I wonder whose autograph it is??

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Komatsu E-ji

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My secret santa goods arrived! We have an awesome Kyousuke ‘Mission Start!’ mug, a Mio glass, a Kyousuke fan, a Mio plush, little Mio and Shiori figurines, and an Index clear file! Thank you so much to whoever prepared this package, they’re awesome! :heart:

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