It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year - Traditions

 

Woooo a Christmas Link-up!

I am participating in Sarah and Victoria's Christmas link-up:  
It's the Most Wonderful Time of The Year! 

Today's theme is Traditions!

So fun fact: I am Lithuanian! And with that, we have all sorts of interesting Christmas Eve Traditions. Christmas Eve we call Kūčios (pronounced koochus). We celebrate the night Jesus was born as opposed to the day.  It is traditionally a time where everyone comes together for a big meal with no meat, dairy or hot food. We used to do a big fish dinner but it became too much for my Grammy to put together so now we just do a lot of finger foods.

The Christmas Tree is usually decorated with homemade straw ornaments. Since natural grass straw would go bad every year, my Grammy's twist on this is to make the ornaments out of plastic straws (like for drinking as opposed to using hay). This way she is able to re-use them every year!

 

Another Kūčios tradition we have is to break bread with every member of the family. Two of my great aunts are nuns and every year they get the holy bread blessed and send it to us to use. We each take a piece of holy bread and find each member of the family and wish them a Merry Christmas! While you take a piece of their bread, they take a piece of your bread! With 20-30 of us you easily get through the whole bread!

Linksmų Kalėdų!!
(Merry Christmas)

This has always been my favorite holiday and I can't wait for it this year! Since Ryan and I have been dating for 6 years he is a pro at this point and an honorary Lithuanian! Haha!