I'm not religiously Christian, but I am culturally Christian. So generally, my (immediate nuclear) family has the day off for both Christmas Eve and Christmas. (My dad, mom, brother, brother's wife, my partner.)
We tend to get together for lunch, and then (historically) we've decorated the tree. (At my parents' house. My partner is even less Christian than I am, and isn't interested in this -- she comes over for dinner afterwards; I am expecting that my brother and his wife (and new kid!) will start some kind of tradition of their own, except they're still living in a communal co-op that's technically owned by someone else, so they may stick with Dedham instead for awhile.)
We decorate the tree (or, used to), and then decamp for the Unitarian Chrismas Eve carols and candlelight service, which still tends to stick to the King James version of the Christmas story, and reliably makes me very happy in the light and the awe and the everything. And then we go home (sometimes keeping the candles lit), and Calluna shows for dinner.
(And then we sometimes go to an Episcopal service, which makes me more of an anthropologist, so it's less fun.)
And then Christmas itself is a lot more filled with Present Opening and cooking and having 9-11 people over for dinner and so on, so it's busier and less filled with light.
Part of this is the layers of accreted tradition that are a) still going, or b) have changed but which we acknowledge having changed.
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I'm not religiously Christian, but I am culturally Christian. So generally, my (immediate nuclear) family has the day off for both Christmas Eve and Christmas. (My dad, mom, brother, brother's wife, my partner.)
We tend to get together for lunch, and then (historically) we've decorated the tree. (At my parents' house. My partner is even less Christian than I am, and isn't interested in this -- she comes over for dinner afterwards; I am expecting that my brother and his wife (and new kid!) will start some kind of tradition of their own, except they're still living in a communal co-op that's technically owned by someone else, so they may stick with Dedham instead for awhile.)
We decorate the tree (or, used to), and then decamp for the Unitarian Chrismas Eve carols and candlelight service, which still tends to stick to the King James version of the Christmas story, and reliably makes me very happy in the light and the awe and the everything. And then we go home (sometimes keeping the candles lit), and Calluna shows for dinner.
(And then we sometimes go to an Episcopal service, which makes me more of an anthropologist, so it's less fun.)
And then Christmas itself is a lot more filled with Present Opening and cooking and having 9-11 people over for dinner and so on, so it's busier and less filled with light.
Part of this is the layers of accreted tradition that are a) still going, or b) have changed but which we acknowledge having changed.