Laurie - from Canada
Well, if I'm lucky I'll catch a ride with a friend from Ottawa to the GTA (Newmarket). If I'm unlucky, I'll take the crowdy smelly bus. This time I was lucky to and from home. This was also the first Christmas in the history of Christmases in my family that there was not a major fight. Everything else was pretty normal - go to Christmas Eve mass, exchange presents in the morning, go to my aunt's house for dinner and think, "Geeze, I should really give Stacy her Christmas decorations. Well, its too late now. Maybe next year."

Jörn - from Germany
Okay, like said by the fellows from Austria before we rather celebrate christmas eve instead of the christmas day.
At our house I´d like to call it ChristMess:-) For me the 3 prevoius days, where the days of getting the last presents I´d like to give to my parents, my girlfriend and other friends together and to prepare them. This year I found a lot of fun creating my own little gifts, all done by myself instead of buying something. On Christmas Eve we, or at least I, found that I was running out of wrapping paper and the stores where all sold out. Fortunatley Chrsitmas is a time to be friendly and helpfull so I went over to a friends house who still had some wrapping paper left. Then, we decorate the tree... all the rest of the house was already decorated. My dad uses to decorate the house and the garden one day after he took of the Halloween decorations. In the late afternoon we finally get a little bit more silent. Getting dressed for the evening and stuff. Arround 6 pm my brother comes over along with my grandparents and we have dinner. Also, no traditional dinner like having turkey each year. My mother is doing something new for the main dish each year, as a starter we usually have a soup or smoked salmon. By the way, it´s not very smart to disturp my mother while she prepares dinner ( which includes the time from 11am to 6 pm ). After dinner we wrap out presents and enjoy ourselves talking etc. This year I went to church on 11pm for the first time. We never did in our family but since I spended the rest of christmas eve with my girlfriends family we went and it was a nice new expierience to me.
The first day of christmas we start with lunch arround 12 or 12:30 at my grandmothers house, also we are alsways still quiet full from dinner the night before. In the afternoon there is always a big family meeting with all uncles, aunts and cousins...thats always the most fun since we hardly get together during the whole year and thats the way the finish christmas. The "boxing day" we use to rest and relax from the stressfull time:-)
I hope you all had a wonderfull christmas time this year in whatever way you celebarted it. I enjoyed it a lot this year.
All the best and happy new year,- Jörn:-)

Jessica - from Canada
For the first time I went away to visit my Dad's family, who I had seen in about 11 years. Other then that it was a fairly normal Christmas, I'm flying to Nova Scotia tomorrow (Jan 3rd) to see my parents and the rest of my family. So all and all a Christmas for my history books!

Gill - from Canada
We always go on a vacation. Just me, Karen and my parents. It's always lovely and nicer than presents for us because we have soooo many lovely Christmas memories, photos, and videos.

Elisabeth - from Austria
In Austria, the "Christkind", some sort of "magical" equivalent of the little child Jesus, brings the presents on the 24th of December. Usually during the afternoon or early evening. The youngest member of my family is 14, so nobody believes in Christkind anymore :-)), but we still love the traditions. We eat fish on Christmas Eve (sometimes carp, sometimes plaice), and spend the evening enjoying the gifts. Most churches have a Midnight Mass, which is very late especially for small children, but going home from Mass on the Holy Night is still very spiritual and inspiring to me.

Reinhard - from Austria
We don't have a specific christmas-dinner, though I think most people have turkey, duck or carp or salmon, but my family, we always have fondue, meat fondue (with oil, not soup) and all different kinds of yummy sauces. I think the major difference between German speaking countries and, more or less, the rest of the world is that we celebrate on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day. And we don't have Boxing Day or anything. Christmas Eve isn't really a holiday of course, we build the Crib and decorate the Christmas Tree during the day, it only gets solemnly in the evening when everyone's showered and nicely dressed and sitting by the table and fondue's ready :-D Well back to my family, we have the fondue in the evening, around 7 or 8 o'clock, afterwards we eat christmas cookies and open the presents, we drink advocaat, I love it. Afterwards we go to mass (which is at 11pm) - well, we decided not to have gifts this year, so we skipped that part. oh wait, before we open the gifts, we light the candles on the christmas tree (yes, we still have actual wax candles) and sing some christmas carols, Silent Night Holy Night and probably one or two other, that's especially important to my dad. On Christmas Day, we visit relatives.