Closed Cookie's Celebratory Compositions

When the holiday season rolls around each year, my mom spends hours preparing a lot of food for different festivities. We can’t possibly let her cook so much in December, right? And everyone else’s skills in the home with food is… lacking. Instead, we do something else. We’ve had the tradition for as long as I can remember- going out to eat for dinner on Christmas Eve.

Now I’m not talking Olive Garden, or Costa Vida, or Denny’s. We get some more unique food each year. My uncle’s family tags along when we go to all sorts of foreign places. I’ve tried Indian cuisine, Mexican, Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai, all sorts of European food, and much more. There’s been plenty of eventful experiences we’ve had!

The food is always delicious. We’ve been able to eat so many new and incredible things! I really love the drunken noodles from a local authentic Thai place we’ve been to several times. Or the heartwarming Pho, a Vietnamese soup full of meat, warm broth, and a colorful array of herbs, vegetables, and spices. Every curry in existence is always rich in flavor, color, and culture. That curry from the Indian place we went to really was delectable! Drinks and dessert, of course, are never forgotten. Me and my older sister for like, 4 years straight, tried to order a mango smoothie from every place we went to. Sometimes there would be boba inside, or it it was thick and chunky, or even it was watery and subtle. No matter how the taste of anything we ate differed, you could tell that tons of hard work was put into each and every dish.

I remember learning about the culture and beginning to somewhat understand the beauty of each restaurant we ate at. There was always something from that country on display. Whether it be photographs and paintings, pottery, flowers, or even phrases on the wall in that country’s main language, it felt like a treat to learn something new.

By the time our stomachs get happily full, we would all hurry home to enjoy some eggnog and wear brand new pajamas. We have my grandpa, who is old and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, read us a special Christmas story each year. It’s hard for him to remember a lot, and I’ve grown up watching him know all about my interests, to not knowing how to drive, and even forgetting my name. I never see him cry except for on Christmas Eve when he reads the same story to all the family. It touches all our hearts.

I’m grateful that I get to have such a wonderful Christmas Eve. Because of the hard work of the people who serve us that food every year, we all get to spend more time together during the holidays.

I’ve included a small drawing I did of some Pho! I wrote “eat up” in many different languages, because food is universal, and so are the friendships we make through that food.
Looks - and sounds - like a delicious time to celebrate! 🥰 I may not have caught it, but your picture appears to be missing your TBT username. You're welcome to adjust your current entry post to include this.
 
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For the past few years, I have been sort of spending my merry holidays by myself, so I have grown accustomed to my own little routine for the holiday season.

I always sleep most of the sun away, so when night comes, I am ready to set up a little pillow pile on my floor to start the binge session of really bad Christmas movies. All of my family members usually have plans during this time, so it’s usually only my stuffed animals and I watching Hallmark movies as I shovel some grocery store snacks into my mouth. It’s a good excuse to relax on the floor and eat a bunch of those really soft sugar cookies that I hate but love at the same time. They have them with red and green frosting as well during this time of the year so I can really feel that Christmas spirit. I do start sketching some presents for my friends as well in between cookie bites, as it is also tradition for me to be kind of broke and only able to give handmade gifts during Christmas. Due to this, I break my wrists in order to draw because my skill is not the best, but I sure am going to try my best.

It’s nothing special, but I do enjoy the holidays regardless. This time on my own is always relaxing for me.
 
I spend the holidays just like any other day. Typically when you wake up in the middle of December and glance out your window, you see snow. Well, that’s not me. I glance out my window, and I see green. I see the desert sunset. I go outside, and it’s warm enough for a t-shirt. That’s how I spend my winters and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

As the holidays approach, I receive very generous gifts from my parent, and yes, that’s singular. My dad always gives me a good amount of cash to put towards my savings, and a few Uber gift cards which also help a lot. This has been a thing for the past three years, and I’m thankful to have a parent that isn’t strict at all and allows me to move around, but there’s always that option to return. My favorite part of winter is hockey season. It’s been a tradition of mine to go to the Kings @ Penguins game each year. That’s because I was born in Pittsburgh, but the Kings are my favorite team. I’ve only missed two years since 2016, but I plan to go this year if I’m in the area.

In a nutshell, my winters consist of traveling and hockey. I spent last winter in a heatwave. Winters are a hectic time for me. Things change. People leave. But a few things are a constant. That’s why for my picture, I chose to show you all the things that stay the same: My backpack that I use to travel comes with me everywhere, and hockey gets me through the stressful times.

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When the holiday season begins, my family and I often find ourselves struggling with money. Despite so, my mother enjoys Christmas very much and loves finding ways to decorate. When we are able to gather some money to purchase things to decorate our apartment- it becomes absolutely festive! We often do our tree very gorgeously in my honest opinion, it's one of her favorite things to design. Aside from that, we try to get Christmas curtains for our living room and kitchen and a new rug to match the festive decors. We usually struggle at this time of year so it's always celebrated with a lot of effort and a lot of love. My mother loves to cook so she will always make rum cakes and fruit cakes that don't taste bad and traditional meals we usually have like something called "pepper pot" made with pork or chicken, whatever meat you fancy! The tree is sadly, usually empty but we try to do what we can with letters or whatever we can afford, gifts aren't a big deal to us. This year I was able to get something very amazing for her so I'm really glad and with the help of my wonderful boyfriend. Christmas is a season full of blessings and love for us so we truly do try our best to give back those warm feelings to guests, friends, family and strangers. We don't have a family dinner normally but we also tend to sit together and watch a Christmas movie on the morning of Christmas and spend the time together. It is my mom, myself, my brother, my cats and my aunt. It's always filled with love and that's the most important thing for us on these holidays, each other. Merry Christmas, everyone. I included an artwork I quickly did of a Christmas tree to express how much we love our trees we do every year and always make sure we have.

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Around Christmas time my family would always decorate the tree. My dad would get the box out of the garage and set it up, and then my brother and I would be tasked with placing ornaments on the tree. My dad would also place the lights and garland on the tree. Sometimes the ornaments would include handmade ornaments made at school. You can see a pink paper ornament in the attached photo, for example. Honestly the tree in the photo is a bit bare compared to what I remember. I feel like the tree had more and more ornaments every year. We had a lot of ornaments, and I tried to make use of as many of them as I could. The big snowflakes featured in the photo were a favorite of mine though. The tree decorating was usually the first Christmas activity we did each year, and it would be followed by hanging up stockings as well as cards once we started receiving them. We didn't put the presents under the tree until Christmas Eve, but I would usually find some of them before they were wrapped. I'd like to say this was due to my superior finding ability, but in reality my parents just weren't very good at hiding them. (Also, the post-it note is covering me in the photo, if you were wondering about the odd placement.)
 
Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house. Not a creature was stirring - well, my dogs are nagging me to take them out. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

Who's St. Nicholas? Well, my Mom is good 'ole St. Nick. She creeps out into the living room with her arms full of presents. Carefully, she drops candies and toiletries and goodies into each stocking. Then with gentle touch, she places each neatly wrapped present under the beautiful candy-cane themed Christmas tree. Finally, she scurries into bed so no one notices she was stirring.

The next morning, the bright, chilly Christmas Day, we each awaken: my Mom, Dad, my 2 dogs, and I. We change out of our nightclothes into our warm, cozy ugly Christmas sweaters. We greet each other, and then sit on the porch drinking a hot coffee or hot cocoa and watch the morning news (we live in the South, so our Christmas temperatures are 70° F). After that, we all go back inside to unwrap our presents and open our stockings. We hug and exchange our thank you's and you're welcome's.

After that comes my favorite part: the Christmas Feast! Our menu consists of Ham, Stuffing, Spinach Casserole, Vidalia Onion Pie, Corn Mushroom Casserole, and more delicious items. When we are through, we sit and watch Christmas movies for the rest of the day.

Christmas is my favorite holiday. What about you?

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i really like this time of year! partly as there's time-off from school but also as my older sister shall return (in london at the moment, though was living here last year) for a week or so and i get to spend time with her which is really cool! we decorate the christmas tree together which we buy around when she's returned. i assist by bringing down funky ornament boxes, though my favourite part is probably turning on the lights! i take a photo of it each year and made a time-lapse of the decoration of the tree one year.

traditions-wise on christmas day, we sometimes go for a walk in the forest and i open a smol (small) present when we get back. we open the rest after a late lunch, which last year my sister and i shared a tofurkey (recommend for sure, even though it's a weird shape after removing the box) and i'm partly hyped to make it a tradition ! we usually have christmas hymns(?) played in the background when we open presents by the tree.

christmas shows near the end of december-wise, i annually watch big fat quiz of the year with the rest of my family. cool comedians are in pairs and answer questions about different things that have happened in the year, it's pretty funny !

attached is drawing of our christmas tree from last year:

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I typically do not do anything for the holidays for myself, though I do buy some gifts for my partner to open either on Yule or Christmas Day. Since I moved I bought a small tree I like to decorate. I have only a couple ornaments, so I mostly just put my keychains on it to save space in buying things I will not use much. When I have extra time I do enjoy playing the holiday events in New Horizons as well.

Currently my family lives across the country, so I don't celebrate with them. Since my in-laws are close by I usually visit for Yule. They'll make the log cake then hand us a slice whenever their family members have time to stop by to open their gifts. I am not much of a cake person, so I have a bad habit of eating the fruit off it and giving the rest to my partner aha.

Last year I make a chocolate ganache cake with cherries (which was unfortunately too bitter); maybe I should make the traditional whipped kind with the strawberries this time? I bought some fancy piping bags so I could make some cool holiday cakes. 🍰
 
The Christmas season is an important time of the year where I live. Christmas means spending time with family. I have such an extended and close family that we all tend to have huge parties outside. My country doesn't have a winter season so outside gatherings are pretty common. We end up mostly talking, or gossiping, about what's been happening with other relatives. There's always loud music, food and drinks to last an entire night. For me, these sort of gatherings are nice, but since I'm rather an introvert, I never last very long and I tend to want to leave or hover near the food and drink area to waste time. Now that I'm married, I have my husband to talk to during these parties. The foods are pretty basic. There's a lot of bread, fruits, vegetables, and main dishes like fish and sausages. Most of the meats are cooked on a barbacue, which is pretty fun because I tend to help cooking meats in order to not talk with anyone. Drinks are usually sodas and alcoholic beverages. Most of the adults and elders tend to want to drink. It's almost like our cultural heritage...Sometimes we also have bonfires and many of my relatives like to talk around the fire. For the younger children, there's the gift exchange and a money hunt. The money hunt is when money is hidden and the kids have to go find where the money is hidden. The one with the most money is of course the winner. As much as I like the Christmas here, I would really love to experience a "white Christmas", since it never snows here, or get cold. Its always a pleasant 20°C and in that range.

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This Christmas is a lot different than previous ones because I've recently moved houses under not-so-good circumstances. Not being able to do my normal holiday traditions has been making me feel homesick. Luckily I have a lovely support system. I told my partner that I'm gonna miss having my own Christmas stocking, so they made me one and sent it with small gifts inside. It's a really cool stocking too, the fabric has pictures of cats wearing Santa hats. The funniest part about it is that there's cat hair stuck all over it because my partner has 4 cats. I've also really missed living with cats so it's nice to have something covered in cat hair for the first time in way too long. It's a very small thing to be happy about, but it means a lot to me. Despite being away from home, I'm gonna be able to spend Christmas with my brother. This is another thing that means a lot to me. We get along well and have a lot of fun together.

Another thing I've been able to do this year is watch lesbian holiday movies (and straight ones, while pretending I'm the man). I'm not a very sappy person, but I do love a mediocre holiday-themed movie about lesbians falling in love. It's like the second mid-November hits I start craving romance, drama, and Christmas music.

The stocking my partner made me;
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Every Christmas, my family tradition has been decorating the Christmas tree. The ornaments my family uses aren't the typical shiny baubles that you see on the average Christmas tree though - they're all odd, sentimental ornaments. Since moving across the world from the US to Australia however, I haven't decorated a Christmas tree for a couple years. This year though I really missed it so I bought a small tree and decorated it with some random items.

The lights I used are battery powered Holly Christmas lights. On the top branch of the tree is a female posable drawing figure. Beneath that is a little doll-ish keychain my mom bought me a long time ago. To the left of that is an Animal Crossing bell that my husband 3-D printed for me. To the right is the Easter Egg I painted for the last TBT Easter event. Then over to the right is a penguin keychain that my husband won for me on Toreba. Deeper in the tree, not as visible in the photo is my mom's business card; and one of those Chili pepper sewing needle sharpener things. To fill the rest of the space, I hung some individually wrapped mini-candy canes.

Aside from that, another family tradition we have is making Christmas sugar cookies decorated with sprinkles, which you can see in my signature (though I know my signature won't count towards this entry). I don't know if I'll make them this year though!

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Every xmas day i watch the strictly come dancing christmas special, im disabled and i believe i was a dancer in a pervious life. I adore strictly come dancing when its on every year, and on xmas day there is a special show dedicated to the holidays. And i never miss it on the telly every dec 25th. I enjoy the whole decoration which has took such hard work and the amount of love the celebs and pro’s put into their routines to make it festive is 100% worth the scores they get out of 10 the image ive added is from a celeb and pro who i adored watching on their series in 2018 and were loved by so many were invited back in candy cane outfits to achieve a 40/40. My highlight of the day is watching the xmas special as i love the art of dance and christmas itself, the fact its rolled into one is perfection for me on christmas.

so every year after we sit around to have our xmas dinner (veggie for me!) come 5pm i make sure im ready to enjoy the festivities of the dances and end the day on a super high of the art of dance. And enjoy a festive chocolate tin in my pj’s ready for the dark night to settle in since after all, it is christmas☺🎄

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During the holiday season my partner and I usually travel around, mostly to eat foods we don't come across commonly, either that be really expensive cuisine that uses expensive ingredients and complicated and time consuming techniques to make or geographical location specific specialties (like kushi katsu in Okasa or curry pan in Japan in general). I mean, we check out the atmosphere and sights too, it's not just purely about food.

Last, last year (pre covid) we went to Vancouver, BC where there's a little port area Steveston (the town where Storybrook is shot in the show Once Upon a Time, I thought that was cool) that you can buy fresh sea urchin for only $5 each, as well as other freshly caught fish and sea creatures. But most memorable (pic below) meal was at Butchart Garden in Victoria, BC where we enjoyed some high tea surrounded by botanical artistry and viewed their specular and amusing Christmas lights display. The cafe, restaurant? has seasonal menus that specializes with flavours that includes floral ingredients grown in the garden itself! It's was such a treat! The botanical garden is more lush during the summer with flowers tend to bloom in warm weather but I found that different species of evergreens that can be found across the glove made really beautiful landscaping.

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I usually start celebrating the holidays right after Thanksgiving has passed. I like to get most of what I can on my Christmas shopping done on black friday and/or cyber monday when the deals are too good to pass up. When that's all said and done, my family and I usually like to start decorating around the house and getting the Christmas tree out to make everything more festive, even though it's still very much November. Lights are my favorite part of Christmas, so you know there's going to be lights everywhere. Christmas shopping is so stressful but after its all done I love just relaxing with a hot beverage, watching some Christmas movies, and counting down until Christmas.

As for actual Christmas day (and Christmas Eve) we usually split between two different households, one would be my in law's and the other would be my mom's. Each year we switch off which house we will spend Christmas Eve on and which one we will spend Christmas day on, makes things a little more evenly split. My in law's have a very traditional Christmas. We make gingerbread houses (or whatever other arts and crafts my MIL has set up that year), playing board games, and if its Christmas Eve then we would go to church with them. Food wise, also very traditional. Basically the same thing we would eat for Thanksgiving (turkey, mashed potatoes, veggies, and end off with some sort of dessert (usually pie). My mom's house is a little less traditional. I have five siblings so when we all get together under the same roof, it's definitely a chaotic mess especially when you factor in the kids too. A lot less uniformed and more so what happens happens kinda celebration. Food usually consists of hot pot or whatever else she feels like making that year. Regardless where we are though, we always have a great time. Spending time with family is what makes the holidays special for me even if it can get stressful at times, it's all worth it in the end.
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My holidays consist of a LOT of card-writing. I am the eldest of several siblings and also the most comfortable and fluent in Korean. This means that I'm usually in charge of writing all of the holiday greetings and well-wishes for the new year for all of my relatives. My parents will walk a stack of blank cards to my room. I will show them a copy of the Korean message I'll be writing, mostly for grammar and spelling mistakes. And once I get the go-ahead, I'll make do like a little robot: I will write the same "Dear (relative), Merry Christmas and Happy New Year" message in Korean over and over again until there are no more blank cards. For a while, I was also drawing all of the cards too! My go-to imagery was a decorated Christmas tree with a star-topper and a present or two by the trunk.

Ten years later, my parents have decided to take mercy on me and now I'm only responsible for writing out the message. Honestly, it's hard work and it gives my hand a serious workout by the end of the stack, but it feels nice knowing that my message and horrendous handwriting will be appreciated by a relative! I'm hoping that the stack stays full this year too, and hope even harder that my parents get me a bag of chocolate truffles for my holiday reward.
 
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I may not have a ton of traditions with long exciting histories, but there's a few things I do every year and highly look forward to each time! As you may be able to guess from my picture, one of these is ice skating. Near where I live there's a pop up ice rink that comes around every year, complete with a few fair rides and some stalls with food and drinks etc, and so I make a point each year to go with a group of my friends and we all just spend an evening hanging out - we might get some dinner beforehand, and then we'll skate and get some snacks and hot chocolate! The last couple years it's been raining when we went, but honestly it kind of adds to the atmosphere. So far this year I haven't had a chance to go - I only just got home from uni, and my friends aren't back for another week, so maybe this year it'll be even better since I haven't seen them for a while!

As for more familial traditions, I tried to add a little nod to it into my ac picture with the Brewster cookie. I can't remember how long ago this started, but at least 8/9 years ago I found this gingerbread recipe that I really wanted to make, and so I convinced my mum to buy the ingredients and baked it. And not to toot my own horn.. but it was really good gingerbread. And since then, every year when it starts getting near December my mum starts not so subtly hinting that she'd love to have some gingerbread. And every year, I oblige and spend an afternoon in the kitchen making batch after batch of gingerbread. One year we put holes in them and hung them up on the tree, but the torment of staring at these cookies just sat on the tree means we never really did it again! Plus now we have cats who like to climb our christmas tree so.. can't have them enjoying a midnight snack!

Those are sort of the main two traditions I hold near to my heart around christmas. Obviously we have a few others, like always playing specific games involving passing paper around in a circle + visiting specific family members, but these are the real stand out ones I could talk about for ages! :]
 
When I was younger we used to decorate a Christmas tree. This was something I loved doing, even though I didn't really like having to take down the decorations after a few weeks. I didn't consider that a fun activity, to be honest.

When we moved we stopped putting up a Christmas tree at some point, mostly because of a lack of space. We tried putting it in different spots, but somehow it always ended up being in the way. Though that was also because we had a dog that had a very active wagging tail.

We did sometimes put up some tinsel and such, but it never really looked pretty. So we stopped doing that as well.

Still I wanted to have something festive and found inspiration after seeing a house in a nearby street that had decorated their window with little Christmas villages. So Google it was.

And so after a bit of searching I ordered a few items and waited patiently for those to arrive. Of course, it being December meant that I miscalculated when they would arrive with how busy everything was and thus I received them in January. But better late than never, right ?

After that the tradition became to put them up at the beginning of December and leave them till the end of January. Mostly because they make us smile when we see them and also because years later I still don't like taking down decorations, even though it's now much faster than when we had a Christmas tree. Some things just never change, do they ?

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Back when I was younger Christmas was one of my favorite holidays, mainly because of decorating our home to give it a festive touch, baking cookies and of course the presents. We didn't do anything huge actually, it was more like a typical way to celebrate the holidays by doing some things which you can call sort of traditions like the ones I mentioned. Best thing was when we got snow around the Christmas Days, it made everything even more better.

However, over the years a lot of things changed: My family changed, I changed, we moved to another town... And the older I got the more I lost interest in Christmas... or in any other holiday, maybe with the exception of Halloween and New Year's Eve, although I celebrate Halloween more online like here at the forums for example when any events are happening since it's not a big thing here where I live. Honestly, Christmas isn't as special to me now as it used to be. At some points, it just annoys me and I'm always glad whenever it's over. The only things I still like about it are the decorations, the Christmas songs playing in the radio (yes, even "Last Christmas"), when something good gets shown on TV and whenever Bell Tree is doing an event (like right now, thank you for this btw). Worst thing is we don't even get snow anymore, like not only just around the holidays but in general. How should I get Christmas feelings if I look out the window and it feels like as if it's Spring? As if Easter is coming up next rather than Christmas.

I don't know, maybe my interest for Christmas in general comes back one day. For now, it's just another holiday with no special meaning to me whatsoever.

The picture (made in ACNH) here is basically a sort of simple portrait of me watching the typical Christmas TV programme while almost falling asleep, because most of the time, there are only a handful of stuff which you can enjoy watching at those times without getting the needs to smash your TV out of frustration. And yes, the lack of Christmas decoration is actually on purpose, because with the exception of some Christmas lights at the windows, we don't have any at all around our home this year. The mood is just not there to make something big, maybe next year...

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This isn't exactly a tradition but I do it every year so it kinda counts. I am a mail carrier. This means I am one of the many folks who drive up and down your street everyday delivering your mail and packages.
This time of the year though, it gets a little crazy for us. Ok a lot crazy. It starts in November when all the companies send out their catalogs for people to order stuff. That's when I know Christmas is right around the corner.
Then shortly after Thanksgiving the Christmas packages start rolling in(not literally. They are brought to us on big trucks). In no time at all my whole truck is packed full. And it stays that way the whole month of December.
Next I head out to my route, delivering all those packages and mail to about 700 houses. This time of year is tough for us delivery people and can really make us dread the holidays. We work long hours(sometimes starting before it gets light out and working til after dark) and it is stressful at times.
But it's nice to see the smiles on people's faces when they seeing us coming up the walkway with a delivery(or several). I once had a customer tell me "Yall are better than ice cream." It made me laugh.
Even something like a cold bottle of water in the hot summer is enough to brighten the day. Some people set drink/snack boxes at their doors for all us delivery people and some even give us cards and gifts. It's always nice to know our hard work is appreciated.
This job can make it hard to enjoy the holidays but it helps to know I am helping others enjoy theirs.

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