Handmade Holidays

Sew,Mama,Sew! Blog is having 30 Days of Gifts to Sew for the month of November.

I've seen so many cute things so far that I would love to make not only for gifts, but also for myself! Cute! Cute! Cute!

Personally, I love handmade gifts, either to give or receive! I don't make many and I also can't think of the last time I've been given anything handmade either though.

We keep Christmas around here pretty simple and low-key. Its nothing like the craziness that I see on the TV. This year, we'll be traveling to my parents house for Christmas Eve and Day. I'm not even sure we'll be putting up a tree. Christmases in our family have always been about getting together with family, eating lots of good food, presents for the kids, going to church on Christmas Eve. I've always, always loved Christmas Eve services in whatever type of church we were attending. Midnight Mass has got to be THE favorite though. I was so sad and shocked to see that the local Catholic church here does not have one anymore. Well, they do actually, but its now a Spanish Mass, the English version is now held at 10 pm. I still would have went at midnight, Mass is Mass no matter what language its held in, I think.

When I was little, my Grandma would hostess a HUGE Slovak dinner for Christmas eve. It consisted of 12 separate dishes, to represent the 12 disciples of Christ. I can't remember them all,
Pirogies
Babikis (sp?)
Mushrooms
Lima Beans
Prunes
That's only 5 and those are the ones I LOVED (first 3) and LOATHED (last 2), funny how those are the ones I can remember. I'll have to ask my mom what the others were. One of these Christmases, I'd love to try and host my own dinner like that. We also always ate pieces of raw garlic with dinner, usually wrapped up in a piece of buttered bread. There was a reason behind that as well but I'm not remembering it at all. Everybody did it and we all had garlic breath together for days afterwards!

My Grandma is old and very frail now. Her body and mind are failing, I wonder if the big Christmas Eve dinner is going to be a thing of the past now. That's why I'd like to get it all written down, so I can have it. My mom grew up Catholic in the 50's, they had all sorts of customs and traditions full of symbolism and meaning. Most if not all of it is lost now and it's kind of sad, I think anyways.