Especially now that most of the 'kids' are older, we decided as families to 'dial down' the shopping part of the season - we now take turns selecting small gifts for just one family each year and rotate from year to year who gives to which family. It's kind of fun to try and remember who we give to each year, and who will be giving to us - and then try to find a special gift for that family.

Rich Parker - Director of Engineering, VPR

Dad's homemade eggnog is a legendary tradition in my family and among our friends. Beautifully frothed, then elegantly spiked, it's presented in a punch bowl with a sprig of holly. Sprinkle with nutmeg (if desired), and jollity is certain to follow.

Joe Goetz - VPR Classical Afternoon Host

We have several Holiday traditions at the Wertlieb household, the most important being required holiday viewing.

My wife Erin and I are suckers for two animated holiday specials which are traditions themselves: A Charlie Brown Christmas, and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Because network TV increasingly airs these classics at odd times (apparently a Charlie Brown Xmas was aired in NOVEMBER this year--Good Grief!--) we made a decision a while back to purchase both programs on DVD so we could watch them on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day for the full heart-string-tugging effect they have on us every time we see them (and that's A LOT!)

My wife does an especially good impersonation of Linus' voice and has his speech about the true meaning of Christmas memorized, so I talk her into reciting that before we watch. And we also put fake antlers on our dog Grendel to make him look like the Grinch's own put-upon pooch--a sacrifice Grendel apparently is unwilling to make for very long, so pictures must be taken quickly before the fake antlers are ripped apart faster than the Grinch himself cleans out Hooville.

We also light the Menorah this time of year, and a penchant for gingerbread cookie men, highlighted by what we hope will become an annual tradition--a cookie decorating party--is also gaining ground.

Merry Holidays to all!

Mitch Wertlieb-Morning Edition Host, VPR

No matter what the weather on New Year's Day, my family hikes up Mount Philo in Charlotte. Each year we take a photograph of the four of us at the top, along with our golden retriever Monty. Then, snow permitting, we all pile onto the toboggan and sled down the entire way with Monty running alongside. A great way to start the year!

Robin Turnau - VPR Vice President of Development

I like to visit area grocery stores after Christmas and buy the leftover little potted starter trees that didn't find a home before the holiday. I undecorate/repot them and give them a chance to get strong before being planted in the early summer. Feels good to give a little back for all the trees that are cut down at Christmas. (And, by the time I get them they're usually discounted 1/2 price or better!)

Cheryl Willoughby - Host/producer, VPR Classical

My holiday memories of growing up in Madison, Connecticut
include the annual skating party on Horse Pond where a huge
bonfire was built right out on the ice (luckily the one acre
pond was only 5" deep). The evening included mock hockey games for the kids, swirling around the grown-ups who were busy drinking fortified eggnog round the fire.

Our holiday wreath often stayed on the front door far into the new year, until one year the local paper showed up to take pictures of the birds who had built a nest and raised a few youngins in the wreath.

George Thomas - VPR Jazz Host

In 1973 I was 20 years old, and working part-time teaching in a music store in Garwood, NJ. At Christmas time the boss gave each member of the staff a full-size bottle of booze (mine was Southern Comfort) as a gift. It made me feel soooo grownup and special (it was the very first bottle of high-proof alcohol that actually belonged to me!) that I will always remember it, and to this day I always buy a holiday bottle for every one of my co-workers as a special treat - seeing their surprise and delight brings me right back to the excitement of that first bottle!

-Robert Resnik, Host, All the Traditions

I have a boisterous and wonderful family. Every Christmas my brother and I spend the morning with our mother's side of the family, including grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins etc. Then we spend the afternoon with our father's side of the family, including the requisite aunts and uncles and cousins and cousin's children and significant others and pets etc.

Don't get me wrong, I love the hubbub and the fun of getting everyone together under one, well two roofs. But it can be a little overwhelming. So every year for the past fifteen or so my brother David and I have slipped away at the tail end of Christmas day and gone to the movies. It's usually pretty empty in the theater and it's dark and while it may not be quiet, at least we don't have to talk. It's become a tradition and a wonderful way to bond with my brother, who's been with me through thick and thin.

Jane Lindholm - Vermont Edition Host, VPR

Holiday greenery has become a tradition around our house. Like a lot of folks, we like to cut a tree from our property. We like to keep it simple, so heading down the hill from the house in search of the perfect tree feels natural for us.

Finding the perfect tree, of course, is a lot more challenging than if we went to a Christmas tree farm or a tree stand in town. But that’s half the fun. We actually start looking just after Christmas for the next year’s tree. As we tromp through the woods around our house, we size up trees and commit them to memory. And then promptly forget where we spotted really good ones.

So, we always end up with something less than perfect. It seems there’s always a hole in one side. Or the top looks a bit lopsided. We’ve found abandoned bird’s nests occasionally. (They actually make nice decorations.) And we’ve just accepted that, because the tree’s never been pruned to make a nice shape, it’s probably going to be a little off balance. So we’ve put wires on our Christmas stand to keep it upright. We just leave the wires on the stand from year to year so they’ll be ready to go next year.

We gather extra branches while we’re out searching for the tree, so we can make sprays that we put on the doors and on the barn. We wire two or three fir branches together, attach a bow, and we’re halfway to having the outside of the house decorated.

The one big disadvantage to cutting our own tree is that our house sits near the top of the hill. All of our woods are down the hill. So the tree always has to be hauled up. At least this year there was a good cover of snow to slide the tree and the boughs behind us.

Ross Sneyd
Newscast producer/reporter

When it comes to baking, my mother is in a league of her own. Pies, cakes, brownies, cookies - everything she makes wins raves at family, school, and church events. However, for all of her culinary masterpieces, one of my all-time favorites is the Pineapple Cream Cheese Pie she makes every year at the holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, too). She found the recipe on the side of a can of pineapple years ago and it was so well received (especially by my dad) she's been making it ever since. It's one of my favorites and I particularly appreciate it because I did not inherit her cooking talents and this pie is sooooo easy to make.

Recipe for Pineapple Cream Cheese Pie
1 9" graham cracker shell (mom makes hers, I buy mine)
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
11oz Philadelphia Cream Cheese
1 can crushed pineapple (drain well)

Soften cream cheese to about room temperature. Add eggs and beat well. Add sugar a little at a time and beat until smooth. Pour the cheese mixture into the graham cracker shell. Carefully scatter the drained pineapple on the top of the pie (you can spoon it on or just use your fingers). Bake at 350 for 25 -30 minutes. Place immediately in the refrigerator and let it chill overnight. It is best to keep it cool until served and if there is anything leftover, store it in the refrigerator.

Jonathan Butler
Web Producer, VPR

On Christmas Eve I invite friends and family to join me at a candle light service at my local church. We then head to my house for a "Traditional Christmas Feast" with a twist...I serve traditional foods from a variety of cultures around the world, so folks never know what they'll find. Afterward we head to a friend's farm to sing carols to the animals in the barn. It is said that because Jesus was born in a stable with the animals, that this is the one night of the year when they can truly understand what we sing and the miracle of Jesus' birth.

When I was a youngster in the early 1950's in the Bronx, my dad and brother, who with me were big Laurel & Hardy fans, would all wait for L&H's wonderful "Babes In Toyland" to come on NYC's WPIX Channel 11 sometime during the holiday season, as they aired the 1930's vintage film each year.
This tradition in my life was reinforced with the advent of video tape, and not only has my brother and I maintained the tradition of viewing this delightful film, but I continued it with my own daughters who are now 18 and 22. I suspect they may someday take it to yet another generation.
When Oliver Hardy was in his final years back in the late 1950's, he told an interviewer that his biggest regret was that "Babes In Toyland" was not filmed in color. Today, as I watch a beautifully colorized version of the film on DVD, I wonder if he ever could have imagined that his wish would be granted for future generations. -Joel Najman "My Place", VPR

This year I'm looking forward to celebrating the Fifth Annual Jeffery Family Pajama Christmas. This tradition was actually born out of sadness. After my 18-year-old cousin, Jeffery, died suddenly and unexpectedly of the flu in early December 2003, we spent a LOT of time with extended family as we helped each other cope with this horrible loss. By the time Christmas rolled around, my immediate family and I decided that we desperately needed a quiet holiday spent with one another rather than another big gathering.

So that's what we did. We exchanged gifts and ate a leisurely breakfast, watched movies, cooked a delicious dinner (homemade lasagna!) and played games. We didn't plan on it, but we ended up spending the entire day in our pajamas! But that little oversight really punctuated the point of that particular holiday - no pretense or fascade, just all of us together with unbrushed hair and in our slippers, focusing instead on what mattered most. And it was the best Christmas we'd ever had.

The next year we did invite family to come for dinner, but we insisted they wear their pajamas. They did, and so it's gone every Christmas since. I may never get dressed on Christmas Day again.

Michelle Jeffery, VPR Listener Services

As kids, my sisters and I were allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve. This was intended to allow my parents to sleep in Christmas morning. Of course that didn't work, we'd wake up my parents just before dawn anyway, excited to see what was under the tree. Even though those years are long past, I still wake up at the crack of dawn to open presents but instead of waking my parents I now wake my wife. After opening presents we watch "A Christmas Story" and have fresh baked cinnamon rolls.

Dan Palow - VPR Membership Manager

The holiday traditions in our family center around seafood and sledding. Christmas eve we usually feast on fish (hopefully one that I've caught) and Christmas day we take to the hills in snow tubes and toboggans. There have been some notable mishaps with both traditions. One year when my daughters were young, the snow was crusty and hard. Too crusty, as it turned out, and when I wiped out with a little girl on my lap she got a nasty scrape on her face from the ice. I still get grief about that.
And then last year we decided to break with the home-caught fish routine and prepare "lutefisk" in honor of my wife's Minnesota-Norway heritage. Bad mistake. Lutefisk is reconstituted cod. And at least as we made it, this Scandinavian delight turned out to be a nasty dead-fish smelling jello-like substance that stenched up the whole house. I'm not even sure the dog enjoyed it.

John Dillon, VPR reporter

As youngsters, we often take our habits and customs for granted, but we learn as we grow up that other families may do things very differently. Christmas is the time when these differences are most evident. For instance, in our house we could go through the contents of our stockings but we couldn’t open any other presents until we had eaten a hearty breakfast. I now know not everyone does it this way.

Here’s one Christmas custom I grew up with that I’ve never heard mentioned elsewhere. During the nineteen fifties, when I was a young boy, our family lived in Milford, Connecticut. The house was on the seashore and my parents’ bedroom window faced east, across the ocean. Of course we were always up early Christmas morning, ready to run downstairs to see what “Santa” had left for us. But my parents made us wait until just the right moment of sunrise, which was determined by watching as follows.

There are a few seconds when the sun has risen just above the ocean but the bottom of the sun is still attached to the horizon by a fat little stem, an optical effect familiar to those who have watched the sun rise across water. As we watched transfixed from the upstairs bedroom, this stem would suddenly break and the sun’s image at once would be fully clear of the horizon. It was at THAT EXACT MOMENT that we were finally allowed to run downstairs and check out our booty.

This is one of many pleasant memories I have of Christmas as a child.

-- Greg Guest, St. Johnsbury, VT

You’ve asked a huge but wonderful question. We love traditions in our house and hearing about those of other people.
Before digital cameras and when offers of double prints were ubiquitous, I would get those doubles and send some of them off to family and friends, but there were always lots left. So, I buy each of us a frame – collage style- collect scissors, tape, paper, a hat and all the extra prints. Every Christmas Eve, after dinner, while finishing eggnog, and before singing, we each pull a name out of the hat and make, secretly but all together, special year-in-review collections of photos to hang on our bedroom walls. It’s gotten harder without those doubles; I have to actually order excess prints to choose from. We have about ten years on our walls. It’s great to see, daily, the things we’ve done and the fun we’ve had.
One year, on our usual Christmas tree hunt, we spotted a neglected but beautiful tree. The tree farm owners had somehow forgotten, years before, to remove a stump, and some renegade branches had grown skyward to create a tree with several tops. It made a gorgeous tree, a whole host of angels on top, and a new tradition was born. Last year, we added to it with my daughter’s comment, during the tree choosing discussion, that she liked a certain tree because it had “presence”. The rest of us were either dismayed or thrilled since that tree clearly didn’t need the addition of presents! This year’s tree has eight tops, we think, a roomful of presence and is, of course, the most beautiful tree ever.
You’ve seen all the beautiful Christmas stockings in stores, markets, craft fairs. So have I, and now we have numerous stockings (no mantle large enough) that we hang on windows with suction cups. They don’t all get filled but they do brighten the long evenings this time of year.
Years ago we had very busy Decembers – parties, shopping, cookies, church activities, etc. All great stuff, but way too much. So, one January we made a list of all that we had done, and then crossed off (or sent to a different month) all the things that weren’t meaningful in some way. And later we followed one of our children’s delightful suggestions that we each buy one present for each family member. (Stockings stuffers, excluded; there has to be somewhere to put sox and underwear.) It’s hard to buy just one present, often takes a yearful of thought.
Traditions make our year go round and our family ours. Traditions that we share make our lives rounder and richer.
Nancy, Jericho

My most beloved holiday tradition is decorating and admiring our Christmas tree.

Each ornament has its own story or memory, a visual reminder of a loved one or a memorable event. Many of them are hand-made and just about all of them were given to us as gifts. We make decorating the tree a bit of an event, with carols on the stereo and hot chocolate to sip.

When my children were little, they would wait for me to unpack each ornament, hand it to them and then together we would hang it on the tree. As I slowly unwrapped each ornament from its tissue paper nest, I would tell the story behind that ornament. I’d talk about the person who gave it to me, or the occasion it marked. Like the exquisitely delicate dove of Italian glass with a blue gem on each wing. My godmother gave it to me for Christmas when I was quite young, a first-grader I believe. I remember being so proud that she thought I was old enough to take care of such a beautiful ornament. Every year it graces our tree in the upper branches.

Then there are the little hand-knit stockings Grammie made to hold miniature candy canes. And the little elves, with mischievous grins on their faces, that my husband’s Grandmother would hide in the branches of her tree. The little gingerbread boy from when I was in kindergarten. The ornaments my mother made and sent me for my first Christmas away from home. The bird’s nest we found in our tree one year. Various felt cut-outs with glitter, paper chains and yarn stars given to me by my children and friends’ children. The little red balls our cats, Remus and Clancy, would always bat off the bottom branches of the tree. (I wonder what our dog, Callie, will do this year?)

Now as we unwrap ornaments to hang them on the tree, my children start to tell the story of the ornament, remembering more details with each passing year. And they get so excited when they see their “favorite” ornaments and remember the story behind it. I so enjoy that magical moment when, after all the ornaments are hung, we switch the tree lights on, and everyone goes “Ahhhhhhhhh.” And we again remember the family and friends that have so blessed our lives.

-Leah Hollenberger, VPR Producer

Our three girls are all grown now but we have two traditions that have lasted.
The more recent of the two is the hiding of the "pickle". We have a glass ornament that is the color and shape of a small gherkin. Every year it is hidden somewhere on the tree. Whoever finds that ornament on Christmas Day wins the "pickle prize". It is usually something small and not very valuable but it sure is fun watching grown women and their husbands and their children looking for the pickle.
The other, and oldest, tradition centers around Christmas Eve. Each of the girls is allowed to choose one food item. There are no limitations except on quantity. We have had some eclectic meals over the years. When the youngest daughter was still small she would generally ask for gummy bears while the eldest(no dummy herself) wanted lobster. There was usually some type of seafood, some kind of beef product and frequently anything else you can imagine. The only rules were that each item must be shared upon request. I don't ever remember asking for gummy bears with my steak, though.

Christmas was always a tale of two grandmothers. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day we visited Grandma Up-the-Hill and Christmas Day we also visited Grandma Down-the-Hill. Grandma Cengeri's house was at the top of a steep climb on the southside of Bethlehem, PA. Grandma Focht lived 15 minutes away in Whitehall, down a slight rise to her home.

Christmas Eve is a special time for the Slovak people, which is the nationality of the Cengeri family. On that night, you gather and have a special meal that is to include 12 dishes, most of which are traditional old Slovak dishes that the young American children had no interest in...things like mushroom soup, slab bacon and fish. So Grandma Cengeri (who spoke very little English) added the not-so-traditional Slovak dish of pizza to the lineup somewhere along the line. It certainly wasn't what you'd find in old Bratislava, but it kept the kids happy until Santa Claus knocked on the door and left a bag of small treats on the front porch for all of the kids.

Ric Cengeri, Production Associate, VPR