Your Best Holiday Traditions Are Measured in Calories

Christmas is about … love? faith? giving?

All of those, perhaps, but when we asked Patch readers for their holiday traditions, the unmistakable theme was … food.

Take a minute to read some of the traditions we've received from our readers and share your family's holiday traditions in the comments section below.

“In days past (before adopting a more healthy eating lifestyle) my mom would bake her brains out for about two weeks before Christmas,” wrote Nancy Ball Carmody on our Port Washington-Saukville Patch Facebook page. “We would have at LEAST 8 different varieties of cookies. My favorites were her coffee cherry bells … the cut-out, press into a mold, bake, and then elaborately decorate Santas, stars, trees, angels and stockings. … I would say besides eating them, that the bonding time spent making them was the most priceless of all.”

Laura Mokelke, a reader of Brookfield Patch, was eager to share the story of her Christmas, which spans two weekends and a few dozen people.

She and her husband’s parents are both divorced, and two are remarried, she wrote in an email.

“We start Christmas on the 17th with my dad and stepmom and then my sister and stepbrother and their families,” she wrote. “On Christmas Eve, we are hosting my mother-in-law overnight and doing a nice dinner and then watching a marathon of our favorite Christmas movies including 'Love Actually,' 'It's a Wonderful Life' and whatever my mother-in-law chooses as her favorite Christmas movie this year. We will scoot over to my mom's house that evening to join her side of the family and hand out presents to our second cousins.”

Christmas Day begins with a “large breakfast,” she said, and a trip to her sister’s house for an “immediate family” event.

“Later that afternoon we'll head to my mom and stepdad's house for his side of the family large Christmas celebration of about 30 people,” Mokelke wrote. “It's a great way to celebrate with the adults exchanging presents through a gift exchange and everyone buying for Grandma! Then we will dash out and over to my husband's aunt's house for another round of food and presents. Our aunt celebrates all the holidays with an amazing meal of non-traditional food so certainly no ham or turkey. We might have a French crepe or stuffed pizza, but it will be gourmet and delicious.”

“Some people complain about having seven Christmas events to go to, but my husband and I are lucky,” she wrote. “It is always great food, great company, and blast to try to remember what we packed where in the car and what dish we are taking to pass at which event.”

Other traditions that are part of readers’ lives weren’t quite that elaborate, but they were edible.

“Members of our old Shorewood Girl Scout troop get together for a second-generation cookie bake,” wrote Nancy Peske of Shorewood.

Wendy Cooper Penney of Brookfield wrote that her tradition is “Sara Lee's butter coffee cake after kids open stockings and before starting presents.”

Jennifer Radtke of Port Washington wrote, “When we were kids we would house-hop to see what everyone got and eat all the leftover goodies. I have continued the tradition of advent calendars and St Nick's visit.”