Actually did you know the reason they shorten it to Xmas? X originates from the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of the Greek word Christós, so sometimes in history they would...
nevermind, sorry for geeking out for a second
@Ookla the Shadowed My family has the same pickle tradition! There was one year that we actually lost the ornament, so we hid a real pickle. Ours is also much more competitive (because this is what my family does to everything). Usually it's a couple dollars is the prize, or something from dollar tree, but we will fight for that pickle! As most of my family are adults now, the pickle gets more and more... extravagant every year. Last year it took us three weeks to find the darn thing.
We also make sugar cookies and have a big decorating party sometime during the December month.
Every single year, a big argument goes down about whether we should but the angel on the tree, or the star on the tree, though at this point we've had the argument so many times that it's not a real argument. I think only once or twice have people gotten upset, usually it's just humorous stuff. The funniest part is that the main argument is "what we did last year", but no one can remember what we did the year before. The people arguing for the angel usually say, "We totally did the star last year, we've given in to you guys a couple times lately!" and the star people always say, "we never do the star! We always do the angel! The last time we did the star was when we lived in Colorado!" As you can probably guess, the angel usually wins.
We hide our presents for most of December, and then the night before Christmas we set an alarm for the middle of the night, and sneak out and put our presents under the tree so that when we wake up, the presents are all underneath. We are very very very sneaky.
All of us girls make Cinnamon Rolls with our great-grandma's recipe the night before, and let them rise overnight. On Christmas morning we stuff ourselves with those cinnamon rolls as we wait for the family to gather.
My Dad always tells the christmas story right before the gift giving.
We have a very organized way of opening presents, most Christmases in our house go into the afternoon. We all open our stockings at the same time, announcing anything that is really cool, and then we get to the bigger gifts. We start with the youngest in the family (me), but instead of getting presents for me to open, I get one present that's for anyone in the family but me or the next oldest sibling (for efficiency reasons). I deliver it to them, and while their opening it, the next oldest sibling (my brother) goes and gets the next present. Again, for anyone in the family but him or the next oldest. He holds the present in his lap while the person who just opened their gift announces it to the family, who it's from, maybe tells a story about why they got that gift, and then thanks the person who gave it to them. Then they throw the wrapping paper at our TV which is playing a video of a fireplace (this is a very vital part of our traditions). It keeps going like that, with people getting presents for each other from under the tree. Normally we take a fifteen minute break at lunch to clean up all the wrapping paper, put away the presents we've gotten, and put out the snack bar - little sausages, cheese, crackers, and black olives. Then we finish opening the presents in the afternoon.