1) When do you get/put up your tree?
Whenever we feel like it but after the 1st of December. We don't have any traditions surrounding that.
2) Is your tree real or fake?
Fake, I live in Australia where Christmas is in summer so getting a real pine tree would be a little difficult. I think some people do but I'm not sure how seeing as it's the wrong season and all. Anyway my Mum is pedantic about cleaning and we have a lowish ceiling so it probably wouldn't work anyway. I do know that it was the Germans that invented the Christmas tree tradition and Taylor Swift grew up in a Christmas Tree farm in Pennsylvania, USA but I can only think about those things in theory lol.
3) Does your tree have a theme?
Not really except for Christmassy. Our tree is kind of tacky actually. A lot are little knitted ornaments, old cheap stuff or embarrassingly so stuff my brother and I made in kindergarten and other such places when we were little. My mother used to put cheesy Christmas carols on and declare the tree decorating a family affair. It was cringe worthingly lame.
4) Any sentimental ornaments on it?
A little. I think my Mum finds those horrible things 4/5 year old me (and my brother) made sentimental. Can't think why. There are also a few ornaments my great grandmother gave us but I don't remember that. It was probably before I was born.
5) Favorite Christmas song?
I don't like Christmas songs much but I do like the Australian one Six White Boomers. It's for children and tacky (in a kiddie Christmassy kind of way) but damn that chorus is catchy! Here's a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlSsffF2xhA It's kind of awkward though because the guy who sang it and who was/is big in Australia and the UK is currently undergoing trial in London for sex offenses but he sang this song decades before any accusations were made.
6) Favorite part about this time of year?
Many things - the fact that it's summer holidays so I have a long time to sit back and relax, spending time with family and friends, celebrating Christmas and the New Year etc.
7) Least favorite thing about this time of year?
How businesses monopolise on Christmas and making it into this competitive money making/who has the best of what thing instead of what it should be - a celebration between family and friends.
8) What do you do for Christmas eve?
Get ready for anything we need to the next day perhaps see certain people to give gifts too. We often host Christmas Day so there's often last minute things to get done on Christmas Eve. I wonder if there's any teens who open their presents on Christmas Eve here, many European cultures do that (I think the Czech Republic is one of them)
9) What's Christmas morning usually like at your house?
My brother and I are 21 and 19 respectively and my mother and grandmother of course much older so you won't find the child-like excitement in our house. We usually just get up at 8 or 9 and have a nice breakfast together (often pikelets with things like jam aka jelly, margarine, honey, chocolate sauce, lemon curd etc).
10) Whose house do you have Christmas at?
Often mine (but we have once or twice gone to other places). I'm pretty sure we're having it at ours this year as well though I'm not 100% on that one. I love making desserts so I'm too busy wondering what hopefully out of this world dessert I'll make. Something refreshing, with fudge shaped stars and chocolate decorating it and some sort of surprise within it.
11) What do you do on Christmas?
After the breakfast we open presents, muck about with them and then family come over and we have either Christmas lunch or Christmas dinner with lots of food (we demolish a previously made gingerbread structure usually a house but last year it was a giant tree and once it was a sleigh made of gingerbread full of sweets).
12) Any family traditions?
See above
13) What would you like for Christmas?
- Cake decorating equipments, Harry Potter cookbook, two picture frames, vouchers toward buying myself a 32 gb iPod and some new basic make up (to save me money in the long run).