I have a group of characters who are spending Thanksgiving (American) through New Years together at a cabin in the mountains. They are all from different families so naturally each would have their individual holiday traditions and favorite dish that to them say Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year's Eve. I would really like to know what is yours.
For example:
Dish - I remember as a kid my mother use to make potato candy each year for the New Years'.
Tradition - Putting up and decorating the Christmas Tree on the Thanksgiving night and that on Christmas Eve we would all open 1 present.
I am also looking for suggestions for drinking games that my cast of characters might play to pass the time some evening at the cabin. The characters are all in their early to mid twenties. I am looking for the sort of thing that could evoke tensions and reveal hidden truths among a group of young women, games like "I never..." or maybe something that starts out tamer and can become more attacking under the right circumstances. These can be board or card games that are played while drinking as well.
Thank you in advance for any help you may be willing to offer on these subjects.
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Nothing is Impossible...until you quit trying
50,120 / 50,000
Oct 27, 2008 - 06 34
Dish: for Christmas Eve, we've always had fondue (oil and cheese). I continued that on after I got married, and it's not the holidays unless we do that.
Tradition - baking cookies, particularly Norwegian cookies, for Christmas. My favorites (and the hardest for me to make, for some reason) are berlinerkranser.
12,605 / 50,000
Oct 27, 2008 - 06 54
Dish: Italian cookies especially Fig Cookies and PIzzelles (cookies similar to flattened waffle cones)
Tradition: To wind down the night on Christmas Eve, we would watch A Christmas Carol (non-muppets) but have it line up so that at 1:00, the "bells [in the movie] would toll 1."
Good luck!
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Inirac
50,526 / 50,000
Oct 27, 2008 - 07 07
Dish: It's a tradition in my family to have pizza and eggnog (or another drink for those who hate eggnog) on Christmas Eve night. It started out of not having enough time to make a proper supper because of preparations for Christmas dinner, and just resorting to ordering pizza. We tend to bake frozen ones now, but the tradition still stands.
Tradition: We always have Christmas at my grandma and grandpa's house, and they're religious folk. So, my grandma always prepares a nativity scene. My family's a little bit... how should I say this... insane. Half an hour into the celebration, if Jesus isn't on the roof and a wisemen isn't with the angel 'round back, you've come to the wrong house. She attempted to stave off this blasphemy by creating a winter scene instead, with snow-covered houses and ice rinks and snow... Now we just take the trucks and create massive collisions, put the dogs in the ice-fishing holes, etc. The funny part is that although my grandma always screeches when she sees her scene messed up, she's been caught more than a few times being a perpetrator of such acts.
My family is crazy and we like it that way.
----------We have done the impossible, and that makes us mighty.
-Malcom Reynolds, 'Firefly'
50,099 / 50,000
Oct 27, 2008 - 07 18
For Thanksgiving, we always make candy turkeys. You use an oreo for the base, a creme drop for the body, a fudge striped cookie for the tail, a candy corn for the head, and you stick everything together with chocolate icing.
On Christmas Eve, we open two presents, and one of them is always a pair of Christmas pajamas. Then we watch A Muppet's Christmas Carol. Christmas morning, we read the Christmas story from Luke 2 before we open stockings or presents. And we open presents one at a time, repeating from youngest to oldest until we're done.
----------"We don't need hope. We need caffeine."
11,781 / 50,000
Oct 27, 2008 - 07 45
Am I the only drinker here? No one else is giving drinking game ideas... lol
Though by the time I finish typing this up there might be a few.
Ring of Fire is a great one, but could turn nasty with the right (er, wrong) people. You need a deck of cards and a LOT of alcohol. Warning, do not start with port (stupid boys). And as this game can induce massive amounts of laughter it may cause beer to come out of your nose (pain).
Shuffle cards.
Make a circle with the cards (like a magician spreading the deck, but full circle) face down.
Everyone takes it in turns to pick a card.
Each card, once used, is discarded.
Continue till all cards are gone... or someone dies of an overdose.
This is where the fun starts. Each card has a rule attached to it, different people have different rules but here's what we play by;
Ace - delegate 1 drink
Duece - delegate 2 drinks (either 2 to one person or one to two people)
Three - delegate 3 drinks (again, in whatever combo you like)
Four - delegate 4 drinks
Five - delegate 5 drinks
Six - everyone drinks
Seven - this card is instantly discarded. At some point (whenever they like) they rest their thumb and forefinger on their chin (contemplative type gesture). If you see someone doing this you do it to. The last one to do it drinks.
Eight - change direction
Nine - quote a song, book or film. Failure results in a drink.
Ten - create a rule
Jack - allows you to go to the toilet; no one can go to the loo without this card (spirits are a must for this version)
Queen - you are now the Queen; anyone that looks you in the eye has to drink. This only happens once and you only have one Queen at a time
King - Free go; no drink... unless you really want to (though believe me, you'll be drinking enough as it is)
It's number ten that causes trouble. It can be used in a fun way; everyone that drinks has to spin round three times after each drink. Or in a malicious way; every time someone drinks, Jack has to drink... which was a bad idea, because then Jack made the rule that whenever Jack drinks, everyone else has to drink... Or it can be something nastier, whatever you can come up with.
Someone once created the rule that everyone time someone drinks they had to lick my leg... eugh. We had another that everytime you drink you had to point at a certain guy and declare "You are not Horatio Nelson, you dirty lefty!" So, so silly.
Most other drinking games I know revolve around movies, computer games and board games.
So...
Dish; nothing says Christmas likes Pigs in Blankets (the sausage and bacon kind, not the sausage and pastry kind).
Traditions; opening one small present before bedtime.
Not putting up decorations and watching everyone else do it; I hate putting up decorations.
Christmas hats. No one may eat at my dinner table without wearing a paper hat!
A cigar and whiskey after dinner... well, after I've watched everyone tidy up after dinner. Getting up early to cook for a bunch of people has it's perks.
Putting out carrots for Rudolph and brandy and a mince pie for Santa *grin* I am such a child!
A New Year thing that my mom does and that I have picked up is opening the front and back doors at or just after midnight to let the old year out and the new year back in.
1,668 / 50,000
Oct 27, 2008 - 09 30
Ooh, fun!
Dish(es): For Thanksgiving, my totally northerner New Jersey family deep-fries a turkey. We're not sure where we got the idea, but we do love the taste! For Christmas, there's Italian Christmas cookies. The chocolate kind, a little spicey with raisins, and the sugary-buttery kind, which has be formed into little spirals or elongated S-shapes and then iced and sprinkled with round (never long) sprinkles...
Traditions: Christmas Eve is appetizer night. A few days before, someone goes to a big box store like BJ's or Sam's and buys a box of every appetizer that looks good (pigs in blankets, potato skins, mini quiches...whatever), and the makings for an antipasta. On Christmas Eve, the appetizers hit the oven and the antipasta hits the table and everyone's got something they like in the mess of choices. Christmas Day is pasta. Because really, after expending all that energy opening presents and running around like madmen, who wants to cook some fancy, labor-intensive meat dish? We used to try to do the Italian tradition of serving 7 fishes on Christmas, but then we realized that no one actually wanted to EAT them; we just thought we ought to do it.
----------"Trust me, I'm an expert!": Ask me about Linguistics or being an EMT.
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2003: "By the Book" - winner
2004: untitled - fail
2006: "Spilled Blood" - winner
2007: "Help Wanted" - fail
50,351 / 50,000
Oct 27, 2008 - 12 22
Drinking Games! Yay! Here are two that I know:
BEER PONG - You need a ping pong table and a ping bong ball. Teams can be one, two or more as desired but are usually two per team. Each team has a line of about five or six cups on their side of the table filled about half way with beer. The teams take turns bouncing the ball across the net (by hand, not by paddle), trying to get it into a cup of the opposing team. When a ball goes into a cup, someone on that team has to drink the beer. This continues until all of one team's cups are empty. It's a good idea to have a bowl of water handy to rinse off the ball between tosses when it lands on the floor.
FLIP CUP - This is a race! However many people you have, split them evenly into two teams lining the long sides of a table. Each person has a cup of beer in front of them. When the race begins, the first one in line drinks the beer, puts their empty cup upside-down on the edge of the table, and then tries to flip it right-side up with their finger. They have to keep trying to flip the cup until it lands correctly at which time the next person in line drinks their beer. This continues until the last person in the line can successfully flip their empty beer cup right-side up.
----------What if there were no hypothetical questions?
50,046 / 50,000
Oct 27, 2008 - 13 06
Dish- for every holiday one person from my family makes pizza dip (this delicious, delicious dip that is like eating pizza on a cracker - made with sour cream, cream cheese, spices, pepperoni, peppers, sauce and cheese!) Also, for Christmas my mom usually makes beet soup. It's a tradition passed down from my grandmother and we always eat it on Christmas Eve.
Tradition - Christmas Eve is usually spent with my family and since I was in middle school we have opened presents that night. We usually listen to Christmas music the entire night. Since I've been in college we usually wait to decorate the tree until I come home (I'm an only child). For Thanksgiving, it's also kind of a tradition to take a nap after dinner!
Drinking games - beer pong, flip cup that have been mentioned. At school we play Kings (just another version of Ring of Fire) and other card games like F**k the Dealer: (Sit in a circle, the first person holds the deck and asks the person to the left or right of them to pick a number - let's say they pick 10, the dealer looks at the card and tells them if it's higher or lower than what they guessed. If they guessed right on the first try then they put it on the table and the dealer must drink for as many seconds as the card is. (J-11, Q-12, K-13, A-14) and the dealer also gets one strike. If the guesser is wrong, the dealer shows them the card and they must drink the difference of the card they guessed and the actual card. Once the dealer goes through three people without getting three strikes, they can pass the deck to the next person) This is an easy way to get drunk quick!
Also, A**hole (I don't know why they all have names like this, haha) which goes like this : The deck is divided equally between everyone is who playing. You start with the two black threes in the deck, whoever has them puts them down. (Red threes and twos are "clear cards" which you can use if you need to clear the deck) You then continue in a circle, the next person putting down a 4, the next a 5 (or their next highest card) and so on. If one person puts down two of the same card (two 4's, let's say) the next person must put down two of the same cards that are higher than four. Also, is someone puts down two 4's and another person in the circle has the other two 4's, they may throw them down before the next person takes their turn and they can take another turn after that. This is called a social (when all four cards are down) and everyone drinks. Also, if someone puts down a 4, then the person after them puts down a four, it skips the person next to them and they can't take a turn until the next time around. The game continues until the last person gets rid of their cards. The first person done is the "president" and the last person done is the "a**hole" - the president can now boss everyone around during the next rounds of games (especially the a**hole), telling them how much to drink, shuffle the deck, etc.
Hope this helps!
39,422 / 50,000
Oct 27, 2008 - 13 14
Wow! These are sounding great folk. Please keep it coming.
Funny how isolated we can get in our own little corners. Like I never heard of people banging pots together at midnight on New Year's until I was in my mid twenties. Aparently it's something a lot of the older neighbors do around here but not something that was done in the small town I grew up in.
This is all really helpful. Thank you
----------Nothing is Impossible...until you quit trying
0 / 50,000
Oct 27, 2008 - 15 06
As far as good food for holidays I always think of dishes like roasted potatoes (which i just ate, hmm), sage carrots (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/BRAISED-CARROTS-WITH-CRISP-...), stuffing (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Wild-Mushroom-Stuffing-2/Detail.aspx), and other savory, rich foods. Stews and soups are always good, especially since your characters will be at a cabin in the woods, and it is cold.
As far as games to play, I have to admit a passion for Trivial Pursuit. It can totally be played while drunk, and being drunk may actually help you win- I know it helped me! I also had a lot of fun playing this game:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatrist_(game). It was a ton of fun.