One of our family Christmas traditions is to have "Heritage Dinners". There are eight different countries that our ancestors are from: Italy, France, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, Germany, England, and Denmark. There are differnet traditions and customs for each country, and we explore each one. We have foods from the particular country, talk about their Christmas traditions, and sometimes the family memebers that came from there. We would celebrate these dinners in the month of December leading up to Christmas. Now that the children are older and it's harder to do that, we each pick a country and plan our dinner for a month that is close to December. This year I have Germany. We will have currywurst, onion pie, and gingerbread. Each child gets an assignment or recipe as to what to bring. It is fun and we vary the menus and hosts. In the past for Germany, we have had beef stew with potato dumplings, sauerbraten, black forest cake, molasses, cookies, and lots of other goodies. I am looking forward to Emi's Italian dinner and Scotty's Scotish dinner. (NO HAGIS!)