Ham is a great family meal, flea. Plus easy. I vote for that. Did I mention a bottle of wine? I feel that's key to making the evening a pleasant one.

So after I don't know how many hours, Isaac's room is looking pretty decent! Cleared and neat, if not clean, and the cleaning lady can take care of the rest on Friday. Franny's room, after almost the same amount of time? Still a mess. I can't win. And I need to shift my attention to the den and the living room tomorrow. Le sigh.

I am pretty sure there is a Honeybaked Ham store INSIDE MY KROGER.

I wouldn't be surprised. The ones that have the jewelry stores inside them are what blow me away.

You know what's inside my Kroger? A police substation. Awwww yeah, my 'hood.

Of course, it was handy that the police were right there the night we were shopping and 2 families (of, like, 7 people EACH) got into a knock-down, drag-out fistfight IN THE STORE. And the fight kept moving throughout the store. It wasn't just Doppler shift; the fight was traveling. It was hilarious.

Awwww yeah, my 'hood.

We have a local outfit, Honey Bear Ham, that I like to patronize. I've never gotten an actual ham though, just slices. They have a dude in a bear suit outside for a few days before most big food holidays. I wonder if he's out yet.

I am pretty sure there is a Honeybaked Ham store INSIDE MY KROGER.

My Dad works for one of the local Kroger-owned stores (yes, the same one my Mom worked at). He is now officially the Guy Who Demos The Honeybaked Ham because he was so good at it last year. As in, Dad makes up his own jingles and sings them over the P.A. system every hour. Apparently that store's Honeybaked Ham sales have doubled since they put Dad back on the mic.

My great-aunt is my giftee for this year's family exchange, and she is impossible to buy for, naturally. The best suggestion is one of those gift cards that are like cash, but as far as I know, those almost always have associated fees. Does anyone know of one that doesn't?

Traditional Jewish Christmas is Chinese food and a movie.Since movies have become part of everyone's Xmas tradition we have modified it to Chinese food and a video.

We used to do a full out turkey dinner- a lot like thanksgiving- on xmas day (midafternoon.) Eve was often quiche and preliminary sampling of the pickles and pickled herring and the like that we'd also have with xmas dinner. Sometime it was ham and potato pancakes.

Now, since Dominic's bday is xmas eve, it's leftover cake and whatever doesn't make us groan. Xmas dinner is my SIL's ham. She does a really good ham, mom was happy to let that tradition take over.

OK, two more things on my list knocked off. I WILL get through tomorrow. Damnit.

My family used to have roast beef and yorkshire pudding, or at least my mother's version of it, on xmas. But that was a hundred years ago.

My mother's tradition, if we feed, is kinda random, but there's rice and peas, two sorts of tubers, beef, pork (maybe ham, blech), poultry, seafood, and if I'm really lucky, goat. Drink includes sorrel amongst other things. Dessert is the most consistent--christmas cake/pudding, hard butter, mince pies, and Blue Mountain coffee.

And if we go out, then, it's whatever we grab. But there is usually Christmas cake or pudding at the house, and my mother's gotten really good at the mince pies--last years were AMAZEBALL.

Still don't know if there's a pain plan for me yet. Way too many things are left until tomorrow, considering I fly out Thursday morning. And this time, no matter how I feel.

I don't think we had any particular traditional Xmas meals growing up. Something fancy but not necessarily the same every year. Usually a Christmas Day brunch of something like cinnamon rolls that we wouldn't ordinarily want to wait through the cooking time to have for breakfast, since we'd have oranges and little boxes of cereal in our stockings to tide us over (the only time we had sugary cereals, so that was a treat, too).

Russian Christmas had traditional meals but that was two weeks later and we didn't really get to it that often while we lived in Louisiana, so I don't remember well. I think there was kulich, though I might be mixing up holidays. That peas in mayo salad, probably. I want to say some kind of roast beef type of dish - I'm not sure, but after the per-holiday fasting that seems likely.