Ruthmarie, I have to say that when I was married the first time, my MIL made tacos her way for dinner the night before Christmas. Since I have divorced and moved away I don't make them and no one I know cares for her way of making them, so I have to say I miss them every year. Christmas just isn't the same anymore.

Oh, they all sound intriguing.  I know there's a chilled Dream Whip Salad in my family's past, but the recipe is lost.  Share recipes, please?  I shared mine, and maybe there's a Best of the Holiday lineup possible on the CITR.  Could be as interesting a collection as the stories that cemented the recipe into one family's tradition.  <img class="sfsmiley" title="happy-flower" onclick="sfjLoadSmiley('happyflower.gif', 'happy-flower', 'http://chickensintheroad.com/w…..eys/', '', '1');" src="/wp-content/forum-smileys/happyflower.gif" alt="happy-flower" />

Made from scratch pumpkin pie and fresh whipped cream and sweet potato casserole/souffle. Christmas eve it's potato soup and some other kind that is vegetarian for my DIL. Okay, I'm getting hungry now.

The signature dish in my family, for both Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, is stuffed celery.  We can vary the menu to accommodate new inlaws, diets, changing tastes, or experiments, but we have to have stuffed celery or it isn't our family holiday.  We have two different stuffings: one is pimento and cream cheese, the other is a cream cheese, roquefort, Worchestershire sauce, and garlic mix.  There are no recipes.  The secret to making them just right is shared knowledge, passed down by practise and experience from one generation to the next.  We always make a huge platter of it, so we can nosh later in the evening and still have some left for breakfast the next day.

We have some other traditional foods. Spiced peaches and my mom's fresh cranberry-and-orange relish for Thanksgiving. Bagels with cream cheese and lox for Christmas breakfast. My family used to usually have ham for Christmas dinner, but my husband's family's Christmas tradition was prime rib with Yorkshire pudding; after having it once, my entire family happily abandoned our tradition for his. So of course we had to have plum pudding for dessert, too, though we kept our mince pies as well.

But we could, if pressed, do without any or all of those as long as there's stuffed celery on the table.

For Thanksgiving my family has to have my sister's sweet potato crumble which is more of a dessert than a vegetable dish, but we seem to overlook that.  We do repeat lots of dishes, but the sweet potato dish is the one we use every year.  Other than that, the rule of the day is to be overwhelmed with food.

Christmas day we aren't consistent with food.

This is a fun discussion, thanks Ruthmarie!

Every year my mom and I make Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner exactly the way my grandmother (her mother) did.

-Turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing/ stuffing, gravy, candied yams, green
bean casserole, rolls and pumpkin pie.

Each year I say I'm going to try new dishes (I love to cook & experiment
with food), but I never do. I just don't think it would feel like the holidays if we didn't
make grandma recipes.

Good morning from the farm. This is going to be a hard Christmas this year for our family since my husband just passed away in August, but I'm going to try to make the best of it. My family loves my fresh cranberry salad I make that was a recipe of my Mom's. It has fresh grapes, apples, crushed pineapple and lots of other good things in it. I make this for Christmas and also for Thanksgiving. Also I always made my lg homemade nutrolls for Christmas with lots of nuts,honey, butter, pure maple syrup in the filling. Yum-I'm getting hungry thinking about it!  Alanna