My favourite winter holiday by far is Hanukkah. Even though this is more to do with late fall, early winter, the date of Hanukkah varies from year to year, and some years it's most certainly early winter (at least around these parts). I never grew up with it, but since I've been married it has become a part of our yearly tradition. The Hanukkah lights are beautiful, but I also love the blessings, traditions, and foods eaten around this time. Even though we are Christian, we observe many of the Jewish holidays, and this is no exception. (We believe that Jesus celebrated Hanukkah, actually. I taught a sermon on this one year, as a lay minister).

This is very different from my childhood. Nothing was celebrated in the late fall, early winter... Just Christmas. Being from a Czech family, we observed many of the Czech Christmas traditions for many years. These include many old superstitions and magic, strangely enough.

To save me a lot of typing, I'll simply include a link to a site that describes many of these dates, traditions, and customs very well -- put together by a Czech society in Nebraska. http://www.nebraskaczechsofyork.org/...traditions.htm

But long story short, mom would always bake traditional Christmas cookies, we would decorate the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, and most certainly have carp (which we replaced with other fish in later years) for supper... Fond memories for sure!

My wife and I still adhere to bits and pieces of this, but it's a lot more difficult. The wife won't let me wait until the 24th to put up a tree, and she really doesn't like us opening gifts on the 24th -- just doesn't seem right to her. And the fish for supper thing is odd for her too, but she generally indulges me, albeit grudgingly. This is part of the reason why I'm so happy to celebrate Hanukkah -- because it's something that we can both agree on and there are no disputes about our individual traditions growing up, and which we should observe.