Same Same, But Different

Whereas there are many countries which seem to have ONE particular traditional Christmas meal every family eats, this is not the case in Austria. I just looked up the number of households in our country (3.65 Mio), approximately 79% of which are either Catholic (75%) or Protestant (4%). So those 2.9 Mio. Christmas-celebrating households probably have about 2 Million different traditional Christmas meals.

Well, at least this is what I assume based on surveys among the people I know. The "traditional" meals range from cold cuts to fish to sausage and sauerkraut (which my Dad's sister and family always eat, apparently a nod to the Holy Family's humble beginnings in the manger to turkey or "something different every year". In my family, we always have fondue (the chinoise type with meat cooked in broth, not oil) on Christmas Eve. Meat fondue is acutally the traditional New Year's Eve family meal in some of my friends' houses. The Mermaid's clan also eats it on Christmas Eve, like we do. We did not always eat fondue, but have had it pretty much as long as I can remember. I really love it and look forward to it every year. In case you are wondering why there are chopped sausages on those meat plates, this is a special family tradition as we are all greedy and have perfected the art of putting at least 2 pieces of meat on the skewer. The little piece of frankfurter sausage acts like a great stopper that prevents your meat from dropping into the "lake". Needless to say the broth that we have with noodles on either Christmas Day or the 26th (called Stefanitag after St. Stephen in Austria) tastes great. Christmas Day is the only time of the yaer those old-fashioned but cool special fondue-plates with their sauce compartments get an airing. Some years ago, we switched to an electric fondue heater, but other than that, we're traditional...

What's your family's tradition?