What's your family's ethnic tradition for the holidays?
Ours is Welsh cookies (or Welsh cakes as they're known to some).
4 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter, softened
6 tablespoons lard
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 cups currants
4 eggs
8 tablespoons milk
Directions
Sift flour, baking powder and salt into bowl. Put in butter and lard and mix until resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in sugar and currants or raisins. Beat the eggs lightly and add to flour mixture with just enough milk to make a firm dough similar to shortcrust pastry.
Chill dough 1 to 2 hours.
Roll the dough to 1/4 inch on floured surface and cut with 3 inch rounds. Bake the cakes on a greased griddle or frying pan (I use my electric skillet with just a little non-stick spray) over low heat until golden brown. Cool and sprinkle with sugar. These also freeze well.
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Basically ground nuts and sugar wrapped in sweet dough and baked.
This recipe calls them "Kifles" but I never heard that term.
http://www.food.com/recipe/kifles-nut-rolls-or-horns-13863
Ingredients
Dough
4 cups flour
2 (1/4 ounce) envelope yeast
1 cup butter
4 egg yolks, save whites
1 cup sour cream
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
Filling
2 cups ground nuts
1 cup sugar
4 egg whites, stiffly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
Directions
Combine nuts, sugar and vanilla.
Fold in egg whites; set aside.
Put flour into a large bowl.
Add the yeast to the egg yolks in a small bowl and let soften.
Cut butter into the flour until crumbly.
Add egg yolks and yeast and sour cream.
Mix well until it forms a smooth ball.
Form into 10 balls and chill.
Mix 1 cup granulated and 1 cup powdered sugar.
On counter top, sprinkle a spoonful of sugar mixture, place 1 ball on the sugar, add more sugar on top, roll out ball Roll until dough is 1/8-inch thick, forming a circle.
Cut the circle into 8 pie-shaped wedges.
Fill the wide end of each wedge with 1 level teaspoon of filling.
Roll from wide end to the point.
Continue with all the balls.
Place on greased cookie sheets.
Bake at 325°F for 15 minutes.
I'm not ashamed to admit that that is often my breakfast in late December.
I love latkes and brisket! Are you having knishes and pickled beets by chance? 
Love 'em!
You do what you want.
I'll do what I want.
Maybe we'll see each other; maybe not.
Cher
Mom has the recipe, but it's basically flour, sugar and lots of butter, whipped with serious elbow grease until it is "light and flufy". There's a typo in the recipe, so we always say "floofy". 
It's best when dipped in single malt.
In Honduras, Christmas is celebrated on Christmas Eve. At midnight the presents are opened and dinner is served. It can be turkey, ham pork, or nacatamal (a central american version of the tamal)
But the Christmas desert is always this:
(it's a bit like french toast, but with sweet bread)
YUMMM!! I cant wait!
Ingredients:
A loaf of egg yolk bread (or other type of soft bread that will absorb fluids)
500g of Moscovado sugar
6 cinammon sticks
3 cloves
5 eggs
2 cups cooking oil
4 cups water
2 cups milk
Instructions:
Cut the bread into slice,s1 1/2 -inch thick.
In a pot, heat the water and melt the sugar, with the cinammon sticks and the cloves, to make a syrup
Separate the egg yolks and the whites
In a bowl, beat the egg whites until they peak.
Fold the egg yolks inot the whites.
Dip each bread slice in mik, then coat it with beaten egg.
Fry each slice, both sides, in hot oil until golden.
Place the fried bread slices in the pot with the warm syrup, bring to a boil, and then switch of the heat.
Let the torrejas sit in the pot for several hours to let them soak up syrup.
Tips:
Never serve a cold torreja. Re-heat the pot before serving.
Always serve the torrejas with a generous amount of syrup from the pot.
To make your Christmas party a bit livelier, add a bit of rum or red wine to the syrup.
Punching my brother for the right to put baby Jesus in the Nativity crèche... Ah, those days. 
We've had our own dysfunctions at our family Christmas celebrations, but yours takes the cake. 
I wait all year for this meal, then I eat it for DAYS until I get
totally sick of it.
Until the next year!
You have to have horseradish with the beef, right?
I love rotkohl.
Because we are Shinto~Buddhists. In Japan they celebrate Christmas only as a romantic holiday, sort of like Valentines day. But its not a major holiday, and people do work that day. The big holiday in Japan, and at my house is New Years. Many people send out New Years cards to their friends and family, which the post office will hold and then deliver on New Years day.
One of my favorite things about New Years is to get a Daruma doll for the New Year.
What one does, is make a wish, and then colors in one of the eyes of the doll. Once the wish comes true, you can make a second wish, and color in the final eye. I have had these for years, and they are fun. (They are sold in Japantown, and there are different sizes.)
The dolls are given out as gifts on New Years. Another New Year Tradition is to go to a Buddhist Temple where they ring the bell 113 times, to rid us of our sins from the previous year. If one is lucky, one can get to ring the bell as part of the ceremony.
I wish we had such a bell in San Francisco, but not sure one exists here. In Japan, there are many places to go, and do that. New Years is the biggest holiday in Japan..and so it is at our house as well.
My intention was to include all holidays being celebrated this time of year. Thanks for you lovely post!
