American Christmas Traditions: Postcard from the USA

Hi, this is Christina from Speak English with Christina.

It's the holidays, it's Christmas.

I'm here with my family in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

And I just wanted to show you a little bit

around what we're doing for Christmas.

I'm gonna have some of my cousins in my family

who's gonna explain some typically

American Christmas traditions,

and just kinda show you what it looks like,

maybe not in every American family

'cause everybody's a little different,

but what it's like in our family.

So let's go.

Okay, so I'm gonna let my little cousin, Annelise,

tell you about the tradition

of presents and Christmas trees.

- Whenever, a lot of people,

the day after Thanksgiving, we put our Christmas tree up

and we decorate it.

Also, a lot of families, each kid,

each year, gets a special ornament that they hang up.

And then, when they're adults,

they get all their ornaments; it's a collection.

The presents range from anything.

They can range from little necklaces

to giant toy sets.

- [Christina] Like the presents, hold up,

let's look at the presents.

- [Annelise] And if you run of presents,

if you run out of space under the tree,

and you have a fireplace, you put it by the fireplace.

- [Christina] There's the presents

by the fireplace.

- [Annelise] As long as your fireplace isn't running

'cause then it's a fire hazard.

- [Christina] Yes, of course.

What about on top of the tree?

- [Annelise] The star?

- [Christina] Mm hmm, that's not a star.

- Sometimes they're stars, sometimes they're angels,

sometimes they're like,

for our Christmas tree,

it's a little, like, a candy cane and a stocking.

They're just kinda decorations.

The star is supposed to

do with the story of Jesus.

I don't really know why they have that.

- [Christina] Anything else about trees and presents?

- Sometimes, they're, a lot of people have plastic trees,

a lot of people have real trees.

- [Christina] Oh yeah, is this one, what about this one?

- [Annelise] It's fake.

- [Christina] It's a fake tree.

- [Annelise] It's fake.

- Okay, lovely, thank you.

Okay, and now, my cousin, Maggie, and her little girl

are gonna tell you about the tradition of stockings.

- Okay, so, usually in most homes,

how many kids you have is how many stockings you have.

And they hang them on the mantle over the fireplace

if you have a fireplace.

And Santa comes, when Santa comes,

he fills your stockings with lots of things.

It could be candy or even fruit or toys.

What did you get in your stocking?

- I don't know. - You don't know?

- [Christina] You don't know (laughs).

That was a year ago. - Yeah, that was a long time.

What do you want in your stocking?

- I don't know.

- Do you want an LOL doll in your stocking?

Yeah.

Any kind of doll or fun stuff.

Usually it's just small little trinkets.

- [Christina] Yep.

- So, that's it.

- And next is my cousin, Bonnie.

You might remember her

from the Understand Real American English course.

And she's gonna tell you all about

the tradition of Christmas cookies.

- Alright, so here we have Christmas sugar cookies.

It's a tradition for us to decorate our cookies

with icing and candy sprinkles, or sparkly sugars.

And what we will do is we will leave these cookies

out for Santa Claus, with a nice cold glass of milk,

so that he can have some refreshments

after he delivers all of our gifts.

- Okay, so, I hope you enjoyed meeting some members

of my family, learning a little bit

about some typical American Christmas traditions.

I know in the video, the lighting and things like that,

it's not great, but it's at my family's Christmas party

so I don't have all of my equipment and everything.

But I really wanted to share that with you

so that you can see a little bit

about how we celebrate Christmas.

I just wanna wish you all the best for the holidays.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year,

and I will see you in 2019.

See ya!