Does anyone have any good Christmas or holiday recipes they want to share? Main dishes, desserts, cookies, etc.? And/or any cool Christmas/December holiday traditions?
Sure! 
This is one of my favorite easy desert recipes that I always make around the holidays… and other times to.
Scotcharoos
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup white sugar
1 cup creamy peanut butter
bag of chocolate chips (about 12 oz or so)
rice crispies
In a large sauce pan mix the corn syrup and sugar together and heat to a good boil. Remove from heat and stir in peanut butter. Then add just enough rice crispies (10-11 cups or so?) to make it thick and sticky similar to rice crispy treats. Press mixture evenly into a lightly buttered cake pan. Melt chocolate chips and spread over the top. (can melt chocolate chips in the micowave, in a pan on low heat on the stovetop, or sprinkle them on top of the rice crispy mix and carefully put the whole thing on the middle oven rack under the boiler just long enough to soften the chocolate to spreadableness.) Let the whole thing sit a little until it’s all cooled and set up a bit, then cut and eat. YUM!
Happy Holidays Everyone!
My grandmother always made corn-and-oysters, a casserole type dish, on Thanksgiving and Christmas. To this day, it just doesn’t seem like the holidays without it-- even though I’m the only one around who eats it, as my parents live on the other side of the country. 
You can have that recipe if you like, or I can give you my rum ball recipe! 
Andrea ~*~
Well, traditions…let me see…
One thing we make a big deal about in our household is the season of Advent. Every Sunday evening in Advent, at sundown, we light the appropriate candles on the Advent wreath and celebrate an abbreviated service of Evensong, taking turns as Lector, Oblationer and Cantor. We also have an Advent Calendar that is also a Jesse Tree…our daughter greatly enjoys putting the appropriate ornament on the tree each morning and reading the accompanying Scripture.
Another Advent tradition, which we picked up from the Moravians in North Carolina, is the “Good Deeds” Manger. On first Advent, we put the empty manger and a bundle of straw (or, in our case, usually pine needles!) in the middle of the coffee table. Whenever any of us does a kindness for another person, he or she puts a straw in the manger.
One of those “kindnesses” for us is the Angel Tree for needy children at our local mall. Whenever possible, we pick two or more children, close in age to our daughter, so she can be closely involved in choosing gifts for them. We never know anything about them, other than their first names and their ages, but our daughter loves thinking of them on Christmas morning…imagining them opening their gifts, and hoping they are as pleased with them as she is with hers. This kind of giving is something we endeavor to practice year 'round, but there’s a special tenderness to it in Adventide.
On St. Nicholas Day (December 6) we like to exchange ornaments for our tree (which won’t go up until a bit later). My parents started my sister and me collecting Christmas ornaments when we were little, and it’s a tradition I’ve continued with my husband and daughter. St. Nicholas Day is also when we put up our outside decorations.
We’re always in a bit of a quandry about our tree. We’d prefer to follow the Anglican tradition of putting the tree up on Christmas Eve, but our Christmas Eve schedule is pretty tight (and it’s next to impossible to find a tree that close to Christmas, the world being what it is these days), so we compromise by putting it up as close to Christmas as possible. Decorating the tree is a bit of a ritual with us. Always, before any other ornament goes on the tree, my daughter hangs a very special ornament…a tiny, battered nativity scene that has been a part of my Christmas tradition since I was a tiny child (there’s a special story about that particular manger scene too…it played an important part in a small Christmas miracle…but I won’t go into that unless someone is interested, as it’s a rather long, though very sweet, story). After that, we hang our new ornaments. Then we take the others out of the box, one by one, and remind one another about Christmases past as we hang them on the tree, for each has a special story to tell.
The week before Christmas is an especially busy one for us. Our church has an evening Service of Lessons and Carols on fourth Advent, and as both my daughter and I are choristers and all three of us are Lectors, we have a major role to play. It’s one of my favorite services of the Church Year…the public is invited, and the church is always packed. Our choirs also go caroling at area nursing homes on fourth Advent, so we get a lot of singing in!
Sometime during that last week of the Advent season, we also make a trip down to Pacific Grove, where my husband and I lived when we were first married. We do a bit of shopping, have dinner at the little restaurant we loved so much when we lived there, and then visit “Candy Cane Lane”…a neighborhood that decorates to the nines for Christmas, complete with animated figures and music. We also try to make time to ride the “Christmas Train”…a light-encrusted train (yes, a full-sized train!) that cruises through the railside neighborhoods of Santa Cruz as the riders sing carols.
Christmas Eve is a wonderfully full day for us. We usually take our daughter to the afternoon service at the church, which is especially for children. The kids read the story of the Nativity from Luke, and place the various figures in the Nativity Scene at the altar. At sundown on Christmas Eve, we light the final candle in the Advent Wreath (the white “Christ Candle” in the center of the wreath), and finish our Evensong by singing “Joy to the World.” Then we take the little Christ figure and place him in the Good Deeds Manger, on the soft bed we have built for him with our kindnesses to others. Only then is our daughter allowed to choose one present from under the tree to open (the rest are opened on Christmas morning). Very shortly thereafter, I have to get to the church to rehearse and vest for Midnight Mass (the Youth Choir doesn’t sing for this service, so my husband and daughter can come a little later). Our choir usually presents an hour or so of special music before Mass begins (it actually starts at 11:00). The Mass itself is wonderful…I can’t think of a better way to usher in the Feast of Christmas! At midnight, our sexton slips out and rings the church bell…the one time of the year, in this very secular, “PC” community when we can get away with ringing the bell after sundown! Usually this happens during communion, and it’s a wonderful thing to be kneeling at the altar when the bell tolls the good news of the Nativity!
I always arrange a little party for the choir after Mass…nothing elaborate, as it’s quite late, and people need to get home…just some champagne and goodies in the choir room so we can toast one another and the season before heading off to our respective homes and traditions.
We don’t get home until very early on Christmas morning, but there’s still one thing to be done…the goodies for Santa must be arranged! I have it on very good authority that Santa is especially fond of Russian Tea Cakes and Eggnog. Of course, carrots must be left out for the reindeer as well. Then it’s off to bed for our daughter, and, somewhat later, for us .
On Christmas morning, all of us, including the animals, rush down to see what Santa has left (he’s very generous to the critters as well…our dog Cedar heads right for his stocking to find the tennis balls Santa always brings him!). Then we sit around the tree and open our gifts one by one, slowly, so we all get to see what everybody got. After that, my husband makes our traditional Christmas breakfast of gingerbread waffles (yum!). I usually make something special for Christmas dinner as well, but that changes from year to year…this year, I want to make something festive with tempeh.
In the Anglican tradition, we leave all our decorations up for the entire 12 days of the Christmas season. We’re a bit of an oddity in our neighborhood, where people tend to take everything down a day or two after the main feast! On the eve of Epiphany, we give our daughter one last present…this time, something sacred in nature (this year, I want to give her her own Prayer Book) and attend a special Epiphany Mass at church, where we sing the “star” carols (such as “We Three Kings”) and celebrate several baptisms. Only then, on the morning of Epiphany, do we take the decorations down and carefully pack them away for next year.
I love Advent and Christmastide…can you tell?
Redwolf