Christmas Eve

In our family the main christmas celebration takes place on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day. The entire family gets together for a huge dinner party. Following dinner we all hold hands in a circle and sing a Hungarian Christmas carol. After we go around the room and make sure to say merry Christmas to everyone and hug them. Then we gather around the tree and take turns opening gifts. The eldest female always is the one that distributes them and reads the tags while the children pick which presents are opened then pass them to her. This usually ends around midnight at which time we put out more food.