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Getting Ready To Host During The Holidays

Thanksgiving is coming up, with Christmas right on its heels.  So whether you are preparing to host guests for Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Posadas, or traditional US Christmas gatherings, it will probably be a lot more enjoyable if you put together a strategy that will allow you to be so superlative that you create your own tradition this year.

Here are some ideas that can help get you ready to be the best host that you can be once the holiday season is here:

Plan your meal with your family

When you are creating traditions, cooperation, community, and shared enjoyment are building blocks that can form positive takeaways for you children.  One of the more popular ways to create shared experience is to look into holiday cooking classes.  Holiday cooking types and styles can vary, but putting your family in front of a knowledgeable instructor in a gourmet kitchen can return a pretty strong understanding of how to help the family get prepared for the holiday meal.  And as you have probably seen on television, the age for children who master cooking just seems to continue to drop. 

Of course, there biggest challenge for families these days is being able to put everyone together at the same time on consecutive evenings so that you can all get down to the local cooking school and attempt to unwind instantly so that you can enjoy the latest class.  In actuality, it works out to be much easier to use your own kitchen as the gourmet kitchen and look into remote classes online through the foodnetwork.com.  That way, you can be more flexible about the class time as well as  allow all of your family to learn in a comfortable ‘home’ kitchen environment.

Another alternative is cooking marketplaces which have individual cooking classes that take a few hours as opposed to cooking schools that need longer term time commitment. Cozymeal as an example is present in Boston and D.C. on the East Coast and offers a few hundred different cooking classes on the West Coast in Los Angeles, San Diego and last but not least Seattle. 

Holiday classes can also teach your family how to create great desserts and holiday cookies that are typically shared during the months of December and January.  Having a good mix of cookie types is not something that happens overnight for some people.  So learning some tricks and techniques can help you quickly put together a combination of cookie types that will impress your neighbors and friends.

Experience over decorations

One of the biggest functions of decorations is to help children learn about your culture or your way of celebrating a specific holiday or event.  If you celebrate Christmas with a nativity calendar, you may have a different faith than someone else that does not use one.  Or your culture may be different. 

Beyond teaching children, most people excel at creating one or two different types of seasonal art that augments the parties that they have.  At the same time, decorations do not need to be extant to the point that the party becomes a spectacle that provides an opportunity for people to enjoy the decorations as the main event.  In fact, except for trimming a Christmas tree and perhaps driving around to enjoy Christmas tree lights, there are rarely decoration event parties. 

So if you spend more time planning shared activities with your family that are well-coordinated this Christmas season, you should see some results.  One concept for singing events is to enhance caroling by using karaoke.  Creating contests that allow people to get involved in the traditions of the holiday that they are celebrating is another way to bring forward ideas that will add to visitor’s memories.

Include something new

People like tradition and enjoy spending time at parties during the holidays doing traditional things.  Yet within context, adding something that is part of the tradition, yet maybe isn’t part of your culture or tradition can be a good way to test a food or activity out that might be popular enough to start adding to the annual list of things to include in your holiday party.  In some cases, celebrating an entire activity that you haven’t before can start a tradition.  In Mexico and Latin culture, Posadas are holiday parties that follow certain traditions during the Christmas season.  If you share a similar belief system, you might consider having a Posada this year so that you and your friends can enjoy Christmas from a different viewpoint. 

New Year’s in Japan is a very popular family holiday.  Stores close and everyone stays home with their family to enjoy traditional foods and watch traditional Japanese dramas.  To incorporate some Japanese elements into your New Year, you don’t need to create an entire weekend like it is Japan.  Instead, you could bring in the concept of foods being pre-purchased and prepared and match that with activities that center around the family during those days. 

Hosting parties and events during the holidays can be pretty hectic, yet rewarding.  By excelling at planning and bringing in new ideas, the legend of you as a host will start to be born.

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