Christmas Rituals

I was asked to think about what the effect of missing Christmas with my family would be long before this trip was official, especially since the friend I'm going to visit made it very clear that Christmas is an extremely important time in his family - not only because he and his father work intimately with the church, but also from a cultural context, the rituals observed at this time are extremely intrinsic to their lives, and especially important to the family unit.

I have particular feelings about what Christmas means to me and my family, and I think they're quite different from what you'd expect. However I'm not asked to go into those right now; what I'm supposed to ask myself is basically what am I going to miss? Waking up and opening presents with my family? Probably not so much.

However, eating orange cinnamon rolls for breakfast before the ritual of opening presents? That's something important to me that I think I might miss. So I'm thinking I may have to learn to make some from scratch. Yikes.

Also, I realized last night, Christmas crackers are special to me. I'm trying to figure out if they're part of South African Christmas tradition or not. It seems they would be, (or that me imposing a colonial perception on the country?)

I just don't know, and it's going to be exciting to find out. (For the record, a quick google search reveals little of use, since it focuses on more tribal-oriented customs and interpretations of European practices.

*shrug* We'll see. I'll be paying close attention, you can be sure. Can't wait to find out what Christmas in the summer season is like.
For the record, I'm simultaneously studying for my Cultural Anthropology final, which explains why stuff like this is on the brain.