Well, another Christmas has come and gone. After 18 of these bad boys, I believe I’ve come up with the essentials for the ultimate Jewish Christmas.

Christmas is great. Anyone who knows me personally would probably be surprised to hear me say that- I hate Christmas music, I like very few of the movies, and the santa-magic was ruined for me by a teacher when I was about four. It’s never been a terribly important part of my winter festivities, as it was consistently out-performed by my grandmother’s latkes and chocolate gelt (even if it does taste like wax.) But I still think it’s fun walking around Rittenhouse Square or particularly festive neighborhoods and taking part in the communal joy.

So what do I do every December 25th as everybody else is sitting down to family dinner? Well first of all, cinnamon buns. That’s the #1 most important Christmas tradition in my house. This is the one day out of the entire year that cinnamon buns are allowed in our house, and we revel in the overly sweet icing and sticky dough. This is the second thing we do after waking up, following the opening of stockings.

Yup. We do stockings. And a tree. And some presents (our “big presents” are Hanukkah, cute little things like a Pennsylvania mug or hand warmers are for Christmas) They’re fun, and usually are primarily filled with candy. The tree is important to my mom because she thinks it’s pretty, and my brother and I would have felt left out sans stocking.

After the essential cinnamon bun, we see a movie. This is where the dispute starts. There’s rarely a movie out which none of us have seen and are all interested in. My brother likes exactly the kind of movie you’d expect a teenage boy to like. He’s a walking stereotype when it comes to entertainment. I, on the other hand, like none of the same movies. Star Wars is always a win, but last year’s Creed was not.

After the movie is when we get to escape from each other. None of us are sociable enough to be around each other for an entire day, so post-movie is the perfect time to escape to various rooms (and TVs) and be our typical reclusive selves. This remains the case until my favorite part of the day- dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Some years we order pizza, but at this point we’ve learned to really embrace our cliche Jewish selves. It’s all very A Christmas Story. It’s a lovely end to what is honestly generally a pretty boring day.