Cherished American Christmas traditions in rural families can include recipes and rural wilderness activities you can share with family and friends.
In 2010, 9 acres came up for sale. It sat next to our 29 acres in Botetourt County, Virginia. The elderly man who’d owned it had worked for over 20 years to build his house but died before he could finish it. My wife, Elaine, and I bought the acreage and deeded the house to our recently married daughter, Sarah, and her husband, David.
We wanted to reestablish that rural tradition where generations live close together. Elaine worried that Sarah wouldn’t want to dwell so close to us, but both Sarah and David were thrilled with the offer. We help them with various tasks, and they do the same for us. We’re very involved with our two grandsons, Sam and Eli, from babysitting when they were little to adventures with me on the land as they grew older. We’ve created many holiday traditions.
Thanksgiving Traditions
Deer hunting plays a major role yearly. The evening before Thanksgiving, Elaine serves a family favorite, spicy venison stew. Our son, Mark, who lives just 16 miles away on another rural parcel we own, comes over with Sarah and her family. This hearty soup fuels David, Mark, and me before hunts – and the rest of the family on Thanksgiving Day and throughout this holiday period.
Over the holidays last year, Mark killed a nice doe behind our house. Before dawn, I positioned him between a bedding area and an oak flat. Several hours later, Elaine and I heard a shot, followed by the digital tone of Mark texting me to help drag a doe back to the house. Two Thanksgivings ago, I killed a mature gobbler on Thanksgiving Eve. Since the tom’s harvest came a little too late for the Thanksgiving meal, the bird served as the main course for Christmas.
Many families dine on pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving Day, but we feast on something different. Just as wild game meals are part of our holiday traditions, so are the fruits we grow and forage. Elaine and I gather 10 gallons or so of wild raspberries, blackberries, and wineberries in the summer, and we harvest apples and sour cherries from our backyard. Raspberry pie is my favorite dessert; blackberry cobbler is an ethereal delight; sour cherry clafoutis is a revelation.
Christmas Trees, Holly, an Anniversary, and Presents
We cherish the rural tradition of going out the back door, rambling through a woodlot, and selecting a Christmas tree. No plastic evergreens or perfectly sculpted white pines for us! When Sam was 4 and Eli was 2, the three of us began our annual December quest to find a Yule tree. The boys must collaboratively decide which evergreen receives the honor each year.
White cedars and Virginia pines dominate our 38 acres – neither of which, frankly, makes an aesthetically pleasing, stereotypical Christmas tree, but that’s not important. Our grandsons are now 14 and 12, and over the years, they’ve selected 16-inch-high pines, 8-foot-tall cedars, and other scraggly softwoods of various heights and dimensions. My wife always responds to the boys’ offerings with a “Wow, what a wonderful tree you all have brought me this Christmas.”
After pruning the tree outside to meet Elaine’s requirements, the grandsons gather holly from our woodlot and return inside to decorate the tree and make wreaths from the holly. Honestly, no matter how homely those scruffy pines and cedars look outdoors, they metamorphose inside. And it’s worth a great deal that these Yule evergreens cost nothing and further bond the boys with Elaine and me.
Sarah believes that children should always celebrate Christmas in their own home, so Elaine and I walk across the hollow every Christmas morning. Though opening presents is a highlight, my favorite part to witness is the emptying of the Christmas stockings.
Sarah, like her parents, is a gardener, and she wants seed packets in her stocking every year. Spinach, zucchini, and yellow squash are among her favorites. The last two years, we’ve also given her heritage fruit trees: an ‘Arkansas Black’ apple tree two years ago, and last year, a ‘Montmorency’ cherry tree. One Christmas several years ago, she received a heritage ‘North Star’ cherry tree.
Outdoorsy items often find their way into stockings. Last Christmas, Sam found a Buck deer-skinning knife in his, and Eli received a Buck tool knife. David discovered scent control bottles in his stocking. For me, a memorable Christmas stocking included two field guides on foraging.
Elaine and I celebrate another half-year of marriage during the Christmas season. This year, on Dec. 10, we’ll celebrate 48-1/2 years. We each decided after our fourth date that we’d marry – though we didn’t tell each other. On our fifth date, we made plans to do so. As newlyweds, we were so happy together that, annually, we decided to revel on both Dec. 10 and June 10. That euphoria still exists today.
On that date, we always go out to the same restaurant (Coach & Four in Roanoke). Elaine gives me a romantic card, and I buy her flowers or chocolates. I don’t know of any couple that celebrates their half-year anniversary, but I highly recommend it. Do something special for your significant other the next time you two have been together six months. I’m willing to wager that this date will evolve into a regular anniversary.
Yet another Yuletime tradition is our family cookie swap. Sarah, Mark, and Elaine gather about a fortnight before Christmas to exchange cookies they’ve baked. The trio coordinates beforehand to ensure variety and avoid duplication. Cookie choices vary from year to year, but some traditional standards always appear on Grandmama June’s (Elaine’s mother’s) cookie tray: toffee bars, chocolate fudge peanut butter pinwheels, decorative spritz cookies, Jan Hagels, and this past year’s selection, crescent sand tarts.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, but there’s a lot to be said for Andy Williams’ crooning about Christmas: “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” Here’s hoping that you and yours have unique traditions to celebrate this holiday season.
Bruce and Elaine Ingram are the authors of Living the Locavore Lifestyle, a book about hunting, fishing, and gathering for food. For more information, email them at BruceIngramOutdoors@Gmail.com.
Originally published in the November/December 2026 issue of Grit magazine and regularly vetted for accuracy.
