Heh.

What I've noticed from my experiences here in the US and in England, people don't stay late at the table like we do in Latin countries. Thanks giving dinner will be done without 25 minutes. lol Oh well... I like how you do Christmas though.

Pretty much this.

Christmas dinner, New Year dinner, Chinese New Year dinner, probably that's about it.

Actually it was Summer Aisle - an Island off the coast of Scotland.

Jõulud (Christmas*) in the winter. Traditional meals would be baked potatoes with sauerkraut, blood sausages with lingonberry jam, meat jelly with black bread.

Jaanipäev (Midsummer) in the summer. Traditional meals would be beer, shish kebab, grilled sausages.


* Yes, we still celebrate Christmas in an atheist country. Just not as a religious holiday.

Christmas, New Years & Australia Day here

Pretty much just New Year's Day.

Oh, I'm sure there's meant to be other times, such as Obon (honoring the dead), but that's not a national holiday. And even when there are national holidays, good luck finding a company that lets have the day off these days.

This is nice, cause christmas wasn´t a regilious holiday. Used to be a pagan one to celebrate the winter solstice in the north hemisphere.

Christmas, despite its current name, didn't really start out as a religious holiday. It was co-opted instead to get people away from paganism. I think it's probably completely fair to celebrate it as an atheist:)
Ah, ninja'd, I see!

Actually, Jõulud/Christmas used to be a religious holiday in Estonia even before the crusade. We haven't always been non-religious. Old Estonians believed that the souls of dead ancestors visited the living at that time and brought good luck when given proper respect.

When it comes to big family meals, it's Christmas on my place too. My old high school clasmates hold some sort of get-together dinner every year during christmas because that's about the only time when everyone goes back to town for their own families and we can all meet.

Incidentally, my own family's used to be a bit of a crazy schedule: one big meal for Christmas eve dinner, another for the 25th lunch, then 31st dinner, 1st lunch, and finally the 6th of January (last day of Christmas and my father's birthday). We finally wisened up and we're skipping a couple of them, but I still take 2 full weeks to go back home for Christmas.

Japanese are wery diligent workers and im somwhat admiring that aspect.
But i wonder if you guys sometimes work too much.

For myself
its basicly this :
Christmas Eve Dinner
New Year's Eve Dinner
Christmas Lunch (sometime around December, no fixed date)
Easter Lunch (during Easter, but no fixed date)

We also have The Constitution Day 17 may
and St.hans day/eve (Bonefireday) but i woudnt call it a feast really.
It usally only includes Drinking and Barbecue.

17 may most norwegian Eat lunch and then theres parades evrywhere.
My family usally dont participate its just too much and too much stress so we usally just go on a fishing trip.

Oh, and we dont have a rigid list of what to eat but Lutefisk is a tradition sometime during Christmas.

Some funny stuff :
interview with Jeffrey Steingarten, author of The Man Who Ate Everything (translated quote from a 1999 article in Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet):

Lutefisk is not food, it is a weapon of mass destruction. It is currently the only exception for the man who ate everything. Otherwise, I am fairly liberal, I gladly eat worms and insects, but I draw the line on lutefisk.

What is special with lutefisk?

Lutefisk is the Norwegians' attempt at conquering the world. When they discovered that Viking raids didn't give world supremacy, they invented a meal so terrifying, so cruel, that they could scare people to become one's subordinates. And if I'm not terribly wrong, you will be able to do it as well.

But some people say that they like lutefisk. Do you think they tell the truth?
I do not know. Of all food, lutefisk is the only one that I don't take any stand on. I simply cannot decide whether it is nice or disgusting, if the taste is interesting or commonplace. The only thing I know, is that I like bacon, mustard and lefse. Lutefisk is an example of food that almost doesn't taste like anything, but is so full of emotions that the taste buds get knocked out.

Australia Day. Day when traditional aussie familys gather around a BBQ & throw all sorts of meat on.

In Canada, pretty much whatever you have in the USA in terms of family gathering holidays/events is the same here. However, being Chinese ethnic, I can tell you in China (specifically Hong Kong), we have various ones such as:

1. Family Reunion Dinner: exactly what that means, the day is dependent on the Lunar Calendar and is held a day before the New Year, hence Chinese New Year

2. Regional Village Celebrations: In Cantonese, it's called "Dah Jiu". In Hong Kong, there are many villages. Depending on which part of Hong Kong, Dah Jiu is on various dates and can last a few days to a week or so. Everyone in a single village has the same family name, because our founders could be our great great great great grandfather/mother, diluted through various marriages over the generations and centuries. Not sure when it happens, but I think it happens once every 10 years.

3. Weddings: a big one for villages in China where everyone is a part of it. Back in the 1970's, my mom arrived in my dad's village in Hong Kong in a red wooden carrier, carried by four guys. ^_^