I guess people of the north still have some traditions for Beiwe. Here 'deep down south' (lol) aren't that many traditions from the times of celebrating Yule, Kekri and St. Knut's Day (predecessors of Xmas).
Probably only 'scandinavian' traditions we have left is to go down to city to listen city mayor declaring 'christmas peace'. It's just a medieval tradition that has been going on in our city for more than a 600 years. Doesn't have any juristic meaning these days, just a tradition of the old laws. Other such laws were 'king's peace', 'courthouse peace' and 'peace for women'. If it gets too cold out there, we might as well watch the whole thing from telly.
Maybe another small tradition that doesn't exist elsewhere is goats made of straw. It has some pagan origins but nowadays it's just kids making them. We have few, somewhere, made by our kids when they were younger.
I guess the whole xmas thing is just taking it easy while ladies (wife, daughter and my mother-in-law) make traditional christmas dinner (ham, various casseroles, smoked salmon, black bread etc). The point is to make the dinner by themselves, not to buy ready products.
Of course i've had a hell of a job with my son to clean the house for xmas. It must be over the top for the ladies :thinking:
And smoking the salmon is my job also. It's a hell of a cold job at this time a year :p
And what's better after dinner than sitting down with some good book, pipe & beer.
edit: just found one the goats. Checked my history books also. Nowadays these goats are just charming decorations but in the medieval times 'goat' (pagan character) was a bad one. You better stay indoors when such thing were on the move :p
http://i1221.photobucket.com/albums/...ps68eabcfd.jpg