Four weeks¹, four journal posts.

In November, we set h2g2 researchers the challenge of writing a post a day for thirty days. And what we got was brilliant, funny, moving, informative and occassionaly quite weird journal posts, on a wide range of different topics. It was great.

This month, however, we want you to write to a theme, and that theme is celebrating the midwinter (summer) blowout differently. Differently to how you usually do it, differently to your neighbours, differently to the Western stereotype of the bigfatredsantahohohoturkeysproutsbaublesstartreetreetreeeggnogpresentsmorepresentsandfallingalseepinfrontofjamesbond². Plus snow.

Choose from the ideas below, or use your own prompt. The idea is to write a post a week, but if you want to cram them all in over the space of a few days, why not? And if you only feel like doing the one post, don't hesitate to do that too. Or write more than four posts.

Anyone doing the full four will get a special handshake to perform with other December journalists for the start of the New Year. And you get extra points³ if you manage to turn you experiences into a Guide entry.

• Have you ever celebrated a holiday from another country or tradition?

  For many Christmases Solnushka's family used to host overseas students for a traditional English Christmas dinner. Some of the were Christian, some of them weren't, but all of them got to be flummoxed by the sprouts, play the one board game my family indulges in a year and fall asleep in front of James Bond. The stories they must have told when they returned home...

• Have you ever discovered that your family or neighbourhood has what others consider an unusual holiday custom?

  A Russian Jewish friend of Dmitri's was shocked to find that her neighbours in Cherry Hill, NJ, didn't have Christmas trees. In the Soviet Union, they all had trees for the Winter Festival. What did that have to do with religion, she wanted to know. What, indeed? Another friend of Dmitri's from Nebraska never liked the crib scene in the North Carolina town he'd moved to. The reason: 'It wasn't the same without the T-Rex.' Turns out the small town he grew up in had dinosaur sculptures as a permanent feature of the park. The T-Rex always loomed over the Christ Child come December...

• Do you, or would you consider, opting out of the holiday your background suggests you should celebrate altogether? What do/would you do instead?

  Ben used to go away to a meditation retreat with the Buddists over the Christmas holidays.

• What is your favourite, or least favourite family or regional holiday custom? And are there any customs from another tradition you would like to steal?

  Witty Moniker likes going to pick out the tree at the Christmas Tree Farm. You can go any time after Halloween. They tag the trees and you rip off the bottom half of the tag of the tree you wish to reserve. When you're ready to put it up and decorate it, you go back to the farm, give them tag and they fell the tree for you. On the other hand, Ben dislikes Aul Lang Syne. But Solnushka is enthusiastically encouraging the adoption of the Russian tradition of making the children perform for Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost aka Santa in a blue hat and robes) before they get any presents on New Year's Eve.

• What do you think people from other traditions would find the oddest about the way you usualy celebrate?

  Even after a number of years of doing it with her husband's family, Solnushka finds the Russian habit of sitting down to the biggest meal of the year (on New Year's Eve) at the stroke of midnight a little strange.

When you have written each entry, why not share it in the thread below?

Solnushka