With Christmas less than a month away, people of all ages are starting up their annual Christmas traditions. Whether it’s with family, friends or significant others, seemingly everyone has some sort of holiday tradition.

Rachel Hofhine spends her time bonding with her siblings.

“Every Christmas Eve, me and my little siblings build a tent out of blankets and sheets and whatever we can find,” Hofhine said. “We put lights up around it in the living room and we all sleep in the tent.”

In addition to hanging out with siblings, Ameara Clark gets to visit another relative.

“I go to my aunt’s house on Christmas Eve every year,” Clark said. “She’ll make a big dinner (I get a WHOLE pan of green bean casserole for myself) and we’ll trade white elephant gifts and eat cake balls.”

Chesley Buser also has exciting traditions involving food.

“In normal years, my grandma holds a gingerbread house decorating party with homemade houses, cookies, sandwiches, soups, and then holiday ice cream,” Buser said.

America isn’t the only one with Christmas traditions. 

British kids are well acquainted with Father Christmas, Santa Claus or Saint Nick, but they can consider themselves lucky they don’t live in Austria, where a ghoulish creature called ‘Krampus’, the evil accomplice of St Nicholas, is said to wander the streets in search of badly-behaved children. During the month of December you can expect to see terrifying masked figures out and about scaring kids and adults alike with ghastly pranks.

Another unusual tradition comes from Iceland, where a giant cat is said to roam the snowy countryside at Christmas time. Traditionally farmers would use the Yule Cat as an incentive for their workers – those who worked hard would receive a new set of clothes, but those who didn’t would be devoured by the gigantic cat-like beast.

But this year, most cannot celebrate Christmas like they’re used to, because of Covid.

Here’s how the Coronavirus has impacted Chesley Buser’s Christmas traditions.

“So my grandpa’s birthday is Christmas Eve and we normally have a bunch of parties to celebrate him and of course Christmas,” Buser said “We have a bunch of my family come down but this year it will just be my immediate family of me, my sister, mom, dad, mama, and papa. It will definitely be smaller but I hope that by next year things will be better,” Buser said.