Holiday habits

With Thanksgiving coming up next week, I've been in touch with my mom a couple times to discuss things that we'll do when we're home. My sister will not be coming down to North Carolina this year, so Torsten and I will be the guests of honor, so to speak, not that our family is ever formal like that. But it got me thinking about the little rituals that I associate with holidays.

I don't mean the holiday-related stuff itself, like drinking eggnog or celebrating Christmas in the morning or afternoon or all decorating the tree together or whatever it is that you all do as a family around the holidays. I mean the stuff that you do around holiday time that really doesn't have anything to do with the holidays, but that you would be sad if you didn't do.

Really I guess I'm talking about parent-visiting rituals, since the only time when I reliably visit my parents each year is at the holidays. (Also, as a side note, I originally wrote "go home" instead of "visit my parents" and then made the conscious decision to change it since I'm married and my parents' house isn't my home. Am I the only one who still makes those little Freudian slips?)

So what I've been thinking about are the things that I always like to do when I go back to the town I lived in for 13 years, and that I've started associating with holidays, especially Thanksgiving. There are three:

1. My favorite sushi restaurant. It is just so effing good. And there is no sushi restaurant in DC that even comes close. How depressing is that? Wouldn't you expect a major city, the capital of the country, to have better sushi than a random city in North Carolina? Well, you'd be wrong.
2. The movies. This is something my sister started, I think. My dad likes movies that my mom and I do not, and my sister would often go with him to see stuff that we didn't want to see. Even though this year she won't be there, I fully intend to send Torsten to see James Bond (which he is dying to see and which I could care less about) with my dad while I go to something girly that Torsten would hate with my mom.
3. The shopping mall. DC has a few shopping malls in the suburbs, including one nice one that's on the Metro, but I still hardly ever go to the mall, and when I do it's usually mission-oriented. I've never been a big shopper and Torsten is even worse than me. My mother and sister are career shoppers, though, and would shop endlessly if given the chance (and the budget). I often tag along but by the end of the day I'm usually collapsed in a chair while the two of them fly through the sale racks. Maybe this year since my sister won't be there the shopping will be a bit more low-key.

So, what are the things that you always do when you go home for the holidays?