Among our family Christmas traditions is Christmas Eve communion. This tradition didn’t start until I was in college. At that time, the pastor at the church I grew up in started serving come and go communion and this tradition continues today. Even before this tradition started, we would go to my grandparents’ house on Christmas Eve. When this started, the family would go to church as a large group and receive communion.
There are a variety of ways that churches do communion. I have spent my entire life in the United Methodist church and we typically do communion once a month. In all of the communion services I have participated in, we have always gone to the front of the church to be served. Beyond that, there are many ways that churches serve the bread and wine. The United Methodist churches that I have gone to always use grape juice, many times served in the miniature shot glasses (I’m sure there is an official term for these but this is what I have always called them). These glasses were actual glass in the church I grew up in and had to be cleaned between uses. They also used broken up saltine crackers for the bread. I remember our church upgrading to the communion crackers (comedian Dane Cook refers to them as Jeez its) and eventually using disposable shot glasses.