Lisa Hardman knows that if it’s Christmastime, Wham! will be calling.

The calls began around 30 years ago. Hardman would pick up the phone, hear nothing for a few seconds, then the British pop group would begin crooning their schmaltzy 1984 hit “Last Christmas.” One of her brothers would act as operator, patching the call through.

“None of us like that song,” said Hardman, 54, of Alna. “So when we heard it on the radio, we would try to torture each other with it. This was before you could download music, so we’d have to hear it on the radio and call. “

Christmas is all about sharing time and special moments with family and friends. Hardman’s family tradition, which started about 30 years ago and continues today, shows there are more ways to do that than just roasting chestnuts and hanging stockings with care.

There are people all over Maine who have Christmas traditions that aren’t exactly traditional, yet bring people together, honor family and create lasting memories.

THE SONG THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

Hardman says she and her three brothers never liked “Last Christmas.” The family got a karaoke machine in the early 1990s and that came with “Careless Whisper” by former Wham! singer George Michael. That may have helped fuel the family’s distaste for “Last Christmas,” which seemed to be on the radio every few minutes at the time.

It was Hardman’s younger brother Jim who started the tradition. He would wait by the radio for the song to come on, then call a sibling and let it play.

“He sat next to the radio for as long as he could, just so he could have the honor of being the first one to do it each year,” said Lisa Hardman, who works as a librarian at Dike-Newell School in Bath.

It wasn’t long before Hardman and her other siblings were making the Wham! prank calls, too. Sometimes her father joined in.

Jim Hardman died unexpectedly in 2012, at the age of 37, but the tradition he started lives on. Because he got such joy out of pranking people with “Last Christmas,” now when Hardman hears that song she thinks of it in a very different way.

“Now I actually smile when the song comes on the radio and listen to it, as it brings back funny memories of him,” Hardman said. She also carries on her brother’s legacy.

When Hartman emailed her brother John a list of gift ideas for their mother in early December, a link that appeared to direct him to a kitchen sponge instead popped open with a video for “Last Christmas.”

“Glad all the tech skills I learned from remote learning during COVID finally came in handy,” Hardman said.

EASY DOES IT

About 40 years ago, when her three kids were young, Nancy Johnson began feeling like the holiday meal calendar was a little too labor-intensive. She found that having to plan and cook a big Christmas dinner for her family just a few weeks after the Thanksgiving feast was “rather stressful.” A friend of hers, also a young mom, said she always made tacos for Christmas dinner and her kids loved them.

“She pointed out that there wasn’t a ton of preparation, the kids could pretty much help themselves,” said Johnson, who lives in Dixfield, near Rumford. So Johnson tried tacos, they were a hit, and they’ve been on her holiday table ever since. “Of course we also listen to, and sing along with, “Feliz Navidad” by José Feliciano.”

When the taco feast began, Johnson’s children were 6, 7 and 12. The ingredients at first were pretty simple — seasoned beef, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, taco sauce and flour tortillas. A few extra ingredients have been added at times, but the basic taco meal remains the same.

Johnson’s children are grown now, with families and traditions of their own. But when Johnson’s kids and grandkids come home for Christmas, tacos are still the main course.

“When that Old El Paso seasoning goes into the beef, we all agree it smells like Christmas,” Johnson said.

SOMETHING FOR THE OLD FOLKS

Brogan Howard’s family makes a gingerbread house for Christmas. Not to display among holiday decorations in their home. Instead, they carry it down to the family cemetery plot on their farm in Bridgton.

They leave it there, along with hay, grain, apples and carrots for the wild critters that live nearby.

Howard, 39, says her grandmother Betty Horton started the tradition in the late 1980s so “the old folks” would have something to look at during the holiday season and called it a living Nativity scene.

Howard’s family members would sometimes ride to the cemetery with the gingerbread house, hay and animal treats in a backhoe. That was the best way to get there when the snow was deep.

She helps to keep the annual tradition going with her own children, who are 3, 5 and 10.

“We’ve lost my grandmother and my grandfather and my stepfather and my great uncle in the last four years, and my kids knew them all,” Howard said. ” So for them, it’s like ‘Let’s bring the gingerbread down to Grampy so he can see it this year.'”

TIME TO MAKE THE DOUGHNUTS

Christine Hull says making homemade doughnuts is hot, time-consuming work. The kind of thing you’d only want to do once a year, when it’s cold outside. So why not on Christmas?

“We’re a very small family, just the three of us, and we were looking for a tradition and to create some memories. Making doughnuts is something we tried that stuck,” said Hull, 51, who lives in the Springvale section of Sanford. “Why doughnuts? Because they are delicious.”

Hull and her family began making Christmas day doughnuts from scratch about a decade ago. They make one batch with potato dough, following a Yankee Magazine recipe, which requires baking and ricing potatoes. They also make a batch of traditional yeast doughnuts.

Hull fries the doughnuts two or three at a time in a wok half-filled with hot oil. Her son and husband, who keep bees, top the doughnuts with a honey vanilla glaze.

Most years, they spend several hours making the doughnuts then call friends to come over and have some after they’ve finished with their own dinner. But for Hull and her family, doughnuts are the dinner.

DECK THE DOJO

Mark Huard, of Fairfield, said he’s always been an “extreme Christmas person” wanting to celebrate the holiday as big and as early as possible.

He put up his four Christmas trees — artificial ones — in September, for instance. He said it started as a kid, when his mother made Christmas in his house the happiest time of the year. He’s also got a December birthday.

About 10 years ago he decided to start his own tradition by hosting an early Christmas party at his home for students of his family’s martial arts school, Huard’s Martial Arts in Winslow.

This year’s party was held in early November, with 40 or 50 students and their families. There was a bonfire, board breaking contests, crafts, decorating and treats.

“With everything that’s going on in our world and our country, it’s just nice to have something fun early in the season to get everyone excited about the love and spirit of Christmas,” said Huard, 53. “This is a family business and all the students feel like a big family. That’s where the party comes in.”

PICK A COUNTRY

Dawn Tantum and her family in Starks have been eating their way around the world at Christmas for about 30 years, making food from different countries for their holiday meal. The tradition started in the early 1990s.

Her husband, John Newsom, came up with the idea. The Gulf War was in the news and there was just a lot going on in the world, especially in the Middle East, Tantum said.

Tantum, 64, remembers struggling one year with baklava when doing a Middle Eastern holiday dinner until a neighbor from Lebanon — the country, not the York County town — helped her figure it out.

Now, every year at Thanksgiving the family draws names out of a hat and that person gets to pick the Christmas country for that year.

Tantum, who works in creative services for the Morning Sentinel newspaper in Waterville, said her family and friends have eaten dishes at Christmas from at least 20 different countries: Borscht from Russia, mole sauce from Mexico, a green bean salad from the Czech Republic, an Italian smelt dish and tandoori chicken are among the favorites they’ve made. This year’s country is Argentina.

“It’s always an honor to be picked as the person who gets to choose the country,” said Aimee Newsom Kaiser, Newsom’s daughter. “It’s just really fun to explore other cuisines this way.”