Rituals/Traditions

[oceanchild]

I was thinking my family didn't really have any traditions, but as I'm reading them I'm reminded of several.

My dad always makes Sunday brunch. Eggs to order.

Easter rarely involved egg hunts, but our baskets were always hidden. And in my entire life I've only missed Easter Vigil mass once.

On July 4 we never missed the fireworks shows, and we dressed exclusively in red, white, and blue.

I don't know if this really counts as a tradition, but one of my mom's nativity sets has a baby Jesus that can be removed from his manger. My brother always steals Jesus and replaces him with something (hot wheels car, plastic army man, stuffed animal, etc). My mom gets mad, tracks down Jesus (who can usually be found wherever his replacement item came from), and restores order to the nativity set. Then, of course, the whole thing starts over again.

Our 10th birthdays were the fancy dinner birthday. We could pick any restaurant we wanted and go with just our parents. Now, my mom always calls on our birthdays and sings. A few times she's had her classes sing to me too!

DH and I have a thing where a touch with the index and middle fingers together symbolizes a kiss. That started when we were both temping in this call center one summer and couldn't really stop and talk to each other, so as one of us walked by the other, we'd do that. It totally stuck.

[hanginginthere]

LOVE this thread! I forgot we also always got new pjs for Christmas eve and got to open one wrapped present- we do that with our daughter....since we have a multiracial family we do a lot of stuff differently in terms of food for Thanksgiving and Christmas- we have a varied menu- a roast or turkey, potatoes, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, stir fried veggies, fried rice, tofu, green bean casserole, dumplings, and more...Yep, we have a ton of left overs and take food into the hospital for anyone who is working the holidays- and our newest tradition is to have over anyone who is post call meaning they are working the holiday week so they can't get home...

[L.Jane]

and our newest tradition is to have over anyone who is post call meaning they are working the holiday week so they can't get home...

I would like to make this a tradition for us.

[medpedspouse]

We celebrate Epiphany. We have a party every year and invite our friends. We (family) do Christmas Eve (gifts from one another) and Christmas (stocking stuffers/a gift from Santa) gift giving but always save a special gift for the 12th day of Christmas. For friends, we have the party in the evening. Sometimes it is big if the 6th lands on a weekend and sometimes it is just dinner if it is before a workday. Regardless, we celebrate all 12 days of Christmas. Granted, I do not give my true love 1-12 items of something but we do exchange little gifts.

For birthdays, we try something we have never done. I am more about getting an experience than an actual gift thing.

I also take first day of school pictures....of DH. First day of MS1 through PGY6. He would always roll his eyes and pretend to be annoyed. HOWEVER, when I was not in town the first day of his real job, dude actually asked me "who s going to take my picture" - totally stabbed me and scooped out my heart. I had a friend take it of him walking into his new office.

[Liisi]

I don't know if this really counts as a tradition, but one of my mom's nativity sets has a baby Jesus that can be removed from his manger. My brother always steals Jesus and replaces him with something (hot wheels car, plastic army man, stuffed animal, etc). My mom gets mad, tracks down Jesus (who can usually be found wherever his replacement item came from), and restores order to the nativity set. Then, of course, the whole thing starts over again.

That's funny. When I was growing up, my mom loved to put out a lot of Christmas decorations... one was a set of blocks that each had a letter on it to spell N-O-E-L. My little brother and I changed the letters every time she wasn't looking, to L-E-O-N (her dad's name) or L-O-N-E.

One of our other Christmas directions was to nestle two small bird ornaments in the middle of the tree, one for me and one for my brother, making little nests for them... then we would write little notes to each other, by "hiding" the notes in our birds' nests. He and I typically fought a lot, so it was extra sweet that he and I created this Christmas tradition with each other all on our own!

[SuzySunshine]

- We do the Elf on the Shelf and this year I'm going to have a lot more fun hiding him. Using him for behavior didn't really work but the kids really enjoyed him.

- I am going to wrap 25 Christmas books and let them pick one/day to read, they LOVE books and this will be a great way to remember the reason to the season, I'm going to try to do half and half religious and not.

- Now that we live in the same town as the ILs and my family has decided not to have Christmas Day together we will get to have Christmas breakfast just the 4 of us every year which I'm very excited about. I'm planning to do new pajamas for the kids and opening most of the presents on Christmas morning.

- For birthdays everyone, adults or kids, get to pick their meal and I make their cake. I'm going to do something with balloons starting this year, I just haven't decided what. We always got to pick our meals growing up. I also INSIST that even though A's birthday is only two days after Christmas I don't want her birthday presents wrapped in Christmas paper. I'm anal about keeping her birthday separate.

- We also do first and last day of school pictures. This year we'll do it with a sign that says "When I grow up I want to be..."

I'm sure there are more I'll have to give it some more thought. I love reading all of these ideas.

[Liisi]

There were many traditions and rituals in my family when I was a kid... my parents divorced when I was four, and from then on I had two different homes, with different rituals and traditions in each. One of my favorites at my dad's house was building sandcastles on the beach at night, by flashlight. At my mom's house, I loved Kids Cook Dinner night - when my brother and I were approximately 8 and 10, WE were in charge of dinner one night per week (or month? can't remember). We sure had some interesting meals that way, haha.

[diggitydot]

One of the nice things about living away from extended family for the better part of a decade is that we developed our own traditions. We are in no way religious, however, a lot of our traditions center around holidays.

- Birthday person gets to pick dinner and whatever dessert they want for their celebration. It doesn't have to be cake.

- We do weekly Friday night pajama parties where the kids get to choose movies, games, or video games to play in their pajamas. We usually have our weekly "junk" food night at the same time. Well, as junky as I'll ever let them eat.

- DH and I cook Thanksgiving dinner together and watch football between making various dishes.

- Superbowl party every year.

- For New Year's, we watch the countdown in another time zone and then have the kiddos hit bed by 9:30p our time. We occasionally let the kids try and stay up, but they poop out by 10p.

- Day after Thanksgiving is dedicated to hunting down a tree and decorating the house.

- We do a gingerbread house the week before Christmas.

- We get a new holiday ornament every year, usually whenever we go on vacation.

- We get fireworks for Independence Day, light them off early, and then hunker down. I hate traveling that day.

- DH and I play footsies all the time. It's so silly, but it's kind of an absent minded cuddling thing between us.

- We always do the 1st day of school pic with all three kiddos.

- Weekend mornings are my favorites. We all sleep in and then DH, DD1, and I have coffee and chill.

- The kids get new pajamas, slippers, and bathrobes every Christmas. I'm not entirely sure why we started doing this, but they look forward to it every year.

- We don't put "From: Santa" on any of their gifts. Each kid just has their own wrapping paper with their name written on it.

- We only put gifts under the tree on Christmas Eve after everyone is in bed.

- The kids are allowed to open their gifts in their gigantic stockings before DH and I get up, but they have to wait for everything under the tree until after we're up.

[Bittersweet]

I've loved reading these!

Family traditions:

Christmas eve is celebrated with appetizers for dinner, games and new pajamas to wear the next morning.

Our family meal on Christmas is always Cincinnati chili.

Growing up, my mom always let my sister and I have one mental health day per year where we could play hookey from school and just hang out at home. It was always spontaneous and fun. Like a snow day without the snow

Our new traditions:

After we finish decorating the Christmas tree, we have a family picnic on the floor with only the tree lights on.

Each kiddo will get their swim suits for the upcoming summer in their Easter basket.

We have a silly little anniversary ritual. DH and I purchased a bottle of wine on the day we eloped. We decided that we'd save it, drink it on our 5th anniversary and replace it with another bottle of wine to drink on our 10th anniversary and so on and so forth. I love the pictures we have of us drinking our saved bottles of wine on our 5th and 10th anniversaries. It's fun but I'm pretty sure we're the only crazies who spend our milestone anniversaries in a liquor store agonizing over which bottle of wine will actually last five years.

[Cinderella]

Growing up my family had two distinct holiday traditions. Since I'm from the South originally my Dad would make a pot of shrimp gumbo and a batch of peanut brittle every Christmas as the family tradition. Then on Christmas Eve we each got to pick one present from under the tree to open early.

My husband and I don't really celebrate the same holidays so we're still trying to figure out our family traditions.

[Liisi]

I had probably a crazy idea -
I want to create my own personal calendar with my own holidays! So many of the mainstream holidays are ones that don't have meaning to me, so I don't celebrate them, or I do but my heart's not in it. I want to start keeping track of personally meaningful dates so I can put them on a calendar and celebrate them, such as the birthdays of my favorite authors or historical figures or social justice activists, the full and/or new moons, dates of the passage of legislature I really value, the date the amazing church I grew up in was started, the first day of summer, interesting holidays from other cultures and countries, important social justice events (date of women being legally able to vote, date of gay marriage becoming legal in my state, etc), Earth Day, the day the Internet started, etc. It could be a project that's too ambitious, but maybe even having 1 to 3 holidays per month to celebrate would be fun. And maybe it could be a blog - I could blog about each holiday and how I celebrate it. On my favorite authors' birthdays, I could write a review of their book(s). On Earth Day, over the years, I've sometimes gone for a long walk and picked up trash along the way, and/or sent letters to people in government asking for better toxic chemical regulation, more solar power, etc. I could make a small donation to a women's rights organization on International Women's Day. Etc!

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

The book talks about something similar.

They called it the "Family Almanac" and I'm actually starting it for our family. The idea is that you have a notebook with a page each day. As the days/years go by, you fill in important dates to you/your family. So ours reads for August 20th of this year: "2012 - [DD's name] first said 'Mama'".

They talked about how fun it is to read after a few years because you've got a "This week in history" for YOUR family every Sunday night or whatever your tradition is. I LOVED the idea and am starting it. It's not hard, it's a notebook that you write in whenever something strikes you. I keep it in my bedside table and do it at night if something comes up. I only do milestones or big stuff and it's really fun.

[GreyhoundsRUs]

That sounds like fun, Liisi!

My mom is the queen of celebrating dumb-ass holidays. Sweetest Day - BFD if DH didn't get me anything. Her anniversary - how dare I not get them a present. She also goes way overboard with celebrating her birthday and other holidays. No - DD is not having a joint party with you. Hot damn.

[oceanchild]

One place I worked made up a holiday for every month that didn't have one, so we got a day off work every month.

[diggitydot]

I used to work in the corporate gifting industry. A shit ton of holidays are made up. Like "Sweetest Day"? Total bullshit fabricated by TeleFlora. I like your idea Liisi. Making holidays that are meaningful to you is all sorts of cool.