Traditions

Traditions are important to my family. I can't explain the feeling they give, but anyone who observes traditions of their own don't need for me to explain.

As my children grow older I have discovered that they relate those traditions to memories of joy and are very insistent that we continue the traditions. Some things they view as tradition I just viewed as "a necessary part of holiday preparation".

I ran into a young person this week who told me they don't have any traditions. The young man had a very dysfunctional family and listened to stories of other families' traditions with rapt attention and longing tones of admiration.

It made me wonder - what are some of your Thanksgiving traditions? Certain foods? Certain activities?

We cook together, and that chattering in the kitchen has become a tradition, along with singing along with the Macy Parade.
We watch the games and cheer for teams we may not even know.
Of course we pray together and eat together.
The day after Thanksgiving we hit the early morning sales with cocoa and checkbook in hand. That evening we decorate our tree.
Then we sing carrols.

When Christmas arrives - we will attend a midnight service on Christmas and we'll read the Luke account of Christ's birth.

 

Helen,

With relatives in the mission fields and relatives working for Haz Mat (Hazardous Materials for those of you non-Americans - we've had to learn to celebrate with scattered family.)

Some ideas to help you through this.

Conference phone call, preferably on a speaker phone if you can do that, set up at a certain time so that everyone can talk at once and be as noisy and joyfully nuts as before.

If you have computers and web cams - - arrange for everyone to light their Christmas trees by a certain time and send photos or videos via the internet as it is happening.

Have each family hand make ornaments and send one of those to the other families, then take pictures of that ornament being hung on the tree.

My Aunt and Uncle went to my college's biggest rival, and on Thanksgiving, since football is a big deal to our group, we'll zing emails back and forth during the game teasing one another about how the game is going.

We also traded receipes. My grandmother's chocolate pie was a tradition. Everyone in my family now makes that pie, every year, carrying on a part of a tradition, and when we get together later and talk - that is something we all "have in common" as a memory, even though we were not together.

My sister has this wonderful tradition of writing down favorite memories of by-gone days for relatives and sending it to them before a holiday. She puts them on parchment paper, and frames them, and mails them to people. My cousins say that reading those has become a tradition because it is the next best thing to having a relative sitting there telling you stories of your Mom's past.

I've found those stories are important.

I was going to say why in this thread, but I think I'll start another thread for that.

 

Untasted??? *GASP!* How can you NOT taste cranberries at Thanksgiving!