What are some traditions you’re building with your family?
We have some traditions for Christmas morning. I make sticky buns and fruit salad (a tradition handed down from my mom) in the morning, we read the Christmas story from the Bible, and then we open presents together (which can take all day because the kids enjoy each present after opening it).
For this past Easter, we did something similar to Resurrection Eggs with a 12-day countdown to Easter. Each day focused on a part of the Easter story. The kids LOVED it and could tell the Easter story to anyone who asked. I'm eager to do this every year.
Every fall, we do a Family Getaway Weekend. (Because summer is the busiest time for my husband’s business, we don’t do any family vacations during that season. Even fall can be busy for him, but we make sure to get away as a family for at least a weekend.)
Also in the fall, we head out to a pumpkin or apple farm. My mom and brothers and sisters-in-law have been able to join us; we make it a big event. It's a lot of fun, and the kids love picking out pumpkins. This year, we might try out a farm nearby that has this pumpkin launcher.
What do YOU do? Do you have any non-holiday oriented traditions?
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4 comments:
For some reason it's easier to have traditions centered around a holiday than just a random day. It is funny though, since moving to Ireland, holiday traditions, especially those for patriotic days are so much more important. We have a cook out for the 4th, we fly our flag for memorial day and the 4th of July, we have Turkey and sometimes take the day off work for Thanksgiving! Just being away from home makes these days all the more meaningful and because we don't want the kids to forget where they are from.
At Christmas, we always decorate the tree together, even when they were little they put all the decorations on the tree, (in CO we went together to pick a tree out, but have a fake one now, sadly). Sometime during the Christmas season we always take a family picture, usually to use on the card we send out and we try to get the kids picture taken with santa too, we've not done this every year but we try. We make cut-out sugar cookies with icing and a glass of milk for Santa. I really wanted to skip this year and didn't really realize it was such a tradition when my 7 yo came to me and said but mom we do it every year we can't skip it! So off to the store I went! On Christmas Eve, we get to open one package (usually the pj's package from Gram)then we read the 'Night Before Christmas' and they go off to bed. Ty and I usually get one gift from Santa a few little things for the stockings and we put those things out. Then Christmas morning we read the story of Jesus' birth from the bible, open presents and then I make breakfast (tradition passed on from my childhood-though we always opened all our gifts on Christmas Eve) The last couple years here we've invited friends over and we've had the traditional Christmas dinner, turket dressing lots of potatoes, etc... Growing up we always had black-eyed peas on New Years but it's kinda hard to carry on that tradition when I'm the only one that likes them! We don't have any set traditions at Easter, other than just going to church. Back when it seemed like I was perpetually pregnant ;o) we took a weekend trip with each one, about a month before the birth, though I don't remember it actually being planned like that, just how it worked out. The first Autumn we were here we took a long weekend holiday and it was great timing and we all enjoyed it a lot. We didn't do it last year because we took a trip in August when Ty's mom visited us but I think we might do it again this year. That would be a nice tradition to start...especially since summer are most likely going to be the time that we go home to visit.
Since we both come from divorced families, we try to start our own traditions at home with our kids rather than spend holidays at parents' houses, though this doesn't make them very happy. It's just too hard to please everyone and gets overwhelming for the kids. If our parents choose to celebrate their holidays on a different day, either before or after the actual holiday then we will go over and celebrate then, otherwise, we have an open invite for anyone from all families to come share in our family traditions. We only have a few currently, but I"m sure we'll get more as our kids get older.
Thanksgiving would be the only exception to the going to parent's house rule, and we usually go on the day to Phil's mom's house, as they have a large photo studio in their house where they set up tables and have ALL the extended family over, usually 20+ people for dinner, so we use that as our time to see all of our extended family too. One of our Christmas traditions starts at Thanksgiving too, the "Elf on the Shelf"...we received it as a gift from my dad one year and the kids love it. It's just a stuffed elf with a red suit on that we read a story about....in the story the elf does things at night and then comes back to a different place in the house every morning for the 30 days preceding Christmas. So, each night we read part of the story and then the kids have fun trying to see where the Elf came back to each morning. We hide it in a different place each evening for them to look for.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas we also bake cut-out christmas cookies and bring some to the neighbors and friends at church. Then, the 2nd Sunday in Dec every year, my mother has an annual "sing-a-long" where everyone brings a dish to pass and goes to her home to sing christmas carols. This has been going on for about 24 years now and usually includes anywhere from 20-50 people. As far as our family christmas traditions go, we generally open presents from each other and any extended family on Christmas eve night, after eating dinner and reading the Christmas story from the Bible. Then we put cookies and milk out for Santa and veggies out for Rudolph and go to bed. Then, in the morning, we get to go through our stockings and see what Santa left for us overnight. After Church on Christmas Day, we usually go home and play with our new treasures and spend the day as a family. We also bake a birthday cake for Jesus that we eat with our dinner of leftover sandwiches and fruit/veggie trays from the day before.
For Easter, we always color easter eggs and usually bake more cut-out cookies just for fun. The night before, we have made "resurrection cookies" the night before. It's a recipe that follows the easter story from the bible where you set in the oven overnight, so we finish the story when we check the cookies in the morning before church to find that the "tombs" are empty. Then we usually go out to Easter brunch somewhere with grandparents.
aside from typical traditions involving food and decorations, our family is celebrating the Biblical Feasts from our Jewish roots (no, we are not Jewish, but we are Christians and our roots are Jewish!) We are starting to observe each one this year. I tell you what! My kids are more excited about the upcoming feasts than their birthdays! and the feasts tell about Jesus and the whole plan of God--which makes sense since God is the One who started the whole feast idea so the Israelites wouldn't forget about Him! It's been so great for us. We've learned a ton!
--Meghan
We done a few things we plan on making into yearly traditions. One is to camp indoors in the winter. We put up the tent in the living room and roast hot dogs on sticks and make smores in the fireplace. We all have a blast. The other is to camp outdoors one night in our backyard in the summer.
Growing up I celebrated St. Lucia day Dec 13. It's a Swedish Holiday and now we dress the kids up in the traditional clothes and take a picture to email to grandma on December 13.
We always make a gingerbread house around Christmas. And one thing I am SO excited to start this year is that I have wrapped up as many Christmas books as I could find and each day coming up in December the kids will chose a book out to unwrap and read. Most are books about Jesus being born but to get enough holiday books I had to stick in some "winter" books about snowmen and such since we don't celebrate Santa in our house.
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