What Did Your Spouse Bring to Your Holidays?
November 20, 2008 by Marye Audet
Filed under Relationships
I was writing an article earlier on holiday traditions and I started thinking about the different traditions that we have in our home and how they got here. After 28 years it is hard to untangle the logistics but all in all I think that I have done it.
Marc:
Creche
Cranberry Cookies
Cranberry Bread
Marye
Fruit Salad
Sage Stuffing
O.k..well, so I didn’t bring so much as he did. But the point is that we combined our family things and then together we created new traditions. Whenour two oldest were small Marc had wednesdays off and every year he took them to a movie the day before Thanksgivng so I could get the food prepared. They saw it as him being a great dad..i saw it as him being heaven sent.
We watch It’s a Wonderful Life every year to start the season. The whole family..noone gets to not be there.
Erin and I made a tablecloth the year before she got married. It is very long and we stenciled it. Every year we have the new people at the table sign it in permanent ink. My parents signatures are there, although they spent their last Thanksgivings with us in 2000 and 2001. Old friends have signed it..our children have signed in wavery “I just learned how to write my name” letters. It is a great tradition that I am glad we started.
We are just a week away from Thanksgiving. I think it is a more difficult holiday as you get older because while there are many new faces you certainly miss some of the old faces. Family traditions help make holidays cohesive from generation to generation and really are the thing that makes them special.
What are your Holiday traditions?
Image: (c) Marye Audet 2007
In the days of my youth our family – grandmother (granny) was a cohesive factor – holding all the various and sundry parts together. The Italian side from NY, the red-neck ( the good sort ) Southerners, a growing Korean faction ( through marriage, adoptions etc ), the cherokee/scots/irsih wing..
Somehow, we all managed to meld together, the uncles’ love for grandmother made them keep their Italian wives – often vitriolic tongues from spoiling the waters with their opinions on the Korean side, and they all had to bite their collective tongues from raking us red-necks over the coals, as I’m sure they’d loved to have done from time to time. lol.
So anyways, while she was alive, Christmas traditions ( I think that’s what we were talking about?? ) ranged over the entire spectrum. Everyone’s somehow got accommodated. I suppose they were more or less accommodated ’cause people would come back the next year.
Early on, me and my wife went to Colonial Williamsburg once over Christmas and I fell for the place, and despite the fact the wife wasn’t quite as into colonial Americana as myself, we went back there and to Jamestown at least once more.
After the kids, its been more difficult to do that kind of thing ( they being still young ) but I suppose when it comes time when we can start implementing real Christmas traditions, I think I’d like to have that trip as part of it.
When setting up the lists, I suggest that you also note if you liked (and / or participated in) a given tradition.
That lets you have discussions and makes sure that something you didn’t care for or even disliked has a chance to be dropped from the combined list.
Dave
David:
plum puddings
homemade Christmas snow biscuits
fudge, Amaretto, vodka and melted – fudge – coffee ( called it Pirates’ Dram )
a few christmas tree ornaments handed down from days of olde
more Amaretto, vodka and melted fudge Dram
my ‘Snoopy and the Royal Guardians Christmas Album’ from when I was four <– that’s Charles Schultz meets the British Invasion
even more Amaretto, Vodka and melted fudge, this time with EggNog spiked heartly with Capt Jack
Dave and Doug McKenzie’s christmas album
Meggy:
A really lovely Christmas tree with lots of ornaments
Lots of German beer
Hidden red-date in the gjousa (dumpling) game. Her auntie will cook dumplings and hide red dates in some of them. Then set the large plates of dumplins in the middle of the table and everyone dives in and eats as many dumplings as quickly as possible. For every dumpling you eat that has a red-date, she’ll give you a dollar. ( We all believe she ‘marks’ the dumplings in some way so her sons’ recognize them as they always end up with the most cash every year, lol) A Chinese holiday tradition.
Only time she wears her really, really tight green holiday skirt – a treasure dear to me
Dhave..that is a great idea!
David..LOL!
tried to make this entertaining and fell onto my annual holiday funk, My happy self may show up occasionally, but I should be back to normal in January.
Tradition for about first 20 years. Try to keep both sides of the family happy.
Then we started some new traditions. but I fear it was too late. I really wish it was January.
First tradition we added: Advent.
Since we were never permitted to stay home for Christmas we celebrated weekly with friends. It also made the season less about gifts and more about people.we still did gifts as extravagantly as we could afford. Advent just put it all in perspective. I made an advent calendar that makes the nativity scene day by day. The camels are a hoot.
Doing advent started us getting the tree up before the first Sunday of advent. so we decorate the day after Thanksgiving.
The kids choose cookie recipes…Jim as well. We make one kind per person ( with 11 people it is a marathon deal) Cookies are baked Saturday after Thanksgiving. then separated in four groups . one for each week of advent, which brings the tradition of sneaking frozen cookies from the freezer. I think the kids like their cookies frozen better than they like them at normal temps!
I then began exerting independence from family. I declared we would take turns. We began switching off holidays One would get us for thanksgiving one for Christmas switching each year. I thought it was high time my then 7 children were allowed to get up Christmas morning, open gifts and then get to play with them instead of driving for 4 hours. On alternate years we opened gifts Christmas eve early enough to play.
We began to have our own roast beef dinners. (my family;s tradition)
We did have a Christmas breakfast called sausage puff souffle. ( or harden your arteries in one meal) and we had entemanns cheese danish with it. yeah, I should bake something, but the purpose of this tradition was to make breakfast simple before our 4 hours drive. especially sine we were out late the night before.
As we began to stay home for Christmas I started making Christmas quilts then personalized place mats with mitten napkin holders then stockings etc each children’s room has it’s own mini tree
The lights outside grew to an extent that they can be seen from outer space yet the teen boys cry out each year for more and more.
One day jim said ” pointsettias” are my favorite Christmas things. So now I buy a couple every year for him and many of the decorations an quilts have poinsettias in the design.
No traditions from family , but we have built our own?
“The lights outside grew to an extent that they can be seen from outer space yet the teen boys cry out each year for more and more.”
Thats too much! lol!
Ginger- “which brings the tradition of sneaking frozen cookies from the freezer” You have that tradition too?
David- little do you know. Remember the show, Home Improvement? Remember the Christmas show when he plugged in his lights and all the lights in the neighborhood went off?
yeah.
You have boys, don’t you?
Just wait.
Alright…Marc, any idea on what “…Ginger- “which brings the tradition of sneaking frozen cookies from the freezer” You have that tradition too?…” really means??? I know there is something hidden in there.
Yes, Marye all boys. The littlest one is a ‘wascally wascal’, too.
‘Fraid I haven’t seen telley for a very long year. I do remember that seen, to which you refer, in Chevy Chase’ ” Christmas Vacation” which was hilarious.
‘xcuse me. I meant scene
that is a hilarious movie!
David,
it is straight forward. You bake oodles of cookies then freeze 3/4 to ensure cookies lasting through Christmas. They go in the big freezer in the garage. Then various family members sneak into the freezer in the garage and nab a couple of cookies here and a couple of cookies there. They eat them while still frozen so as not to get caught.
I guess they figure we won’t notice. I actually plan for them to do this now.I have to bake extra. I would hate to hit the week before Christmas sans cookies. Don’t tell THEM this though. Then they will get blatant about it. Making me have to bake even MORE cookies.