Traditions are significant and an important part of the holidays. They help us connect with our families, create cherished memories, and make the holidays more meaningful. I have special memories of my own family’s holiday traditions from when I was a child. When my husband and I started our own family, we wanted to make new traditions of our own.

Each Christmas season, we add to the family holiday scrapbook which we have kept since our child was born. We have also bought her an ornament each year for the tree. Last year, we started a new tradition of buying holiday pajamas to wear on Christmas Eve.

Image: istockphoto

Starting your own family tradition is easy and fun. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Personal Ornament – Purchase a special ornament for each member of the family symbolizing his or her interests or accomplishments the year before. Many malls have Christmas stores open during the holiday season with a range of ornaments catering to almost any interest.

Holiday Pajamas – Each year either buy new or wear a favorite pair of special holiday-themed pajamas on the eve of your holiday. Sitting around in cozy Christmas PJs with a warm cider in our hands is one of our favorite things to do after our daughter has gone to bed on Christmas Eve.

Cookie Swap – Exchanging cookies and other treats is a great way to incorporate the giving spirit of the holiday season. Have your friends come over for a desert swap, bringing their own batches of cookies to share. Set up a special table with a festive tablecloth and some great holiday plates. Noritake has great holiday tableware, like the Aria Christmas and Palace Christmas patterns that will make your cookies look as good as they taste.

Holiday Volunteering – If you are looking for a way to bring meaning to the holiday season, helping out others is a good way. There are many opportunities to help those in need. Visit an nursing home to sing carols or just talk to the residents there, or bring toys to patients in a children’s hospital, or help serve food in a soup kitchen.

Holiday Movie or Story Night - Choose a favorite movie, wear your holiday pajamas, and watch it together. Don’t forget to make some hot cocoa and cookies. If movies aren’t your thing, have a family member read his or her favorite holiday story.

Festive Music – Whatever your holiday celebrations entail, be sure to include some favorites music during your holiday activities. Pandora.com has some holiday stations that play a variety of holiday music, from Christmas pop tunes to classical masterpieces.

Yearly Scrapbook – There are many ways to preserve memories for upcoming years. Save photos in one particular holiday book, or use a pamphlet stitch to bind holiday cards together into a booklet. Family members could write their favorite moments from the holiday that year or save their favorite recipes. Next year, pull out the scrapbook and reminisce about past holiday moments together.

Use one of these suggestions or come up with new holiday traditions of your own to celebrate the spirit of the holiday season. Togetherness and spending quality time with loved ones always creates special memories that will be appreciated for years to come.

Post from: Blisstree

Make Holidays Meaningful with Family Traditions

This old Fannie Farmer cookbook was actually my father’s mother’s book. She died, ironically, on Christmas Day when I was a wee kid, but judging from the photos I’ve seen of her, I’m sure she would have enjoyed having a cup or two of the Walker family nog.

There is a science to this egg nog recipe. For starters, it uses raw eggs. I remember when I was a kid and it was OK to lick the cake batter out of the bowl without someone freaking out about salmonella poisoning. I’m not sure what happened to eggs between now and then. But my father, the immunologist, says that the alcohol in our egg nog is enough to kill just about anything in its path. Honestly, this recipe uses enough booze that even my family would warn guests not to smoke near it.

The other odd thing is that this recipe is to be made a week before it is consumed and “store in cool cellar.” We live in Alabama. Our cellar holds wine and is climate controlled, otherwise it would be about 75 degrees this time of year. But, the refrigerator is a fair substitute. And we make room.

I have had two different excellent chefs taste the Walker Family Egg Nog and they both agreed with anyone else who has ever been brave enough to try it. It is excellent. And for those skittish few out there – not a single person has come down with salmonella or any other illness from consuming the raw eggs in this nog. (Think Rocky Balboa in Rocky, the first one.) As for alcohol poisoning, well, I can’t vouch for that.

I’m going to share this recipe, and you’ll thank me if you try it. (I’m not going to type it in because that’s probably a copyright issue. So I’ll just shoot the page.) But if you really want to thank me, then you can visit BlissMom.com after Dec. 1, because at the end of the month I’ll be moving on from the glorious BlissTree. Bittersweet. Meantime, let’s toast to this, the best egg nog recipe you will every try.

Photos, JWJourney

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Best Egg Nog Recipe in the World!

July 4th - Image: sxc.hu

What are you doing for this holiday weekend, which in our tourist area of New Hampshire, constitutes the beginning of the summer season?

What family memories are you creating?

How are you recording these memories for your family history? 

• Scrapbooking,
• Making photo CDs
• Journaling,
• Taking videos
• Developing special traditions
• Incorporating family members of all ages into these activities

Share with us your Fourth of July traditions!

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Fourth of July – Theme of the Week

These holidays always remind me to give thanks.  It’s not everyday that I really think about the people in my life like my mother and father and boyfriend and really take the time to appreciate all that they do for me.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate them everyday, but it does mean that this is a special time to put it into words or a gift or something special to express it.

Father’s Day was yesterday and it was great to see my whole family gathered in honor of my father.  We did activities and ate food that he loves and truly spent time showing him how much we care about him and the ways that he has provided for us.  We spent time on cards and gifts to truly give thanks.

Even if Father’s Day is not the holiday for you, maybe take a minute to think about these holidays that have been created in honor of relationships.  And if you don’t want a holiday to remind you of these things, then pick another day to do something special to give thanks to the people in your life who really deserve it.

Image: pipitdapo on Flickr

Post from: Blisstree

A Reminder to Give Thanks

Photo: SXC

Sport related traditions are a great fit. If your family isn’t into football, you can hold a tennis, volleyball, swimming, baseball, or golf tournament instead.

Not into sports? What about a board game tournament. Chess, checkers and Monopoly work well for this type of tradition. We preferred Monopoly, but a friend has more fun with Pictionary tournaments.

Short on time? Try starting a special garden area, complete with hammock. Each year, you can buy dad a plant or accessory to put in the garden and you can all put it in together.

Remember, traditions don’t have to be elaborate. They just have to be repeated year after year so you can build special memories with your kids and so you can spend time together.

Post from: Blisstree

Start a Father’s Day Tradition

Some of my fondest childhood memories center around bedtime stories.  When we four children were very young, Mother read to us.  We piled on one another’s beds, alternating each evening, while she read chapters from Heidi, Robinson Crusoe, Little Women, and Tom Sawyer.

Then, often during the day, we might act out these stories.  I particularly recall our pretend jaunts around the Swiss Mountains as we visited Heidi, Peter, Clara and Grandfather.

When we were older, reading in bed before I went to sleep was a pleasure that has carried over to adulthood.  Story time became a ritual with our daughter and now grandchildren.  All of us, in our three generation household, read whenever we have a chance and particularly when we crawl into bed.

When parents have bedtime story rituals with their children, they’re developing traditions that often will carry over into future generations.

Post from: Blisstree

Parents Develop Bedtime Story Rituals

We always made St. Patrick’s Day a special occasion when I was a youngster because the hired man, Dan Sullivan, was Irish.  He wore a tiny green bow on his work cap.  It was a game which one of us children spied the bow first when Dan and my dad came from the barn for breakfast.

St. Patrick's Day Dinner - Image: istockphoto

(Dan worked for my dad on the farm and was a surrogate grandfather for us children.  He took his meals with us and rented a room from a neighbor.)

Mother cooked corned beef and cabbage, with boiled potatoes, onions and carrots, one of Dan’s favorite meals.  Often Mother baked a cake and colored the icing green.

She had a close friend, Aunt Pat, whose maiden name was Kirkpatrick.  Pat always sent us cards on this holiday.  When these friends were in their 80s, Pat still sent a St. Patrick’s Day card, even when she didn’t mail one for other holidays.

When I was substitute teaching the other day in kindergarten, the teacher’s plans called for me to read a story about leprechauns, to use coloring and counting sheets with a St. Patrick’s Day theme, and to discuss the holiday during circle time.

Do you have any St. Patrick’s Day traditions your children will remember?

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St. Patrick’s Day Family Traditions

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Photos Source: Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me

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2009 Family Portrait Poll

I read an article in a parenting magazine saying parents should allow their boys to keep their lovie’s or bankies even up until 8 or 9. I’m going to send his article to my younger brother who’s in his 30s and his 3-year-old daughter is teasing him about his still-present attachment to his blankie.

He is in good company. Every one of my grandmother’s 42 grandchildren and 40-somthing great-grandchildren possess one of these almost-holy fabric hugs. Some, like my brother, wore them out with love and my Grandmother stitched them replacements.

A feminine skill passed from one generation to the next from my great-great ancestors, the women in my family have used quilting as both their artistic expression and a physical manifestation of a love.

I have a crazy patch quilt from my great-grandmother, passed through my grandmother. When my husband uses it to move furniture or dry muddy kids off I feel like my head might explode.

I realize it’s not as common for a woman of my generation to have sat in quilting circles – but I have – and I know the amount of physical labor and time that went into making that patch quilt.

To use that ancient artifact of my feminine birthright for such everyday tasks is an offense.

My son, Zack, has developed a possessive love for his own Choo Choo Bankie hand-quilted by my grandmother. When he drags it around, he reminds me both of the fictional Linus from Charlie Brown specials and my own little brothers when they were small.

His is baby blue satin on one side and I can tell he’s addicted to the soft smooth texture and the coolness of a fresh touch. He’s a baby and he understands his bankie is like a grandmotherly snuggle passed down from his maternal lineage. It makes him feel safe, secure and loved. He’s two, so maybe he only intuitively knows this – but I surely know this.

I’m convinced the tactile recipe for the kind of undying love my brother has to his blankie is satin. My creative contribution to our quilting tradition is to add faux fur (washable, of course). I made several for nieces’ births, as an excuse for my grandmother to teach me all her quilting secrets, with pink satin on one side and animal print faux fur on the other.

I made one for my son’s birth, but my daughter won’t surrender it. The faux fur is a deep chocolate crushed velvet and the satin is black. The tactile experience is divine.

Post from: Blisstree

Blankie = Matriarchal Hug