posted on July 27, 2000 06:45:14 PM new
Ok I read the tooth fairy thread and loved all the neat ideas people did as the fairy.
I have a 16 month old who is just now teething so it will be awhile before I worry about that.
However, I want to start some special traditions for him.Any of the holidays or just a special family day. The problem is I do not have any of my own. I had very strange parents ( well..atleast my mother) and never had any of these wonderful childhood stories. Yes, I had Santa but that was it and Christmas at my house was ...er... well .. different.
Soooooooo
I would love it if everyone would post something neat that they do with there kids.ANY and all types of traditions.Maybe your family has a spin on doing something a little different.
posted on July 27, 2000 06:55:35 PM new
We have a very tradition type Christmas. When I was a child, I always made fancy cut out cookies with a Great Aunt. I now have all of her cookie cutters etc, and make the same type of cookies with my kids. I also have her rolling pin, and all the tree decorations that were hers, so our tree is very similar to what I grew up with.
My parents always have a get-together at their house on Christmas eve, and we get pizza, eat cookies etc, and open our gifts then. It sounds a little odd, having pizza on Christmas eve, but we make sure it happens each year. There was one year we didn't get everyone together, since we all had little kids and it was kind of hectic. My sister and I decided that we HAD to keep that tradition going, so we pressed mom and dad to do it again the following year.
A good friend of mine has two kids, now ages 18 and 22. She has purchased a new ornament each year for both of them, and they start the tree decorating with those special ornaments. When her kids set up their own housekeeping, she is going to give them their ornaments to use on their own trees.
posted on July 27, 2000 06:59:49 PM new
(Note: as I began to type this I realized I'm probably gonna sound like heartless mom -- so maybe you wanna take these as traditions-you-don't-wanna-start. )
Every November we spend a day cleaning out all of our personal possessions. Stuff we haven't used in a while, don't want any more, or just general look at as clutter are set aside. The afternoon is spent repairing any of this stuff that needs repairing. Things that are beyond repair are tossed. All the rest of it is divvied up for distribution to various charities. My kids hated this when we first started doing it; the turning point was the first year that it occurred to me to take them to the places that would benefit from their generosity. My girls have worked day and night shifts at our local shelters; spent an afternoon cooking for folks who have terminally ill family at our local hospital. They've performed magic tricks for the children's hospital. Stuff like that. To sum up -- I guess our tradition is to spend a day each year prior to Christmas making sure that we're giving something back.
Christmas is a bit different here. Santa doesn't come. Never has. Our family spends the holidays enjoying each other; we do give gifts -- but nothing like the amazing abundance they see at their friend's homes.
Family art night. About once a month, we all (and I do mean all -- even my husband!) sit down and do something creative together. We've done collage self-portraits, body painting, and made shoes from cereal boxes. Stuff like that. Always take pictures -- created a photo gallers. In our old house, our hallway was a gallery of our own art. Here the art is more scattered.
On the first truly hot day of the summer, we take the day off from any obligations we may have and spend the day being kids. Sprinklers. Slip and Slide. Popcycles. Dandylions. Honeysuckle. Silly string. Lots o' fun.
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Traditions are, imo, about people. We have our rituals (going to the drive in movie theatre; playing charades; singing karaoke... stuff like that) -- but what makes them special is that its time we spend together as a family learning more about each other.
posted on July 27, 2000 07:26:49 PM new
Meya
How neat I love the cookie cutter idea. I do have some old ones but had not even thought about handing them down.
xifene,
I am with James. How wonderful. I like he idea of taking the old toys and items to the shelter. I will do that with him when he is older. I also like the family art night. I have already tried the fingerpaint with him. Of course he thought I was giving him a strange food and tried to eat it.LOL
posted on July 27, 2000 07:31:32 PM new
James -- I think my 12-year old would be delighted to let you take her place right about now. She's in her room pouting and annoyed because I won't let her stay with her 14-year-old-she's-my-best-friend-even-though-we-only-met-today tomorrow all day while the rest of our family is off on a buying trip. She's decided that I'm "ruining my life, mom. This is sooooo not fair. Sob!"
Zoogal -- finger painting with the younger set can be an awful lot of fun if you forget about keeping the results. We often painted with vanilla pudding -- using food colouring to create different shades. Dress in garbage bags. Plan to be a mess. Have fun!
(For my parents thirtieth anniversary, my brother, sister and I planned a surprise party for just the two of them. It included dressing them in plastic and giving them eggs to toss at each other; sit-on-the-balloon-and-pop-it races; and so on. They thought we were nuts when we started; but they were laughing like mad before the evening was done.)
posted on July 27, 2000 07:35:28 PM new
zoogal, at Christmastime, I don't put one single thing under the tree until the kids are fast asleep Christmas Eve. Not one thing. They know they have presents coming, and they know I have some hidden in the closet, and they have seen the postman drop off huge boxes from Grandma, but it all gets tucked away until Christmas Eve. Then when they wake up Christmas morning, it is all a big magical display.
I have 2 kids and leave 'Santa piles' rather than labelling each individual Santa gift... just one big pile with a card on top that has their name. The Santa stuff goes in front of the tree and everything else is scattered underneath.
Oh, and on top of leaving milk and cookies for Santa, we also leave 'reindeer food' for the reindeer. You can chuck some cornmeal, or lentils or dry oatmeal, whatever out the window... the birds will eat it and the kids will think the reindeer have, lol
Also, my stepfather calls my kids on Christmas Eve pretending to be Santa... their eyes light up as they are already excited because it is Christmas Eve, but then to get a personal call from Santa because they've been so good!
posted on July 27, 2000 07:39:53 PM new
xifene...what a wonderful idea. Those are the things that kids remember when they get older.
Our biggest Christmas traditions are an Advent Calendar and an Advent Wreath. The Calendar is secular (it's got a big ol' puffy Santa Claus on it), but the Wreath is religious. We also make a point of going to Mass on Christmas Eve together and then we have Christmas morning at home. I also buy a new ornament each year for my son, and I especially like personalized ones with the year on them. And I'm very big on Christmas music. I start playing it on Thanksgiving and don't stop until New Years!
We also do the pre-Christmas clean out, usually the first week of December when we put up the tree. The "giving" part of the holiday is probably the most important for the kids. And we participate in several food and toy banks and I let my son pick out the toys to donate.
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That's Flunky Gerbiltush to you!
posted on July 27, 2000 08:02:53 PM new
My family didn't have any "special" celebrations other than the usual. On birthdays my sister & I were allowed to pick any one thing we wanted to do (withing reason ) and do it along with a small group of friends.
One holiday that stands out in my memory is the Thanksgiving when I was about 9 years old. We were pretty poor (my Dad had walked out a couple of years before & paid no alimony or child support & my Mom had taught herself shorthand & gotten a job as a secretary) and couldn't afford a turkey that year. At *that* time game hens were very cheap. My Mom bought three, splurged & got wild rice to stuff them with, and we each (Mom, sister & I) had our own personal bird. I was *thrilled.* Often wish she'd done it again, but that was the one & only time.
Holidays were the only time our dogs were allowed people food & I got to fix their plates (they got a helping of everything *we* did) which was a lot of fun. They got seconds, too.
posted on July 27, 2000 10:27:04 PM new
We seem to do a lot of different things every year so it's hard to pinpoint a Christmas tradition, but my husband and I love to remember the time we put a Santa's hat next to the fireplace - with scattered ashes around it. We told our kids that Santa must have accidently dropped his hat - it tickled them to save it for him. We also always told our kids that Santa's elves were watching them through the vents during the week before Christmas so that they could report to Santa how they were behaving - well geeeeeez - they were really hyper so we had to think of something to settle them down - and it worked.
When we moved into our house 15 years ago, my mother-in-law bought a gum tree and planted it just outside my daughter's bedroom window. Every couple of months or so, she'd sneak over and tape packages of gum all over the tree. My daughter got a huge kick out of that even after she was old enough to know that the tree didn't really grow gum.
One of the rottenest mother kinda things I used to do was to tell my kids that the oil spots they saw on the parking lot were little kids that didn't hold onto their momma's hand like they were supposed to. I can't believe I did that.
posted on July 28, 2000 02:12:26 PM new
Ritual foods in ritual dishes.
My grandmother always served gravy in the same holly-berry plum-pudding bowl. ALWAYS.
Always the same bowl for German-style iceberg lettuce with bacon dressing. (Anybody else love that stuff?)
Tatties and neeps in that Corningware dish for Uncle Ern (we're Scots too, but he's Canadian,you know, so we had to humor him).
The same cut-glass dish for cranberry jelly (NO berries). I had a huge laugh with a friend one Thanksgiving when HER mother put cranberry jelly in an identical dish - except (horrors!) with berries.
Why did she do all this? Because her MIL had. It's just what was done. A change in this routine would've been more discocerting than if Grandma had come to the table dressed only in Saran Wrap.
Other stuff: Weekly visits with my grandfather to the huge family burial plots and hearing who was whom and died of what when. Every time I smell geraniums I think of one of my grandfather's cousins, who died in the 'flu epidemic in 1919. It's nice to know that when I'm "called home," as they say in the Salvation Army, I'll know enough about my "housemates" to say hello.
My family had a huge beach house where 4 generations grew up. Favorite tradition: the "creamy taffy tree". Plain old cottonwood tree on the dunes. Rumor had it that if you found the "magic stick" and touched it to the tree, "all the leaves would turn to creamy taffy." Kept us occupied for weeks.
Traditions today? A huge gorgefest on Thanksgiving sitting on the floor around the coffee table (easier to lie back that way) watching the X-Files marathon. Considered a don't-miss by all who've attended, even though all we do is feed them.
New Orleans, Mardi Gras. Now a family reunion spot. NOTHING gets in the way of this date. Always dinner at Cafe Royal, always watching Val play rugby.
[ edited by HartCottageQuilts on Jul 28, 2000 02:14 PM ]
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Never has. Our family spends the holidays enjoying each other; we do give gifts -- but nothing like the amazing abundance they see at their friend's homes.
