Did your family have special ways of celebrating specific holidays?
Eric - Growing up my family had traditions to celebrate pretty much all the standard holidays.
Valentine's day - My mom would pretty much always make my siblings and me a card. She would write a personal message to each of us and usually give us a box of chocolates.
St. Patrick's day - Growing up if you didn't wear green you would get pinched. Also, my mom would often make a themed meal with food dyed green to celebrate the occasion.
Easter - My family had a lot of easter traditions. Before Easter, we would color eggs. It seems like we would color 1-3 dozen. My grandparents would also have an annual Easter egg hunt. It was huge. All of my cousins would attend. There were two areas - one with Easter eggs for the little kids and one with more challenging eggs for the big kids. As we got a little older my grandpa started including a few special eggs that had cash inside instead of candy. On Easter morning my Mom would wake up early and hide eggs. My siblings and I would take turns finding them. We also got an Easter basket every year. Usually, it would have one big gift, and then candy or other small gifts. My mom made sure we also focused on the importance of Easter. We would often read scriptures or have other reverent activities to remember the importance of the resurrection.
4th of July - The 4th of July is a really important holiday to my Grandma Sue. She made it into an all-day event. The first part of the day started with a water fight. Usually, my siblings and I would go over to my grandparent's house in the morning to help inflate and fill pools. As our family grew my grandma Sue began getting bigger water slides/inflatables for the party. There were always plenty of water guns and we would all run around spraying each other. The water party wraps up around dinner time and we would have a big barbecue. Then as the sun begins to set the family would move out front for fireworks. Usually these start with smoke bombs, and parachutes, which lead to tank wars. My grandma Sue would buy a box of tanks for each of the grandchildren. After the tank wars, we would start setting off the bigger fireworks. My grandpa liked to sit back and be a troublemaker. He likes to light firecrackers when people are least suspecting it to see what kind of reaction he can get. It is a little iffy. While we watch the fireworks we eat Dunford doughnuts. For the first couple of years after Alison and I were married, we went to the Stadium of Fire. That is fun, but it is kind of a pricey event. Then we started a new tradition of spending the 4th of July at Flaming Gorge. It was a weekend of boating and fishing. We made a lot of great memories and had a blast. This year we decided Flaming Gorge is a long way to drive on the holiday weekend so we are going to try something new, but it was a fun tradition while it lasted.
Halloween - This was a huge holiday when I was a kid. Every year my mom would make elaborate costumes for my siblings and me. My costume always reflected whatever I was into that year - Ninja turtles, Wesley from The Princess Bride, Ash from Pokemon, Link, and so on. It was a lot of fun. We would usually go trick or treating around the neighborhood. Although a couple of years we went to Hyrum, Utah to visit my Mom's cousin Michelle and her family. Those years were some of my favorite Halloweens. I will always remember Dale, Michelle's husband, trying to egg us on into telling people "Merry Christmas" instead of "trick or treat." In my family, once you turned 12 you were too old to go trick or treating. Being the oldest my siblings were still way into trick or treating when I was 12. I had to find other things to do to entertain myself. One year I played an elaborate Halloween prank. I built a scarecrow that I put on my grandparent's porch. On Halloween, I brought the scarecrow inside and dressed up like a scarecrow. I then sat on the porch with a bowl of candy and scaring trick or treaters. It made for a very memorable Halloween. When I was in high school Charly and I put together a Halloween party for a couple of years. We would buy lots of finger foods - taquitos, chips, pizza bites and invite over a lot of our friends from the neighborhood.
 |
| Pirate and Princess |
 |
| Aladdin and Abu |
 |
| Ninja Turtle |
 |
| Link |
 |
| Luke |
 |
| Ash |
 |
| Harry Potter |
Thanksgiving - Every other year we would have a really big Thanksgiving with my extended family. This was always a lot of fun. I loved seeing my cousins. Most of the time I would bring over a Nintendo console so that we could all play after dinner. Dinner was always amazing. We would have the traditional turkey with all the sides. My favorite was the stuffing. My mom makes the best stuffing. It is one of my very favorite things to eat. My mom also makes amazing pumpkin pie. The day after Thanksgiving my Mom and sister would get up really early to go shopping. When I was little Jon and I would have to go along, but once I was old enough to watch Jon we could stay home. We would usually also get a pretty early and spend the morning playing video games together. We would also polish off a leftover pumpkin pie for breakfast. It was such a great tradition.
Christmas - We did most of the traditional Christmas time stuff - decorated a Christmas tree, put out nativities (my mom loves nativities), and made Christmas cookies (my mom made great Christmas-shaped sugar cookies). Our Christmas festivities started the day before on Christmas eve. Most Christmas Eves my mom would break out her video camera and record an interview with my siblings and me. These have turned into priceless snapshots of each of our childhoods. We would then have a special Christmas eve dinner celebrating "Jesus' birthday". It was always a really nice meal. We would even use my Mom's special china and silver. We would then put on a program. Often my siblings and I would reenact the Christmas story. We would also play music and sing Christmas songs. We would also read about Christ's birth from the scriptures. Christmas eve in our family was all about remembering and celebrating Jesus Christ. Before bed, we would open one present (usually pajamas or sometimes a new pillow). We would then have to stay in bed until my mom woke us up and told us it was time to get up. We would walk out of our bedrooms with the youngest leading the way. We then opened our stockings and presents. Later in the day we always went to my grandparents to eat lunch and see all of our extended family.
Comments
Post a Comment