Holiday Traditions
This time of year, we are in the holiday season and, for many of us, this evokes memories of years gone by. Memories come to the surface, making me smile, sometimes bringing a tear to my eye, and always remind me that my memories of my family and friends are to be remembered, to be cherished.
Holiday traditions in my family have varied from generation to generation and some, like a story that is passed on from person to person, have changed as they are retold each time, changed drastically from the origin of its start while others have remained relatively the same. Honoring old traditions can be comforting, bringing back past memories. Creating new traditions can be exciting and fun and hopefully will become old traditions in years to come.
My mother was very much a stickler for tradition. Her mother insisted on turkey for Christmas dinner, on Christmas Day, and dessert always included plum pudding served with a hard sauce. My mother never varied from this tradition. She started a tradition of her own when she got married and started her own family. She didn’t mess with the dinner menu, honoring my grandmother’s tradition, but she did change the breakfast menu. She loved scrambled eggs and crumpets. This is one of my most cherished Christmas food memories of my childhood. My mom and I would go out a few days prior to Christmas, to Kresge’s (a department store chain back East) and we would get our crumpets (which we never had any other time of the year so it was a special treat for us) and she would also get a small white paper bag filled with flavored cream chocolates (my fave was always the orange cream). On Christmas morning we would line up the crumpets in the oven , turn on the broiler and crisp up the top before turning them over to warm up the bottom of them. These would accompany fluffy scrambled eggs and usually bacon (Canadian back bacon was my dad’s fave).
Gifts were always opened on Christmas morning but one gift could be opened on Christmas Eve which is a tradition my mom started that was a hit with me and in later years, with my children. Stockings were always opened first on Christmas morning and I was allowed to open my stocking immediately upon awakening, not having to wait for my parents to get their coffee and get comfortable in the living room, with me.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day was always spent at home; we never traveled or visited with family until after Boxing Day. My mother honored that tradition until I was married and out of the home. By then, my parents had divorced and my father moved away, so my mother always came to our home on Christmas Eve, usually staying the night, right through until Boxing Day (Canadian shopping day, on the 26th). For my mother and I, our tradition was to head out first thing in the morning on the 26th, heading to the stores, looking for the sales, shopping throughout the morning and finishing up by lunch time, before the mall became too busy. It was our time to relax, to help each other shop and talk about our Christmas and upcoming New Year’s plans. We always grabbed some lunch together and admired each other’s purchases. When my girls were older, they often joined us but not always. They weren’t the shopaholics we were LOL. With the passing of years, my mom’s health started to fail and she wasn’t able to walk much so our last Boxing Day shopping together was done with her in a wheelchair as I pushed her through the mall. We moved a little slower, took a little longer to get our shopping done but we had fun. To this day, I still go shopping early morning on the 26th, on Boxing Day, often alone, but always thinking of my mom and our adventures together.
A tradition I started was to spend a night baking, usually cookies/bars, with my girls. When they were older, had their own plans, and not always able to help me, my nieces would come over and help. I don’t bake much, I can probably count the yearly times I do on the fingers of one hand, so Christmas baking is something I look forward to, doing it so seldom. My husband started his own tradition, last year, and made jam-jam cookies (his mom’s recipe) for Christmas which is amazing because he doesn’t cook or bake at all. I was very skeptical when he announced he would be doing this (last year) but he pulled it off without a hitch and the cookies were delicious. He will be making them again this year. Last weekend, my youngest daughter and I did our Christmas baking together.
Whether new or old traditions, they create holiday memories that we can cherish and remember for years to come. Do you have any holiday traditions? Maybe you can start a new tradition this season.
