Traditions

What with the holiday silly season upon us I have been thinking lots about traditions. Holidays are a big time for traditions, and even if you don't think your family has any you are proven wrong when you get married. All of us have a "way we do Christmas" and few of us question this "way" until we are confronted with the completely foreign and totally "wrong" way our partner's family does Christmas. My husband and I tend to navigate these situations with relative aplomb, using diplomacy to deflect potential conflicts in philosophy with comments such as, "well hon, your mother's family think its okay to shake presents, so I guess you can fondle just this one..."

However things get more tricky when children are added to the mix. What was once a quirky approach becomes a gaudy freakshow and what was originally a cute ritual takes on religious extremist proportions. I think this is because when we are raising kids we are constantly distilling our world into digestible portions for our kids. Suddenly you are listening to your partner trying to explain the many odd rituals of the silly season... What to do?

I think it can work to view it as an opportunity to establish your own family rituals for various special days. This was especially evident because we inherited ours kids in the insta-family method. Getting our kids so quickly really emphasised the clean slate we had before us.

So what are some of our newly established family traditions? We make a pretty killer gingerbread house every year and then devour it with friends on New Years Eve. It's some really good kid-decadence for an oftenly kid-unfriendly event. We bake sugar cookies together and sometimes we manage to go caroling in the neighbourhood, which is met with bemusement by our Aussie neighbours! This year we all watched a podcast which talks about New Years Day traditions and picked a feast from this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdnVodCY29M&feature=relmfu
 Apparently black-eyed peas, pork and greens are all lucky food for the first day of the year. Also, we baked a cake and hid a coin inside with the idea that the person who got the coin got the most luck for the coming year. As it turned out the coin sat right in the middle so we told the kids that meant we all got the lucK. Do you feel lucky? Yup, I do. (incidentally the best chocolate cake I have ever made, courtesy of abc foodi app or here:


Www.abc.net.au/local/recipes/2004/11/20/1286010.htm

So, SO yum! Especially if you don't mind feeding your little kids brandy and coffee. And who doesn't, right?