25. Did your family have any special traditions?

From: Connie Olson

Lets see, on holidays we have a tradition of certain foods. On the fourth we all get together for the doings and parade in town. Each person brings their favorite dish for a cook out. The place where they have the cook out each year furnishes the meat.
Memorial Day is the first cook out of the year regardless of the weather. If everyone is healthy and can travel we will go the cemeteries for the services and to put flowers and visit the graves of our family and friends
Labor day is the last BBQ for all the families to get together before the long winter ahead.
Thanksgiving is always at my daughter place. Last year we tried something different for the food, went all Italian. Didn't seem like a holiday so this year it's back to having turkey even though lots of us aren't very fond of it.
Christmas is usually ham but the last few years we've added a pork or beef roast or both,. Some of the family doesn't like ham we found out as the kids got older and could speak their piece abut food we have. We go to Christmas Eve services at 8:00 in the evening and then over to my friends place for his birthday celebration. Gifts are opened in the morning.
New years is a day for friends and family to come and visit. Two years ago we started a new tradition. We make Clam chowder and Cheesy Cauliflower or cheesy broccoli soup. We have different kinds of breads , buns, meats, and cheeses. Lots of different treats etc. It sits out and anyone can go and eat when they are hungry there's no sit down meal. The son in law made a salad bar we put ice in keep the food cold. We have two big roaster for the soup.
Valentines Day is ice cream and cake, it's a pink cake with strawberries and whipped cream.
St Urho's Day is the 16th of March the day before St Patrick's Day. It's a newly recent Finnish Day of celebration it's said it's because St Urho who chased the grasshoppers out of Finland
St Patrick's day is green ice cream and green cake with the St Patty's Day decorations.
Then Easter we all go to sunrise services at church done by the youth. We have a pancake breakfast afterwards done by the youth too.
Then head for home to find our baskets and make the big dinner of ham or ???
That's about it for traditions. Oh I forgot, if we have wedding or showers in the family we all get together to decorate and bring the food for it. Everyone brings what they make the best or are assigned a food to make. It's nothing to make a 100 pounds of potato salad for a wedding. No complaints either. Otherwise it's to much work for one family to do and it can get very expensive.

From: Connie Farrington

When my children were growing up, we had several traditions. We made May baskets from cottage cheese containers, crepe paper and pipe cleaners, and hid them on the porches of old people, ringing the doorbells and disappearing. The baskets were filled with candies and cookies. We tried never to let them find out where the basket came from. No one else in our
Connecticut town seemed to have heard of May baskets.

In the Fall we spray painted the covers of small jars for making jam from anything that anyone would give us (wormy apples, hard pears, patches of mint). We would cover them with parafin and put them on the shelf. Starting right after Thanksgiving, we would make Christmas cookies several evenings a week and put them in the freezer. We didn't allow ourselves any samples
until we had a thousand cookies stowed away. Some were beautiful wreaths and anise flavored candy canes and spicy little glazed stars. Each kind was in labeled metal containers. Shortly before Christmas, the kids and I would have a wassail party. I would make a big punchbowl of hot non-alcoholic wassail and we would put it on the dining room table. We would surround it
with the many canisters of cookies. Then with Christmas carols playing, we would pack up plates of Christmas cookies. Each big Christmas plate would have a jar of jam in the center. We would go round and round the table until everyone had filled all the plates they needed for their "lists". Finished off with plastic wrap and ribbons and labels, we would deliver them
the next day. We all looked forward to those delicious-smelling evenings of cookie baking.

And lastly, one of my sons thought it made more sense to have his birthday presents wrapped in comics rather than in wrapping paper. Now he is in his thirties, and he still gets his presents from me wrapped in the comics.

From: Philip Harris

When I was a youngster we had a tradition of cutting a Christmas tree on my birthday on Dec. 18th. We were supposed to stay on my grandfather's property. The trouble was, he had no good Christmas trees on his property. We would sneek over onto the Stevenson property, now Stanley Miller's, and cut a beautiful tree and drag it home. One year as we were cutting the tree we were cought by Mr. Miller. He told us we could have the tree but next year call him first. In our family because of safety concerns.Mom and I decided to change a family tradition and have a artificial Christmas tree. The tradition had been to get the tree out of the box and put it up on Dec. 18th. I think all our family still uses a artificial tree. Traditions I like are telephone calls from my children on Christmas, and Mothers and fathers Day. Green bean soup with fresh beans out of the garden. Salt on a green apple or rhubarb. Buttermilk and Dirty John Hot Dogs. Pickled Kabossie Inovations with the family.. Family Home evening.

Traditions and memories are wonderful. I hope we can have a big Family Home evening and reunion before too many more years pass.

From: Lois Rotella

I have been thinking about this question. For some reason it has been hard. I know we had a few traditions. On Christmas Eve we never ate meat. We would go to midnght mass and after we came home we could have meat. We had special dishes mostly italian food. On New Year's day we always ate hame I don't know why. On someone birthday we alway had a special meal.It was the chose of the birthday person. I think our traditions are mostly the food we eat. It is most all italian food.

From: Marie Zamora

Our family is odd. We had a "tradition" when ever we get together we play 'Inovations' or immitations. It's lots of fun. We pretend to be someone and then everyone tries to guess who it is. We love to laugh!

From: James Harris

Hey Renee, how about this: (Fiction Again) When Dad came home from work, he would be quite tired. To relax himself he would play the extended version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly really loud. He would sit back in his recliner and smoke a big joint. Mom was never sure what to make for supper, so she would pull out a Oiuja board and divine what would be best for us. The ceremony to slaughter a lamb for supper was quite intriguing. After supper we would play Scrabble or watch TV, the Outer Limits being a big favorite.

From: Brenda Olszewski

The special traditions I remember was when I was young and grandma and grandpa Harris were alive we would go to there house on Christmas eve with all the relatives and have a party there. I t was so much fun with all the cousins and aunts and uncles. We also would have with mom and dad a get together in November for Thanksgiving and exchange presents with them for christmas.

From: Jenny McMurray

We had a few traditions. I remember our family doing imitations with grandpa and grandma when we had family home evening. Now that I am married I experience every year the polish tradition on Christmas Eve. My husband's family has been celebrating the wigilia every year together since their family came from Poland. Because Thad's mother's family is Catholic we also celebrate Little Christmas on Jan. 6th. We usually give a little gift and enjoy desserts together. These are only a few that we have.

From: Joyce Eggleston

The family tradition was when we use to dress up and go to mom and dads on Christmas Eve. The whole family gathered and it was fun.

From: Heidi MacDuff

The most special tradition was Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grampa Harris'. We have never been able to duplicate it.