My family is German. My grandmother always made holiday stollen, which is bread filled with raisins, jellied fruits, cinnamon and other spices.
I hate it. I love the tradition, the idea behind it, but I can't stand this bread that makes my father's eyes light up like a kid in Willy Wonka's factory. Still, my mom videotaped them making stollen so the tradition wouldn't be lost after my parents and aunts and uncles go to the big stollen bakery in the sky.
Apparently, it could be worse. I found this tradition from STLMom in the comments of a post on holiday traditions at GNMParents.com:
In my Norwegian-American family, the Christmas Eve tradition is to eat a vile substance called “lutefisk”. This is a cod fillet which is dried, then reconstituted in lye, then rinsed in water to remove the lye (which would be poisonous). You are left with a horrible white, jello-like mass that makes the whole house smell like rotten fish when you bake it.
Wow. Nice tradition!
I still haven't hit on a holiday tradition for my family, my new family, the family that is my husband and my daughter and me. We decorate the house, we put up the tree, but we still don't have our holiday thing.
So I spent some time searching around the Interwebs for some good ideas. Here are some that I like.
From The Tranquil Parent:
Give a gift to someone who is not expecting one from you. Help the kids bake cookies for the mail carrier or make a card for their librarian! Every year, they can choose someone outside the family to appreciate – there’s a great new tradition!
From Grandma's Modern Day Trunk of Treasures:
I have a large collection of musical instruments that we play along with Christmas music CD's or when we sing Christmas songs together. Some of the instruments are homemade and others have been picked up in the dollar store. They are stored away all year long and they are looked forward to as part of our Holiday tradition at grandma's house.
And, my favorite, from The Bean Blog, which can be used at any time during the winter (or summer) holidays:
In what has become somewhat of a Thanksgiving tradition for me, I want to thank everybody who has touched my life this year. Everybody I admire. Everybody who is there for me. I couldn’t go on
each day with out you.
The point of traditions, I think, is to center us during the year and give us a signpost connecting the past, present and future. Traditions shouldn't be hard or labor-intensive, but they should be practiced with love. Maybe loving my family is the only tradition I have right now -- but I'm going to try to find some way to mark that this year. What do you do?