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Family Traditions
A tradition can be anything from going to the beach every summer to always saying “bunny, bunny, bunny” for good luck when you wake up. What traditions have been handed down in your family?
If your family has a tradition of eating dinner together, it’s a great chance for everyone to talk over what happened during the day, or to air out problems. One friend of mine grew up with family night; her father would read something aloud and the family would discuss it and use it to generate more conversation. Another family had game night. They would pull out a favorite board game, put out bowls of snacks, and sit around the table and play. What would be a great activity for your family to do every week? Go bowling? Cook dinner together?
If you do start a new family tradition, maybe it will still be going strong when your grandchildren are your age.
CELEBRATION TIME!
What holidays does your family celebrate? Whatever your religion or personal beliefs, the calendar is full of special days and opportunities for celebrating—and for starting new traditions.
The birthday cake with candles was a new tradition a little over two hundred years ago. It started in Germany as a cake of sweetened bread dough. When the candles were blown out, the smoke would carry birthday wishes up to the gods.
Why not come up with your own family reason for celebrating, and schedule it every year on a certain date. It could be as simple as, every spring, planting marigolds in a small portion of your backyard to celebrate new life. The choices are as open as your imagination!
TRADITIONAL FOODS
Certain foods are traditional for special holidays: hamantaschen, cookies shaped like three-cornered hats, celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim. Christmas cookies are often flat shapes decorated with red and green sugar. And what’s Thanksgiving without turkey and cranberry sauce and all the fixings? Countries around the world have traditional foods for holidays and family meals. In the U.S., favorite foods can even vary from state to state. Your relatives in North Carolina might love their barbecue, while your relatives in Boston might be more interested in baked beans and cream pie.
“It’s just like Mom used to make.” How many times have you heard someone say that? Yes, holidays are good reasons for extra-special meals, and old-fashioned home cooking often deserves the highest praise any meal can get! It means food that’s cooked with love and care. And special recipes often have secret ingredients and are handed down from generation to generation. It’s a great way to keep a strong connection with your ancestors. Make your great great-great grandmother’s recipe for stuffed cabbage the way she did, and you are re-creating a part of your past!
Back when people didn’t have cookbooks or the Internet to look for recipes, they wrote them down and handed them out, often on index cards, as gifts along with a tray or taste of the recipe. My mother’s recipe cards were often faded and worn from use. We looked forward to those family favorites. Why not make your own recipe box and stock it with your family’s favorite recipes? Or use an app to create a virtual recipe box with digital index cards. You don’t even need to print anything.
Collect every recipe you can find that has been handed down by family members (ask if they have more) and make a special family recipe box to hold them. Or use your digital cards and upload them to the genealogy pages you’re creating. (First make sure you have permission to share the recipes so openly and freely, of course.) With a little research, you may even find recipes that an ancestor might have enjoyed. Then title them with zingy names such as Aunt Martha’s Marvelous Munchy Candy Mounds, Uncle Bob’s Spicy-Licious Barbeque Sauce, or Cousin Irma’s Devilishly Delicious Devil’s Food Cake.
When you’re in a mood to cook, it’s great to have your family’s favorite recipes all in the same place. So now’s the time to get started on this kitchen project.
WHAT YOU NEED
Your family recipes!
photo storage box or shoe box
tempera paint
magazine clippings of anything to do with food. (Cut out pictures, and even lettering, to decorate your box with “Good Eating!” or “What’s Cooking?”)
white glue
plastic dish
scissors
soft brush
index cards in different colors
WHAT TO DO
1. First, paint the box a bright color. Be sure to let it dry completely!
2. Select pictures and lettering, and decide on a pattern.
3. Pour some glue into a plastic dish. Use a soft brush to apply the glue to the back of your paper cutouts and affix them to the box.
4. After the glue has dried completely, apply a thin layer of glue all over the box.
5. While the box is drying, copy the recipes or glue photocopies of them to the index cards—longer recipes onto both front and back of a card, or onto the front of two or more cards that you then staple together. (If you’re hand-writing the recipes, select pastel cards or you might not be able to read the instructions.)
6. Put the cards in the box.
Apples have been around for many years, but applesauce wasn’t invented commercially until 1390.
The first potato chips (fried potatoes cut “thin”) were made in 1853.
It was at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis that ice cream and waffles were brought together—and the ice-cream cone was born.
None of your relatives tasted Jell-O® before 1910. That’s when the quivering dessert was first invented.
FAMILY SONGS
In the Appalachian Mountains, there is a tradition called “song catching.” Long before the invention and popular use of tape recorders, people would “catch” songs.
They were sung over and over until someone younger than the singer memorized them. In this way, their songs were passed down from generation to generation, in much the same way oral histories were transmitted. Of course, as people took turns singing the songs, they sometimes changed them. A young woman with a nice soprano voice might have added some high trills, while an expert banjo player put in extra chords and harmonies. One singer probably sang a tune slowly or softly, while another sang out gleefully. It may have been the same song, but many people interpreted it and many different versions arose.
Historical events also lead to other kinds of songs. During World War II everybody in the U.S., including your relatives, was probably singing along to the morale-building “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B,” made famous by the Andrews Sisters. Another song, dating from the Revolutionary War, is still known today as “Yankee Doodle.” The song was actually British in origin, making fun of colonists as know-nothing bumpkins! Instead of getting upset, the colonists took on the song as their own and sang it with pride. What songs do you suppose your ancestors sang, and what did the songs mean to them? Ask your older family members to sing some traditional songs that they remember from their childhood. Maybe you can “catch” them or record some of the traditional songs of earlier generations.
Bathing suits covered much more than many suits do today.
RECORD SOME FAVORITES
Get in tune with the songs that have been enjoyed by family members over the years. Does your mom sing along so often to those “old” folk tunes her mother loved to sing, you’ve learned the words, too? Does your granddad suddenly stop talking to listen intently whenever he recognizes the great tenor voice of Pavarotti on a classical radio station? Maybe jazz, hip-hop, big band, rock-and-roll, or today’s pop music is always playing in some room of your house or through private earphones. If everybody marches to the beat of a different drummer, why not do some research and make up a “sampler” of favorites? Include something for everybody, from your mom and dad’s special song that they danced to at their wedding to the tune that your grandma sings softly whenever she is sitting with a new grandchild. Set the music playing at your next family barbecue or get-together, and you’ll probably hear Grandpa Garcia, or Aunt Dorothy, or cousin Angelo say, “Listen, that’s my favorite song.” It’s certainly something you’ll want to keep, to remember everyone by for years to come.