This week, we’re talking about weird family traditions, and I can’t help making a joke about heading down the Lane, or the Lain, as it were because today my guests are none other than Amy Lane and Tara Lain, and they’re here to talk about the weird and wonderful things we call family traditions.
Last week’s winner? Fay!!!
This week my guests will share their answers with us, and you, gentle readers, can give your answer to my question in the comment section below. I’ll choose one random person from the comments and reward them with an ebook surprise, it’s that simple!
Tell me what your answer to today’s question would be in the comments, and you could win an e-book!
This weeks question is:
What is your weirdest family tradition?
What is your Weirdest Family Tradition?
I was an Army brat growing up all over the world. We seldom stayed in one place long. The things that most people consider traditional — events with extended family, neighborhood get-togethers — weren’t true for us or people like us because we moved all the time.
I think that’s why my nuclear family had a lot of traditions — things that gave some order and meaning to a very disordered life.
My father spent hours creating Easter egg masterpieces, my mother decorated windows for Christmas that would have put Michelangelo to shame.
Food played a key role in many holidays. For Christmas eve, my mother made an elaborate display of what she called antipasto — a buffet of mostly cold dishes that people could snack on all evening and into the next day. And Thanksgiving? Do you know anyone else whose turkey dinner included sauerkraut and cold canned asparagus! Yep.For some reason, my father discovered that the sour taste of sauerkraut was a perfect complement to the often sweet tastes that star in a turkey dinner like yams, cranberry sauce, even the turkey is a sweetish meat.
To this day, I miss the sauerkraut on my turkey dinner. But I must confess that fresh, steamed asparagus now has more appeal than the cold squishy stuff in a can. Still, I honor it for the weird family tradition it was. — Author Tara Lain
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My weirdest family tradition?
we don’t really have any weird family traditions…I don’t think…although I guess I’m a little weird as is…but we do watch The Princess Bride every Christmas…is that weird? We started that when I was five and it stuck 🙂
I LOVE The Princess Bride. Our family watches The Muppet Christmas Carol. One of our weird family traditions is because my kids birthdays come so soon after the holidays. I was too lazy to wrap their gifts after all that holiday hoopla, so I started a game of hiding gifts and playing hot or cold to find them.
I think most of my holiday traditions are based on sloth, actually. 😀
I LOVE the Princess Bride. That’s an AWESOME family tradition.
Hmmm German Red Cabbage is our tradition too! We serve it with Rouladen. I was also an army brat and we moved a lot. Mom did Christmas up HUGE with decorations and her tradition (though not weird) was to bake enough Christmas cookies to feed Lichtenstein.
We used to do cookies! That was my father’s big deal and his baking was delicious. Now I don’t do it much, but when I do the kids enjoy it. I’m usually whipping up a heaping batch of words these days, so the kitchen gets short shrift!
My grandma used to cook Christmas cookies FOR DAYS. I sort of miss those…
In the unusual food vein, my family eats smoked oysters on New Year’s Eve, along with champagne, of course!
Ah. We don’t have any traditions like that for New Year’s Day, although we should. I often make split pea soup with a leftover hambone, but maybe I should switch to black eyed peas! They’re supposed to bring good luck.
We fry chicken for Christmas Eve. Don’t know why. Just do.
How interesting that cabbage food rule the holidays! Thanks so much for coming by, you guys. I could use enough cookies to feed Lichtenstein! LOL. I don’t love most baked goodies, but crisp cookies are a fave. : )
My Mate makes fudge– sometimes– which is why it didn’t make it into the Christmas tradition category.
Our weirdest tradition is hanging a bungee cord on the Christmas tree. The reason is when my beloved and I first got married, we were dirt-poor. Sweetheart that he is, he bought one of the last Christmas trees on Christmas Eve. It was not in good shape. It was dried out and missing most of the branches on one side. He set it up and decorated it as a surprise, but it kept falling over. After the third time it fell over, he strapped it with a bungee cord to the rail dividing the living room from the dining room. It looked like an unwilling participant to our Christmas cheer, but it stayed up. The bungee cord now serves as a reminder of that first Christmas and also a warning to the tree to stay up.
I LOVE that story! : )
OMG– that’s one of the best stories EVER. I adore that idea. The Christmas bungee! (Hear it in Wallace and Gromet tones 🙂
Awww… That is such a LOVELY story.
Our weird tradition started the year our Angel topper was no longer fit for use. My younger DD solved the problem by attaching Angel wings to a soft toy. That year our tree was watched over by a Spongebob Angel.
Ever since then my kids look for something different or weird to top off their trees. My older DD used a Fez and a bow tie one year and another year she used a stuffed toy disease, she’s a nurse and has a few of these. That year she chose to use – Syphilis! That proved to be quite a conversation starter LOL.
Now that’s a tradition! Love it. : )
OMG– Cuddling under the syphilis tree!! hahahaha
Oh my gosh! Hilarious.
Heh heh…. funny stuff. We don’t have any horrifying or funny traditions. Let’s see, we get a special cake designed like a “Yule Log” from the bakery to eat on Christmas eve, I hand-make our Christmas cards (I make about 60-75 so this is a TIME CONSUMING process), and we drink a LOT of egg nog. Its my favorite time of year.
The Christmas card thing is actually a lovely tradition. I write the Christmas letter– actually, having people love my Christmas letters was one of the reasons I started writing 🙂
I can’t think of a weird holiday tradition (because when you and your family are all nuts, nothing seems out of the ordinary), though my brother used to make up parodies of all the Christmas carols. He won’t admit to it now, though…
I love Christmas Carol Parodies, and I also love it when kids sing and they don’t know the words. I can still hear my daughter singing “Ho, Ho, the missing toe, hung where you can’t see…”