As you can see, the photo is my family’s Christmas brunch in 1951. The brunch was my grandmother’s annual event. Everyone in the family who could attended. I am the little girl in red sitting on the floor on the left . Today I am the only person in the photo who is still alive, not so surprising given that it was taken almost 70 years ago.
Families develop traditions to mark holidays and birthdays and other significant events. Some last for several generations. My grandmother’s Christmas brunch ended when she died — all of the members of the family scattered over the years so it would not be possible to gather like we did that year.
In my family, of course we developed holiday traditions. Foods I always prepared — like the Mexican wedding cookies my mother always made, though she shaped hers like fingers, or molasses sugar cookies using my grandmother’s recipe written in her hand on a now yellowed index card.
You never know when you do things that this thing might become a tradition. Like the fact that starting when my son was 4 and my daughter 7, we went to the movies on Christmas Eve. What started as a way to distract my son who was obsessed with Santa and wound up tight as could be with excitement. It was only the next year that we discovered we had started a tradition, one that continued for many years, surviving a divorce and the coming of new family members. Even this year of confinement, my husband and I will settle down Christmas Eve and watch a movie, to keep in our own small way what has become a charming memory of a little boy who had so much trouble containing his excitement.
This morning I awoke to a text with the photo above from my son. He announced the continuation of another sort of odd and maybe charming family tradition, the Birthday Cereal. When he and his sister were kids, any trip to the supermarket threatened the argument and much whining about why heavily sugared cereal was not on the menu at our house. I don’t remember just when or how I decided that they could choose on their birthday a box of the forbidden cereal of their choice but decide I did and so a family tradition was born. And as their birthdays are separated by just 2 months, judicious conferring and selection meant that this forbidden fruit could be stretched out over quite a while. So this morning he and my daughter and I had a fun text conversation about cereals of their youth. Great start to this snowy day.
Today is my granddaughter’s 6th birthday. It seems she chose Lucky Charms. May the tradition go on and on! Happy Birthday, Hope!
1 Comment
That is a GREAT tradition!