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weird family traditions?
I'm getting excited to see my family in October for my cousins wedding, and I was just thinking of one silly thing we always do. My dad has 3 brothers and 3 sisters, and all except one are married with kids - so it's a pretty good sized group and we're all quite close. When we do separate family pictures (parents and kids), we also throw in a "random family" one. So we'll grab an unmatched guy and a girl from the older generation and a few cousins from different parents and pose them like a family.With this particular side of family there are plenty of other weird things we do, and if you look at my facebook page and see that I'm friends with an "A.J. Ritter", that is a long story that provides evidence that my family is quite strange.
Do you have any odd family traditions?
Re: weird family traditions?
My family doesn't really have fun traditions like that! The only thing I can think of is that in my own family (parents & brother) we always have our own wrapping paper for Christmas. So if I choose reindeer wrapping paper then all of my presents will be wrapped in that. My mom said she started that when we were too young to read and it just stuck.
Oh! I did just think of a good one from DH's side of the family - again, Christmas related. If anyone gets alcohol as a gift then it has to opened and consumed immediately. Seriously. So if I got my MIL a bottle of her favorite vodka then she would have to open it and then everyone (of drinking age) has to take a shot. Sooo... there aren't many alcohol gifts given anymore, LOL. I guess there were some pretty drunk Christmas mornings in the past.
We do the wrapping paper thing. Or we used to when we got lots of gifts! Made it easier under the tree...until my mom started wrapping my brothers stuff in my paper and vice versa.
Festivus! My dad actually has a festivus pole. I kid you not. He LOVES Seinfeld.
As for weird family traditions.. I'm sure we have a million. Usually it involves a "grace" ie: if it's my turn I always whip out the "GRACE?!?! Grace died Forty years ago". or the was the year my dad said Grace and he whispered it to himself as my mom and I were hysterically laughing with tears.
That's pretty awesome that you can do Festivus with your family & Thanksgiving with your IL's!
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday (I'm sure i've mentioned that 216541321 times though) and when Ted & I started dating and it was clear "this was it" I started getting stressed about how we would split the holidays. Ted's family does a BIG Thanksgiving where all the extended family comes into town for it. It's so fun, and I knew I couldn't take that away. On the other hand my family is very small and we don't have extended family that lives close enough to come down just for that, so it was important to spend it with my parents also. Well luckily when you have upwards of 25 people at one Thanksgiving, 2 more people don't make a big difference. So now my parents spend it wth my IL's and it makes life so much easier. My brother spends Thanksgiving with his girlfriend & her family, and they split Christmas day. <- That's why my mom started the annual Thanksgiving Breakfast, so my family can spend Thanksgiving together.
That was long.
On the same lines as thanksgiving breakfast - a friend of mine married into this crazy traditional family and under no circumstances was anyone to miss christmas eve dinner, or christmas morning breakfast. her family didn't have any christmas related traditions so they understood.
however - her mom did want to spend time with them - so she started a big family dinner the night before christmas eve... she calls it "Christmas Adam"
..... you know. because adam came before eve. i adore this.
On New Year's Day we always make "Narkies." It's a tradition that DH's family started. Supposedly it's an old Swedish tradition, but DH has tried to research it and can't find any info on it so we think his great-grandparents just made it up. It's fun, nonetheless.
So on New Years Eve we make dough...kind of like sweet roll dough. It has to proof overnight so it's ready in the morning. On New Years Day everyone takes part of the dough and makes a mini-me out of the dough. The trick though is you make it look like what you want to improve on that year....for instance if you wanted to go back to school that year you would make your Narkie with a big head (e.g. getting smarter). Last year my SIL made her daughter's Narkie look like it was sitting on a toilet because their goal was to potty train her. Usually mine has a tiny little waist. Tyler's usually has big biceps. It's fun. So then you bake them and frost them and then you eat the part that you want to improve on first. So if you wanted to be smarter you eat the head first.
It's fun and goofy and it usually ends up with lots of laughing because the Narkies puff up so much when you bake them that they look pretty ridiculous when you pull them out of the oven. Last year my mom joined the tradition and she thought it was a hoot.
{Blog: Adventures of AlaskanAlison}
That might be one the coolest and funnest tradition I have ever heard of!!! I totally want to come spend New Years with yall.
Ditto. I LOVE THIS!!!! Can you post the recipe for the dough?? I think this is freakin' awesome!!!
Awesome!
My family is way into Christmas so we have a lot of traditions, everyone comes home for "advent dinners" the 4 sundays before christmas. It started as a way to teach us manners when we were kids and just grew into a family tradition. We do the wrapping paper thing, my mom stopped putting tags on my parents presents to us and just wraps them with a theme for each child (one wrapping paper/ribbon/ribbon color/ribbon type/charm etc for each of us) and we have to guess whose presents are whose, she makes it more complicated every year.
On DH's side FIL's family does thanksgiving the weekend before so they don't have to choose between familes.
Our Wedding Day 8/7/10
When I was little my parents always wrapped each of ours in different paper too. Then my parents split up when I was 17 and my mom decided it was time for new traditions so she gets tons of different kinds of wrapping paper and puts names on each present now. No more of the same for each person. We also do a brunch at my moms on Christmas morning. My dads side of the family always has to take a family photo before we open gifts. Its annoying but funny at the same time because the picture takers usually aren't very good at their job.
The only family that DH has that lives in MD are his parents and his brother. His parents usually do Thanksgiving around what my family and his brothers g/f at the time family is doing. It makes it nice so we don't have to choose, even though we've ended up having Thanksgiving dinner at 11 am before. One of these years we will venture to OH so see his family during the holidays.
Hatteras, North Carolina
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At Christmas we all get together for a big family party and we have some traditions. First, someone will always open a present and say "It's a box!" and then set it down like that's it and look at the next person who is to open. Or if someone guesses their present before opening someone will say "Now you have to put it under the sharing tree!".
And we always play board game and whatnot and whenever someone screws something up or does something bad on the game it's tradition for a couple of people to stand up from the table, point at them, and laugh really loudly. Which is more funny when a cousin brings a new girlfriend to Christmas and they aren't expecting it. You always know the ones who will stick around based on their reaction.
Haha, this is really funny! Poor unsuspecting new gf/bf's!
I love this thread and hearing everyone's traditions! We don't have many, unless you count my mom getting upset with one or more of the 3 of us kids and saying that her children don't love her and never do anything for her or some variation. Luckily, that only happens about half the time, lol.
Matthew's dad's side of the family always does a combined Thanksgiving and Christmas celebration on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It makes it easy to plan, but sometimes annoying if we ever want to do something different that day. Plus, his mom never comes to that, so we have to do a separate Thanksgiving with her or she gets sad.
Oh, I forgot one... the family power hour! started by my little sister, one advent dinner we did an xmas power hour, and we vacation as a family to the beach and do a beach themed one there. Although my sister was pregnant last year, and there's a baby this year so that tradition will probably go away.
ok... before this tradition started I didn't know what a power hour was so I'll explain it, but from what I understand I'm the minority in not knowing it so please don't be offended that I'm explaining it - you make a CD with 60 songs plaing only 1 min of each song (beach themed/xmas themed) and everytime the song changes you take a shot of beer, it's apparently a drinking warm up before a game or other event.
It's the irish in us coming out!
Our Wedding Day 8/7/10