Tradition! Tradition!

Today’s Bloganuary prompt is “Write about a few of your favorite family traditions.”

Jiminy, I can’t think of many family traditions, let alone favorite ones. We celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve, a tradition that started when we lived in the same state as both sets of grandparents and had to divide our time between the two families. Actually, it may have started in my Mom’s family when she was growing up, perhaps for the same reason. At any rate, when we moved to another state, we continued with the Christmas Eve celebration, although Santa came during the night, filled our stockings, and left one big gift.

My maternal grandmother was a notoriously bad cook, but there was one thing she made well, and she made that every Christmas Eve. I’m ashamed to say I can’t remember exactly what it was, some sort of beef sandwich, I think. She served it with mashed potatoes that my grandfather made and creamed corn from a can. My mom hated that meal, but I kind of enjoyed it.

In sharp contrast to her mother, my mom was an excellent cook, a gourmet cook, really. Never did her talents shine quite as bright as on the Thanksgivings of my 20s, when my stepdad was alive and shared in preparing a meal. They loved to invite people who had nowhere else to go for the holiday, including a family of Russian immigrants. There were three of them, father, mother, and daughter, and I loved talking to them. They didn’t like to talk about Russia, but the daughter, who was about my age, was a great conversationalist and we always had something to chat about.

My mom was also a talented seamstress. Back in the day, girls were required to wear dresses, and she made several for both my sister and me at the start of every school year. We’d go to the fabric store, pick out the patterns, then select the fabric we liked. I remember then we’d have to wait while Mom found the thread, zippers, buttons and everything we needed for those dresses, and that got a little long, even though she did her best to speed it up.

When we were very young, she made some matching dresses for us, but as soon as we were old enough to display our very different personalities, she stopped doing that.

So I guess we did have a few family traditions I remember fondly.

Image Credits: Santa in his sleigh © vectorfusionart–stock,adobe.com; Santa © Елена Фаенкова–stock.adobe.com; Sewing © Vladimir Polikarpov–stock.adobe.com