It is now December and holiday traditions are in full swing. Some traditions are small, some traditions are large, but traditions are traditions. From playing it simple, like making snow angels, to kicking it up a notch, like ice-skating in Rockafellar Center, traditions come into the holiday season stronger than ever before. Traditions can be found at the root of our families. They date back to as far as anyone can remember.
Let’s take my family for example. We’re big, we’re loud, and we’re Italian. Add the holiday season into the equation and you’ll get a whole mess of crazy, big, and loud Italians who love food.
One tradition that my family does around the holidays is that we bake and bake and bake. All the women in my family meet at one of our houses (usually mine) and we bake tons and tons of holiday cookies for our friends and family. By the end of the day, we would have baked over 600 cookies. Sugar rush, anyone?
Then we have to frost and decorate the sugar cookies, dust the linzer tarts, and try not to eat any of the special Italian cookies that our Nonna made. Houses cannot withstand the amount of noise that 13 Italian women who are continuously drinking make. I know my house can’t.
Another tradition that my family does is on Christmas Eve. My uncle thinks that it is good luck to eat all the fish eyes from the fish we make for the meal. He believes that eating the fish eyes will make you smarter for the year to come. I just find it gross.
My uncle does not speak the greatest English, he just tends to babble, and otherwise he’ll speak Italian.
“This is good for you, my girl!” my uncle would say.
After I would decline, he would persist and chace me around the living room with a fish eye on a fork and try to get me to eat it. I do not care how smart I would be, I ain’t eating no dang fish eye.
However, some family traditions are not as crazy, loud, and wine-filled as mine are. Some are just quite simple, and less loud. Joe Boyle, junior, keeps his family’s traditions humble. His family likes to exchange some gifts during Christmas Eve.
“It’s something we’ve been doing ever since we were little, and it just kind of sticks with us every year,” Boyle said.
Keep in mind that tradition carries over across the globe. In France, they celebrate Christmas a little bit differently. The children leave their shoes by the fireplace, and by the next morning, Christmas Day, their shoes would be filled with fruits, nuts, and little toys for them to play with. Simple, and yet, refreshing.
We can all learn a lot about each other just by getting to know other people’s traditions. Traditions make the holidays that much more special for all of us. Big or small, they are meaningful. It doesn’t take much for them to develop either. You just find something fun to do and you find yourself repeating it year after year. You then start to fall in love with your traditions too, and these traditions become a part of your family, and they become a part of you too
So go make a snow fort, bake 600 cookies, visit New York City, eat fish eyes (totally just kidding), or start a tradition of your own.
