I'm not married yet and there are some traditions that are very unique and special that I would love to pass down in my own family. My family has many Christmas traditions. They range from decorating the family tree with homemade ornaments and reminiscing where we got them or who made them for us. Baking a sweet treat for our neighbors near the season, watching Sesame Street Christmas, decorating a gingerbread house together with my siblings, an event calendar, putting cookies out (even though my little brother and I are old enough to know who Santa really is) and putting out reindeer food for Rudolf to find us (oatmeal and glitter mixed together and sprinkle outside on your front lawn, it's really fun and exciting for your kids) All these traditions I hold onto very dearly and I realized that a lot of family members have other traditions too, such as opening gifts on Christmas Eve. I've never heard of that before but a lot of students in my Family Relation class do this and it was an eye opener for me.
We all do traditions or things that mean something to our family. One was holding hands during dinner prayer. I've always liked the concept of it and even though I don't do it in my family I wouldn't be opposed doing it with my future family one day. And that's the thing, we are so diverse and different even in our family traditions. We marry into a family and realize that some traditions we do can "clash" or "don't make sense." For me I enjoy all different kinds of cultures and traditions amongst those cultures. Some celebrate Day of the Dead, Mardi Gras, The Passover, or even Rosh Hashanah, so why do people "fight" or have "issues" with bringing in traditions into a marriage? Perhaps people don't like change and suddenly changing or mixing things up. Perhaps they just don't understand where they come from and why they have those neat and fun traditions? I have an example for instance that could help shed some light on this question.
In High School I was in the Marching Band (Clarinet if you're wondering). It was a really enjoyable and fun experience to be able to do something that neat. Marching Band was hard and difficult and I spent days practicing and memorizing. When the day came for competitions we did a lot of traditions that I had no clue that would mean so much to me. Before we went to march on the field everyone would stand around my band director and we would pray for a good solid minute. Praying to do our best, march with confidence, and to be able to place in something. Not a lot of kids knew what praying was, but I think in these moments they understood what it was. Some I knew weren't religious or thought the idea was lame, but I knew deep down it did mean something and they all understood why we "needed" to pray. It was to calm us down and have peace in our hearts and heads. Sometimes we lost and sometimes we won, even 1st place. When the competition ended we packed up and drove back home and when we won, carrying that trophy on the bus, we knew what the next day would bring. It filled us with pride and happiness.
We would all file into the band room with smiles and congrats all around. Then our band director (Jay Ronk) would walk in and say how proud he was of us, sometimes he'd get teary eyed. We would watch our show and see/ heard what we needed to improve and why. After watching our show our band director sat in a chair, draped a multicolored towel over his shoulder, take off his glasses and close his eyes. Then everyone pulled out cans of temporary color spray. We would color his hair and mustache in a variety of colors ranging from green, blue, black, silver, yellow, and pink. When we were done he'd look at himself in the mirror and with a huge grin on his face. He worse that the rest of the day...and I mean THE WHOLE DAY! He wore it around the school and even take his wife out to dinner. We all thought it was funny, but we realized what it meant to him. He wore it with pride and everyone knew what the trademark meant. Everyone who knew Jay Ronk with this hair dye job knew what it meant. It meant that his band won. When he was asked why the funky hairstyle he would reply with a smile on his face and tell them the tradition. He has retired now and I don't know if the new director does the same thing as Jay Ronk did, but it was a tradition I was proud to see and witness.
I told these two stories about my band and Jay Ronk because it showed what traditions can do in a community or in a small family even. Carrying traditions and making new ones in the future. It's ok to adapt and create new traditions into your own family because we are all different and it's ok. We need to step out of our comfort zone and do things that can help/ benefit in out family. Traditions help bring families together and can create loving memories.
What are your traditions that you like to do with your family or ones that you've created/ adopted when you got married?
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