The Book of New Family Traditions (23 page)

Your Reunion Needs a Website Because . . .

In the olden days, reunions were run by telephone and snail mail, and it was a bloody nightmare trying to keep track of everything. Now, many well-to tracking RSVPs, selling tickets, and posting both historic and current family photos. A website is a great vehicle for doing all that.

If you’ve been invited to a nice wedding or major party lately, chances are you’ve used one of those online invitation services that lets you RSVP whether you need to bring something. Weddings are big and complicated and so are some reunions, but unlike weddings, the reunion keeps happening again every year or two, so a website allows people to maintain the structure they build for the event. Typically, the services that provide templates for and host reunion sites cost around $10 to $15 a month, but many families swear by them and use the websites to keep family members updated all year long.

Here are two examples:
GuyFamilyReunion.com
is the reunion site for “descendants of Civil War veterans Baldy Guy and George Guy.” Apgar
Family.org
is a site for a New Jersey family that even includes a virtual family museum.

Offbeat and Made-Up Holidays and Rituals

It’s a wonderful moment when a child realizes that nobody else on the planet celebrates the same wacky holiday that his or her family invented, or engages in the same silly ritual.

Crazy Food Day

The Taylor family of Stratford, Connecticut, started this tradition one year during Christmas vacation: On Crazy Food Day, all the meals are mixed up. They might eat lunch or dinner for breakfast, and breakfast for lunch. This day usually gets chosen when school is closed because of snow or when there’s a vacation day with no events planned. Everybody stays in his or her pajamas all day.

Kids’Day

Some kids have lobbied their parents for a children’s equivalent of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. The Hains girls of Maryland get to pick a special family activity, and each gets a small gift. Patrice Kyger takes it a step further: Son’s Day is the second Sunday in July, and Daughter’s Day comes on the second Sunday in August. A special outing like a picnic or miniature golf is planned, and the siblings talk about what’s good about having a sister or brother, depending on the day.

Family Happiness Party

In Merchantville, New Jersey, Susan Lynch and her daughters know just what to do on days when everyone in the family is down in the dumps. They declare a Family Happiness Party and get ready to cheer themselves up with such treats as make-your-own sundaes.

Yes Day

Darcie Gore wrote in
Family Fun
magazine that she got tired of saying “no” to her three girls constantly and decided to declare the next Saturday “Yes Day.” She started a “Yes Jar,” so her daughters could deposit written requests for things they couldn’t do immediately, such as “wear my Cinderella dress all day.” On a Yes Day, the activity requests are read, and all the kids pick one special thing they want to do that day. The first Yes Day began with a breakfast of chocolate milk and donuts, and included such activities as freeze tag, a pillow fight, and the application of toenail polish.

You can decorate almost any container you have, but one simple idea is to take a Quaker Oats cardboard box and decorate the outside with colored paper. Perhaps the kids can cut out pictures from magazines of foods and activities and toys they love and glue them on. Cut a slit in the plastic top, so they can write their Yes Day requests during the month and save them in the container.

Invite the Stuffed Animals

There were always a lot of stuffed animals in our house, and a good number of rituals were created around them. The stuffed platypus my husband gave me for Valentine’s Day years ago, Boris, has his own team sports gear, especially a Cleveland Browns shirt (made from an old sock with a team patch stitched on) that he wears during games (he keeps it on all week if the team wins). Another fun ritual was the stuffed animal football games my husband and son would stage on the floor in the playroom.

But the best ritual of all was the “New Toy Interview,” in which the esteemed platypus Boris, who was sort of the dean of toy town here, would give every new stuffed animal our son got a little orientation. My husband would help Boris make his presentation, and there was always stuff about how Max might not always pay them this amount of attention, and warnings that some of the stuffed animals were leaning toward the dark side and should be avoided. But in general, it seemed like a very sweet rundown and reminder of our family values, a tutorial about what it means to be one of us.

Groundhog Day

This holiday isn’t invented, but who do you know who actually celebrates it? Nancy Dodge, the mother of five in Princeton, New Jersey, says her family really needs a holiday around February 2, “when the winter is looking endless and bleak.” Basically, the Dodge family eats a lot of junk food on Groundhog Day and watches back-to-back movies, mostly on a baseball theme, though they’ve been known to watch the movie named for the holiday.

Alice in Wonderland Day

Declare a fantasy day, and let everyone pick themes, food, and activities. Go to a special place where you’ll feel really huge or really tiny, like Alice after she eats the magic food. Have a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Read or talk about your favorite fantasy books, such as Harry Potter. Mix magic potions. Learn magic tricks.

Mess Day

The idea is to take all the ordinary household rules, and for one entire day, turn them upside down. Let everybody wear their grubbiest clothes and never comb their hair. Table manners aren’t allowed, and all meals should be eaten on a picnic blanket on the floor, preferably while watching television. Toys are never put away, so playing never has to stop.

Overcoat Day

In New York City, Mary Beaton and Jels McCaulay celebrate this holiday with their two daughters. On the first really cold day of the year, they call friends and family and proclaim Overcoat Day. Depending on whether it is a weekend or weekday, up to thirty people show up in mittens, scarves, and warm coats and crowd onto the family’s outdoor deck. The adults drink champagne, while the kids clink sippy cups of juice together. “Wintery” books like
The Snowy Day
by Ezra Jack Keats are read aloud, and the kids make snowman decorations out of cotton balls and construction paper.

Speranza’a

This is the invented winter holiday of the Speranza family and it lasts six days and starts the Monday after Valentine’s Day. Each member of the family gets a dedicated day of his or her own (including the pet bunny, Charcoal). On that day, the chosen one gets to pick the food for dinner—even if the choice is bacon and popcorn—and eat by candlelight. After dinner and blowing out the candles, everyone dances in the living room. Loosely inspired by Kwanzaa and Hanukkah, the holiday has its own principles, explains Carol Sulcoski (whose married name is Speranza). “So far, we’ve got the principles of Irony, Gluttony, and Magnetism, but I think they need tweaking.” Next, the family is considering making a special candleholder, to be called a “spenorah.” Doesn’t it sound fun? “All silliness aside, it is sweet and surprising to see how much this family tradition means to my kids,” Carol wrote in her blog Go Knit in Your Hat. “They talk about it for weeks beforehand, and it is heartwarming to feel like we are making some special memories for our kids.”

Between-the-Seasons Dinners

Cindy Taibbi-Kates has a novel way of celebrating the transition to a new season. When they celebrate the event in September and prepare for fall, she explains, “We eat watermelon slices right alongside butternut squash soup and we drink lemonade and hot chocolate! We dress in shorts and a long-sleeved sweater—or maybe a T-shirt and snow pants. We play Beach Boy tunes and Christmas music.” The decor echoes the theme: One year, the family hollowed out a pumpkin to use as a centerpiece, placing within it a bouquet of daisies in a glass vase. Says Cynthia: “It’s always so much fun to see how silly we can make it!”

Best Guides for Finding Something New and Fun to Celebrate

Every single day is a major holiday or anniversary somewhere in the world. If you are looking to invent a holiday at your house or celebrate something new, you can’t beat these online resources that document all the days.

The old go-to resource is Chase’s Calendar of Events, published by McGraw-Hill, which is the standard text many libraries own and includes a wealth of detail, including astronomical information like moon phases, lists of famous people born on a particular day, every holiday proclaimed by Congress, and lots of national and international special occasions. Along with totally goofy things like January being Oatmeal Month (or so proclaims Quaker Oats), you will find valuable news such as what actual day Easter or the summer solstice will fall on in a given year. This is updated each year and distributed electronically: You can access much but not all this information free online (
www.mhprofessional.com/templates/chases/
), but you can very likely access Chase’s Calendar at your local library’s website. It’s hard to overstate what a great tool Chase’s can be, because in addition to creating new celebrations, you can use it as a tool to teach and discuss history with your clan. I mean, look at just two holidays in Chase’s for the date August 14, which just happens to be the day I’m writing these words: China celebrates the “Festival of Hungry Ghosts,” and the Navajo Nation marks Navajo Code Talkers Day (look that up; it’s fascinating World War II history, and a movie was made about it).

Here are two other invaluable resources, websites maintained by private individuals, but also packed with ideas of things to celebrate:
HolidaysForEveryday.com
and Earth
Calendar.org
.

Belly laugh Day

Did you know that passionate, persistent individuals (as well as nonprofits and corporations) can invent a holiday and then actually get it listed on various “official” calendars? Elaine Helle did this when she created Belly Laugh Day in 2006, which happens every year on January 24. She thought winter was a good time to get people to laugh and relax. The idea is to “throw your arms in the air and laugh out loud” on that day, at 1:24 PM (local time). See
www.bellylaughday.com
.

Jack Horner Pies

This seems to be a widely practiced, old idea but the person who told me about her family doing it is Lee Vogelgesang. Her family does this at every family gathering, whether Christmas, Easter, or family vacation. “A Jack Horner pie is made of little special prizes or trinkets that are given specifically to the person whose name is on the other end of a string or ribbon, to which the gift is secured,” Lee explains. “The gifts are placed in a big bowl or bucket and covered with tissue paper, so no one can see the prizes. The ribbon is poked through the tissue paper, with the name of the recipient on the end.” When the time comes, everyone recites the rhyme: “Little Jack Horner, sat in a corner” and when they get to “What a good boy (or girl) am I,” everyone tugs at once.

Bookapalooza

When my son outgrew celebrating the birthday of Pooh’s creator, A. A. Milne, he suggested we have an annual full day that is all about celebrating books, as winter vacation winds down. We wake up and read in bed, then dress up as favorite characters (Hermione Granger for me, but I do have a Mary Poppins costume left from Halloween), and watch one of our favorite movies based on a book. Other ideas: Play book-title charades, visit the library, make pilgrimages to a statue of a famous fictional character (the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park is awesome) or an author’s birthplace.

SFFF Outings

Carol McCarthy Heald is the mother of four grown kids, and she says for years she would plan some sort of special night or outing labeled with the initials “SFFF.” The letters stand for “Spoon Fed Family Fun.” “Back when it was only $15 for the Santa Fe Opera, I’d buy tickets for all of us. But this also included nature outings, backpacking, canoe trips, and more,” says Carol. She says they had a blast and many memorable adventures, but sometimes she had to force the kids to try new things. “We told them: You don’t have to like it, but you do have to do it.”

Fairy Godmother Induction Ceremony

My friend Anne Kalik had a good friend whose eleven-year-old daughter kept saying that she wasn’t fond of her godmother and wished Anne could take over the job. Anne explained that being chosen a godmother was a lifetime position, but that she would be happy to become the girl’s “fairy godmother.” Wow. During a camping trip, Anne created a little ritual to mark this new relationship, painting the girl’s face with a moon and stars before beginning. She drew a circle on the beach by a river. While the girl and Anne and some other family members stood inside, Anne lit the end of a smudge stick and waved it around to add atmosphere and make the space sacred to them. (For an explanation of smudge sticks, see the sidebar in Chapter 1.) The smudge stick was lit and passed around the circle, says Anne, and each of them “said something from our hearts.” This one-time ritual was simple, but profound. Says Anne, “I’ve loved this child since she was born, but the ritual made me feel I had formally made a promise to be responsible. It added something special: I pay more attention.”