YOUR Family Traditions | The Red Headed Hostess
One of my very favorite posts from all of last year
was when you shared some of your favorite family traditions.
I was SO impressed with your fun and creativity and I made a long list of things that I want to incorporate in my own home!
Here are some examples of the things you said:
- “Each month we pick a theme and a night each week, we celebrate that theme with a dinner and activity. February was Twitterpated Tuesday so our dinner consisted of hearts, red, love and our activities celebrated love.”
- “Every once in a while we have a crazy dinner where the table gets wrapped in newspaper and plastic wrap. Each family member chooses from a disguised menu and might end up with a dinner of carrot sticks, peanut butter and peas all served right on the table! The drinks poured ON the table were the best!
“ - “The children get out of school early on Wednesdays and so we pop popcorn and have movie night in the middle of the week. We throw a blanket on the floor and eat our popcorn right in the living room! I started this a few years back and we still love to do it!”
- “Growing up, we had $1-Dinner Night. Each child was given $1 at the grocery store, and we got to choose anything we wanted to have for our dinner that night. You could also allow each child to have $1, and work together to create a great family meal.”
- “Summer time is so much fun at my house. We all have our own garden boxes and favorite veggies that we love to grow. We go outside everyday when Daddy comes home and take a walk around our gardens. We ohh and ahh over everyones’ bounty. We pick and gather what we want to eat for dinner that night. “
SO…. I would love to have part 2 of this:
Would you please share what are some fun family traditions you have in your home?
Thank YOU!
And if you want to write some of these down, here are some Fun Family “Recipe” Cards that you can use:
Here is the printout: fun family recipes
My family has an annual holiday that celebrates our family. We call it DeGooyer Day! (Our last name is DeGooyer.) On DeGooyer Day there is absolutely no work. We have/create matching shirts. And we play all day long. Sometimes we have a theme. Sometimes we don’t. My daughters think DeGooyer Day is better than Christmas! We have gone bowling, hiking, to the movies, played board games, gone out to eat, gone shopping, etc. etc. etc. The skies the limit! It is so much fun! Of course we document the event with lots of pictures and a huge scrapbook devoted to the event.
we have ‘fancy dinner night’ on mondays. Its made our FHE go for longer (we start with singing Love at home while holding hands in a circle around the table.. I cant tell you how much this makes me laugh… it is such a beautiful thing!) we get out the table cloth and fancy glasses and I try to do an extra yummy meal with all the sides on monday nights. Then after clearing the table we go straight into Family Home Evening
my side of the family has been going to a dam near my parents for 20 years plus on Easter Monday (its a public holiday in australia, but not for you i think) we have an egg hunt and a yummy big picnic bbq breakfast. My kids love it! nothing special except the fact its been going a long time.. my kids will say to eachother.. this is your fourth year, this is your tenth year etc.. so funny.. make me really want to create wonderful traditions in our family that will create such excitement!
We make alot of pinata’s….. it seems to be our thing.. it started with birthdays.. then one day we made a christmas one… then easter ones.. so my kids ask.. when are we making a pinata mum… so funny when I forget coming up on major holidays..
We have lots of traditions around christmas and easter…. On easter we usually grow wheat grass, have an egg hunt, make pretzels (said to be in shape of folded arms for prayer and we talk about gethsemene), do holy week activities – follow the week leading up to christ’s death, make Hot cross buns ( a big thing here in australia – they are fruit bread with a dough cross on them) we also put up an easter tree which is just branches in a vase where we hang decorative eggs, pictures of the saviour we’ve cut from ensigns.
at christmas we read a christmas book everynight for the month of december (we’ve been slowly amassing books for a few years) set up our tree on the same set date every year, I try hard to do advent (four sundays leading to christmas, we burn candles and have a devotional), we make a different advent calendar each year. Some years with treats, other years with activites listed inside.
We have family movie night on friday nights with popcorn.
My husband was doing daddy daughter dates each saturday. We have four daughters so each daughter is given a saturday. A few hours with him and they chose what they do, squeezed in sometimes at night, or early morning, or accompanying dad on errands (will get back onto this! thanks for reminding me we got busy and have stopped them the last few months! )
I am excited to make more.. thanks for you prompt!!
We do homemade pizza and movie night. My kids love it because they get to help and even make their own pizza.
We also do a date night. We have two kids right now and each month one of them get a “date” with one of the parents and then we switch the next month. Are kids are young so we do things like feed the ducks and go play at the park.
I just heard a cool one in church today that I would love to start in my home.
You bake a cake for an ancestor on their birthday. You go through all the motions of celebrating the life of that ancestor including showing pictures and sharing stories. This would be perfect for us because my husband lost his mother when he was 15, it would be a great way for my kids to get to know their grandmother. I am thinking of making this a biannual FHE celebration.
We have a grandma and grandpa dinner every week. This is where we have all the grandkids over for dinner. Just the grankids and us.. It has been so much fun and the questions that they ask are worth the effort. We have discussed dating, sex( for grandma this was a hard one to talk about, but I did it) grades, missionary work, what would I have changed if I could go back and be a teenager again, money, college you name it we talk have talked about it. I love this time with the kids. They are not allowed to come until they turn 8 and what we talk about stays in the house. If I think the parents should know, I have the kids tell them that is one of the rules. We don’t give advise, we just listen and answer questions when asked. We tell them the truth when they ask and we don’t sugar coat anything. It has been a great experience for all of us…. It has helped them understand that every one is worried about the same things no matter what age, and they have grown to love each other. We have different food every week and they get to pick the desert for the dinner. We have been doing this for 8 years and and I wish I would have started sooner.
Jean
I am so glad you are asking this, the ideas I’ve read have been fabulous!
I wish I had some wonderful idea I came up with, but I’ll share something my friend Trish over at preparednotscared.blogspot.com taught me about 4-5 years ago that has changed our family. It will help so much when you start having more children. We reached a point when we started having children who were feeling left out at times and that they didn’t get the attention they wanted/needed. This has solved our problem. Each member of our family has a day of the week where they are the family’s focus. On “their day” they can choose the meal, say the prayers, have a free day from chores, they get one on one time with Mom and Dad, everyone tries to find something nice they can do for that person or say to that person and whatever other amazing ideas we think of. We save Sunday for the Savior. It really helps with getting the kids to think about what the Savior would like them to do on “His” day. The beauty of this is that you can tailor it to fit your own family needs.
We have a Christmas book. Each day of December there is a song, a scripture, and a story. I have collected stories over the years so its very big now and takes up a lot of time, but my 4 teenagers love this. Once I start reading, the tears come and they lovingly wait and hand me all the tp I need!
Easter: we started an outside nighttime scavenger hunt. I hide the eggs and they have to go looking with flashlights. Its great because they can walk right by the eggs if their flashlight doesn’t hit them. We started this when the younger one still wanted to find eggs and the older ones considered it too easy inside. We had the youngest and the oldest as partners and then the two middle ones go together.
A tradition that my family did when I was a kid was have Easter, Christmas, and Thanksgiving together. Each year my aunt, grandma, and mom decided who got which holiday at there house. The house made the turkey or ham and potatoes. My aunt always made her whole wheat buns, my mom always brought a relish plate with olives, sweet pickles, pickled beets, and cranberries. She always made a butterscotch dessert and pumpkin roll. My grandmother always made her chocolate pie.
I started a friday date night with my husband when the kids were young, cooked him something special, then a special dessert and a movie in bed. It was just for him. Simple, like a chicken sandwich from McDonalds and a snickers bar. We didn’t have a lot of money so I kept it small. Or I would make a dinner that he liked and then buy a can a pop to go with the movie. When my husband went out of state for 5 years my kids declared that they were taking over and giving me a date night. Now that my husband is home, its turned into a family date night. Something special to eat, a dessert, a movie. Then mom and dad head to bed. Teenagers are allowed to stay up as late as they wish watching movies or computer games (we don’t have tv or internet so I know they can not see anything I don’t already know about), if they are quiet about it.
Birthdays: my father started by bring the birthday child their favorite pizza and pop. Now he asks them what they want, he goes and buys all the groceries and on party day the birthday child and papa cook the meal. He also makes homemade ice cream of their choice and I get to make dessert of their choice. My kids love this tradition!
2 years ago (Halloween) my father bought pumpkins, took the kids to the garage and they used tools to carve pumpkins, we were going to repeat this last fall, but we were in the middle of a move. The kids fully expect grandpa to do it again.
I have found that as my children are all teenagers now, that a lot of our traditions are evolving. They still love the little kids stuff (I don’t think they ever really want to out grow some things), but they are now old enough to actively participate in new experiences.
One of our favorites is to celebrate other cultures holidays. My family loves to try foods from other cultures. So, we always celebrate St. Patricks day with a traditional meal even though we are not the least bit Irish. We celebrated Fat Tuesday with Cajun food even though we are LDS.
Theme dinners also fall into this category. Sometimes we will just choose a country and make a Sunday dinner of all foods from that country. Other theme dinners have been things like Disneyland food, or food based on a book or movie.
We also celebrate some of the obscure “official days.” For instance today is National Eggs Benedict day. We will be having Eggs Benedict for dinner. We like to celebrate Pi day March 14th by eating pizza with pie for dessert. I am working on a pirate dinner (probably Caribbean food,) complete with eye patches, for National Talk Like a Pirate day in September.
If any of the kids finds out about a day worth celebrating we try to accommodate them. Sometimes it is a day or two late, but still lots of fun.
I love this! So many great suggestions. Here are some of our faves:
Special Plate: have a special cute plate to use for birthday’s, celebrations or any day. Before anyone can begin eating they must give a compliment to the honorary person with the special plate.
Donuts for dinner: my kids think I am awesome when we do this. Its just a fun way to celebrate the last day of school or some other accomplishment.
Good Kids Day: Whenever we think its appropriate we celebrate kids day. Maybe its because they got good grades, are being obedient at home, stood up for something that is right, or maybe they had a rough week and need cheering up. We do kids day to celebrate the kids. We decorate like we would for a birthday party, have a fun meal and do a family activity afterwards. Our kids really appreciate it when we celebrate them.
Right now my husband and I are still pretty much newlyweds (7 months!) so we’re still looking for traditions to start and to keep.
We’re trying to start having Family Home Evening weekly.
(Currently we do a once a month with all the family at rotating homes…so this month at my parents’, next month at my sister’s, etc.)
I’m thinking we’ll continue by having rotating theme’s each week and month.
Example: April is our “Spring into Clean” month, so all month we’ll be focused on cleaning/reorganizing our home. The last week of the month is Provident Living themed, so we’ll have a lesson on preparing for disaster, practice our fire drill/evacuation plans, and work on reorganizing (and replacing needed items) 72 hr kits or bug-out bags for us and our cat.
Date night is something we just decided/started to do. We pick a day or night at the beginning of the week and block it off. No phone, no facebook, no errands or last-minute-have-to-clean-this. It’s couple time!
We’re on a tight budget so we don’t go out much. Mostly we’ll cook a nice meal together, wash the dishes together, and then take a long walk, or cuddle together and watch a movie we both want to see. Or play a game together on the Wii.
Every couple months or so we actually go out for a meal or a movie.
My family always gets together on the big holidays (Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Epiphany) and we have a big dinner. Now that us kids are all grown up and each have their own homes we’ve begun rotating each holiday. The host picks the menu (within reason that is!) and makes the meat and vegetarian main dish. One person gets to make potatoes/veggies and relishes, another does rolls or bread and salad, and someone else does dessert. It works great!
Another family tradition is that the focus of Easter and Christmas has always been Christ and family togetherness.
On Christmas Eve we drive around looking at Christmas lights, (sometimes some caroling at friends homes too,) we attend a Midnight Mass or Christmas Eve caroling service, and then return home to ice previously baked Christmas cookies, drink cocoa, and read Luke 2 together.
Christmas Day starts the Twelve Days of Christmas with a little gift and fruit in each family members stocking. We read The Christmas Carol together, watch our favorite Christmas movies, and bake more Christmas cookies. (We always wait til Epiphany to open gifts to keep the focus of Christ on Christmas Day.)
My husband’s family always decorated the tree together on Christmas Eve and opened one gift from “Santa”…always pajamas for Christmas morning present opening! That’s a tradition I’d like to use in our future family.
Favorite movies: The Nativity Story, Dr. Suess’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Muppets Christmas Carol, The Santa Clause, Babes in Toyland, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Miracle on 34th Street, White Christmas, and all the traditional Christmas cartoons.
For Easter Sunday we always had candy baskets but my mom did this awesome scripture hunt for the baskets every few years. She’d hide the baskets and then plant clues with rhymes and scripture references that when unraveled led to the treats! It’s another tradition I’ll be using with my future family 🙂
A weird tradition we have is during tornado or severe weather warnings we play Parcheesi by lamplight (or candle light). The competition helps keep your mind off the scary weather and the candle/lamp light is weirdly calming.
As a couple we’ve started a few holiday traditions and celebrations together:
St. Patrick’s Day we make corned beef and traditional Irish food (my husband is Irish and I’m 1/4).
Dr. Suess Day we eat green eggs and ham and then go to the library or read to our nieces/nephews.
Halloween we carve pumpkins together while watching our favorite Halloween movies and then pass candy out to trick-or-treaters.
Passover isn’t something my family or his celebrated but I think it’s a wonderful way and opportunity to share the story of Moses and the exodus from Egypt even though we’re LDS. This year we watched The Prince of Egypt and read the story in Exodus. Next year I’ll be making a traditional meal and a Seder plate.
Every year since we started dating, on our first date anniversary we have a picnic with fried chicken sandwiches (replicating that first date meal!). We’ve had them inside on the living room rug, outside on a park bench, even in his car when caught in the rain!
Traditions I want to start now:
I want to steal that idea for an ancestor day! My husband lost his father at 19 and I would love our future children to grow up “knowing” their grandfather.
Note: I know it seems like we watch a lot of movies for holidays but the tv was never on except weekends and evenings after dinner in my parents home. A tradition I’m trying to implement in my home now. 🙂
Your link “when you shared” is not working 🙁 Even on the original post where it links to “your comments here and here” both those links go to page not found. I would love to see these comments as I want to build traditions in my family and I get stuck on what things I can do. Please help!
Thank you!! Love your blog!!