Homeschool Coffee Break: Twenty-Six Lists - It's a Family Tradition

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Welcome to Twenty Six Lists! I hope you'll join me in using some fun List prompts for writing. Every other week I'll share a writing prompt and invite you to link up your list, and wherever the prompt takes you. You may want to simply make a list of five or ten items that answer the prompt, or you may elaborate on the items in your list, or even write an entire article. Be creative, and have fun!

This is a list that I've done before and it was one of my favorites to write about, so I'm repeating a lot of what I said about four years ago. Many people aren't sure they actually have family traditions, or assume their traditions are really no different from what everyone else does. But really, any custom that we carry over from our family or make a part of our family because it's what we want our family to become - that's a family tradition. These can be elaborate customs we have for celebrating holidays or simple everyday rituals like bedtime stories or a special table grace.

When I first wrote this list, I organized the things I considered our family traditions around the occasions that the traditions were related to, so I'll do the same here. And I can't wait to read about other family traditions!

List #16 - Family Traditions

Birthdays

at some point during my later teen years (I think), my siblings and I started purposely butchering the "Happy Birthday" song for each other. That has become a tradition now for our entire extended family - my parents and my siblings and their families. So we phone the birthday celebrant, gather around the phone and put it on speaker (or the newest iteration - we make a video and send it), and the whole family attempts to sing the most horrendous version of the birthday song that we can. We do awful "harmonies" and sing at all different tempos and times, and try to make each rendition more hilariously ugly than the last. This very silly tradition seems to be a favorite and keeps us all laughing!
we haven't hosted a whole lot of traditional kid birthday parties, but I always allowed the birthday kid to request their birthday dinner and the kind of birthday cake (or dessert) they'd like. My mom used to do that for me and my siblings. When the birthday person is ME, the family takes me out for dinner. As the kids got older, there were more parties, but they were very low-key - just invite their friends over to hang out.
We celebrated Thirteen as a milestone birthday. That was the age at which each of our kids was first allowed to drink coffee, and we made a huge deal out of it! Coffee itself is actually quite a tradition in our family, with all of us being quite dedicated to drinking it, with the exception of our daughter.

52 Lists #38 - Our Family Traditions on Homeschool Coffee Break @ kympossibleblog.blogspot.com

Graduation and School Occasions

I always tried to take first day of school pictures. There were varying degrees of cooperation with this over the years! Wonder what this year's First Day picture of Kennady will be like, since her college classes will probably be all/mostly online?
when each of the kids graduated high school, they were allowed to choose the family's summer vacation (within certain budgetary guidelines, of course! See my posts: The Summer of Landon and Homeschool Highlights - The Week With Conservatories, which is a summary of the Summer of Kennady).

Thanksgiving and Christmas

we celebrate Thanksgiving on both the Canadian and the US dates, and usually there's a deep-fried turkey on at least one of those occasions.
we start decorating for Christmas on Thanksgiving Day
on the day before Thanksgiving, my hubby's hockey league hosts "Gobble In the Lot" which is a tailgate/potluck style Thanksgiving dinner for the players and their families.
another tradition that we have carried on from my childhood is a family picture at the dinner table - but with a goofy twist! So when I was a kid my mom tried to get pictures of everyone at the dinner table on holidays, and we kids would always try to "ruin" it by freezing with a forkful of food halfway into our mouth, or with a drinking glass to our lips. At first Mom was frustrated with us, but the pictures turned out so funny that it became a traditional holiday picture pose, and now my own family does it as well, at Thanksgiving and at Christmas, and often at other family dinner celebrations too.

my husband likes to do puzzles, so there's always a Christmas-themed puzzle on the go throughout the holiday season. I'm lousy at puzzles but at some point even I will try to fit a piece or two.
we watch A Christmas Carol (the Alistair Sim version) on Christmas Eve, and It's A Wonderful Life on Christmas Day. And we love to watch Christmas movies and specials together throughout the season, which is special because we don't watch TV as a family much during the rest of the year. This tradition is getting harder to keep up with everyone growing up and having busy social calendars, but we try!
I insist on keeping the tree up until Epiphany.
Several years ago, we intentionally planned a new tradition, and started our Family 12 Days of Christmas (See my posts: Our Family's Twelve Days of Christmas and On the Twelfth Day of Christmas). This is another one that is a little harder now that the kids are all young adults, but we do try to do something from everyone's holiday bucket list during the season. One meal someone will always ask for is Waffles and Awesome Sauce!

Other Traditions

we have a family Stanley Cup play-off pool.
we all enjoy music and often attend concerts together. Most years we attend a concert festival like Kingdom Bound (years ago - that was where this tradition started!) or UpRise (our current favorite and we're all very sad that it's cancelled for this year) all together. The past two years we went to see Trans Siberian Orchestra as a family during the Christmas season, so that may become something of a standing tradition.
since four of us are the core of a worship band at our church, I guess it's fair to say that playing together as a band is a family tradition.
family dinner is the standard here. Believe it or not, even with four young adults living here, all with their own work and school schedules and social lives, we eat dinner together as a family at last half the time. Because this is a daily (or almost) custom, it is a simple thing that I cherish and that I hope my kids continue as they build their own families. Gathering around the table as a family is, in my opinion, one of the best family bonding experiences we can offer. We welcome "auxiliary kids" to our family mealtimes regularly and consider them part of the family. And I'll add here that the simple "Bye! Love you!" that one of our auxiliary kids started calling out when he headed out the door has become the standard parting blessing between all of us too.

We build deep and loving family relationships by doing simple things together, like family dinner and family home evening and by just having fun together. ~Dieter F. Uchtdorf

See my original list of family traditions here: 52 Lists #38 - Our Family Traditions

What are your family traditions? Link up or tell me in the comments!

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Bonus List - Upcoming in Twenty Six Lists so you can think ahead!

August 20 - Best Apps or Websites

September 3 - The Jobs You've Had

September 17 - Simple Pleasures

October 1 - Fall Activities

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