There are many Thanksgiving and Christmas traditions that I hold close to my heart. Although, this holiday season is a little different. A few things have changed in the past year that has affected the way my family celebrates our holidays. For instance, this year my mom had Thanksgiving at our house, which hasn’t happened in a while because it is usually at my grandma's. Also, every year my family plays football together, but this time three of my cousins didn’t come and it started to rain so nobody wanted to play. One of those cousins recently joined the Military and he left in October and won’t be back until April. It was weird not seeing his face at the dinner table. On Christmas Eve, everyone in my family goes to grandma’s house. She always cooks the seven-fish dinner because we all have some Italian blood in us. Unfortunately, Christmas traditions will be broken this year as well. My aunt Linda and cousin will be visiting my military cousin for Christmas in Texas so they won’t be around. I understand that things change as people grow up and it’s just a part of life. It is expected that traditions will be broken as time goes on.
I think new traditions are starting to emerge. Instead of playing football this year, we played board games. Personally, I like board games better because I suck at playing football and I always gets tackled. Scattergories is a much safer and easier game. Traditions are meant to be passed on from generation to generation but, it might be time to start new ones.
Luckily, a few traditions stayed the same this year. For Thanksgiving, we always eat antipasti as an appetizer in the afternoon and we eat turkey around four or five o’clock. There is always Christmas or holiday music playing while we cook and eat. The Saturday after Thanksgiving my mom likes to cook again! Her, my aunt Mandy and their friend Annie like to bake cookies all day long. They bake around 30 different types of cookies and then share them all. My mom freezes ours and takes them out when we have company. For Christmas presents, my cousins and I do a secret Santa to exchange gifts. Although, it is never really a secret. My grandparents have a fake Christmas tree that they put up every year and put presents under it for the kids. We always eat first and then help clean up the tables. There are 18 people so everyone helps to make the clean-up go quick. There are not a lot of holiday traditions but the ones that we do make my family who we are. Some traditions can never be broken.
