This month’s article on Starting the Conversation is all
about family traditions – particularly those around the holidays. I mentioned in the article that my nephew Patrick quoted the musical Fiddler on the Roof regarding the importance of tradition. Here is the
clip from www.youtube.com if you are not
familiar with the scene or if you would just like to enjoy it again.
Traditions, both old and new, are very important to me and my
family especially those that came with my family from the old country, those
that we have shared from childhood and even the new ones we have introduced –
of course some attempts at new traditions take-off better than others. For
example, we always get together to decorate Christmas cookies for as long as
any of us can remember but one year I thought I’d change it up and we would do
gingerbread houses instead – oops. My
icing was too soft, we didn’t have enough icing to go around so we started
using peanut butter, the candies kept slipping off the roof – all-in-all it was
a disaster. Fortunately my brother Michael kept it fun by having his house land
on the Wicked Witch of the East and used red M&M’s for the ruby slippers.
So even though our attempt at a new family tradition never
went beyond the first try, the point of spending time with family and creating
memories that last a lifetime was still golden. So after that I just went back
to having us all decorate Christmas cookies but of course, if first you don’t
succeed…so who knows maybe we’ll try again.
What family traditions do you enjoy in your family? Have you
ever had one go horribly wrong like my gingerbread houses?
