Finding your Holiday Traditions
Over the last month or so I have heard the question “what holiday traditions do you have” over and over. And my response was always the same. We don’t have any. Kind of sad huh. Yeah I thought so to. But then I realized (about five seconds ago) we actually do have traditions. They aren’t anything big but still it’s something we always did when we would go to my parents house and there’s no reason for me not to continue them with my little family.
For Hanukkah we would go to my parents. Occasionally it would be at my Aunt and Uncles but 9 times out of 10 it would be hosted by my Mom. It was the same food every year and while some might complain I think it’s perfect that way. The first course consists of gefilte fish served on a plate with a piece of lettuce, two or three cherry tomatoes and a nice healthy scoop of chopped liver and matzo ball soup. My favorite way to eat my gefilte fish is smothered in horseradish sauce and then I would take a piece of matzo and smother that with chopped liver and some more horseradish sauce. Can you tell I like horseradish sauce? Oh yeah and only the red kind. Then we would have our second course, aka the main course. Brisket, kugel (either potato or noodle), latkes (another one of my favorites) served with either apple sauce or sour cream, and a vegetable. The last few years I had been in charge of the vegetable and I would make my famous green beans.
Food wise I didn’t do anything this year. I’ve been a little bit homesick (shhh don’t tell my husband or my mom) and Brisket is insanely expensive out here, like 40 bucks for a cut of meat, I don’t even spend that much on a pair of pants! And it was the kids last week of school so while we have been doing the candles every night I just didn’t make a big dinner.
For Christmas the kids would wake up and we would all pile in the car and head over to my parents house in our pj’s. It would immediately be gift time because it’s just cruel to make your kids sit and wait while there is a room filled with gifts that they are literally drooling over. After gifts my mom and I would make breakfast. It would always consist of eggs of some kind. We usually rotated between matzo and eggs or eggs smothered in cheese and salsa. And the best part was the cinnamon rolls. Nothing special because this was all about having a relaxing day so we would just make Pillsbury cinnamon rolls. There would also be bacon, sausage and those little square hash browns. I don’t know why but those things are always so dang good.
When I went grocery shopping and automatically went for the rolls, sausage and bacon it didn’t even occur to me that this is a tradition. I was second nature to pick all of these things up. And the same goes for our Christmas dinner. I picked up a ham, potatoes, a ton of green beans, crescent rolls and mustard. That’s just about the same thing my mom would prepare, right now to the mustard which will be mixed with brown sugar for us me to dip my ham in.
So even though this year we wont be spending the Holidays with my family we will be staying in our pj’s all day, grubbing on some good food (even thinking of making some latkes along with mashed potatoes tomorrow), taking a lot of photos, spending all day putting together toys, getting frustrated at all those little ties and screws in said toys and I am sure laughing at each other. If that isn’t some form of tradition then I don’t know what it is.
Happy Holidays to everyone, I hope your holiday season is blessed with love, laughter & light.