Mary Lou and I didn’t set out to establish family traditions, but we ended up with our fair share of them. I suppose it started with Christmas. Mary Lou and I blended the best (in our opinions) of our parent’s family Christmas traditions and started a few of our own.
My family, growing up, always opened our presents from each other on Christmas Eve, leaving Santa’s gifts for Christmas morning. This allowed us to travel to Great-Grandmother Aldrich’s house on Christmas Day. If we didn’t go there, we had the day to play with our new gifts.
Mary Lou’s family always opened their gifts on Christmas morning. Mary Lou felt like it was cheating to open presents early (on Christmas Eve). Our combined tradition evolved where we opened one gift on Christmas Eve, and we also had a gift exchange. Everyone who participated in the gift exchange would put a wrapped gift in a pile. After drawing names for the order, the first person would open a gift. The next person could either open a new gift or take any open gift. If someone took your opened gift, you would then either take an opened gift from someone or open a new one. This continues until everyone has a gift. Then, the first gift opener has a chance to exchange their gift with anyone else, ending the exchange.
Another Christmas tradition involves a Christmas performance. All children who have never married must be a part of the performance. The two oldest children act as the MC’s and organize the event. In the beginning, the children would perform what they learned for their school Christmas performances. As schools became more PC and started to eliminate these school Christmas shows, the kids had to get more creative. It is fun to look back at the different MC pairs and the flavor they gave to the shows. Some of the later shows involved playing guitars and pianos as part of the performances, as well as some pretty good goofy jokes between performances.
A tradition, if you can call it that, has been writing a Christmas letter each year. We’ve been pretty faithful and have put out a letter ever since we’ve been married. It started out with Mary Lou writing individual Christmas letters to our friends and family. I got involved when I felt it was too cumbersome to write each letter, while basically saying the same thing. Our letter consists of a family picture and a narrative recounting the previous year. We didn’t want the letter to be the typical Christmas letter of bragging about our children, so we tried to make the letters a little interesting. One year, when our youngest child, Jesse was in 11th or 12th grade, Mary Lou and I happened to be super busy and was struggling to write that year’s letter. I was able to get Jesse to write that year’s letter. It was well written and had Jesse’s brand of humor in it. It was a hit with that year’s recipients and it set the bar higher for future letters.
There is another Christmas tradition that has survived the test of time. After all the presents have been opened, there is a huge pile of Christmas wrap and boxes that get gathered and taken outside to be burned. It started with my brother-in-law, Ed, and me. We took the trash up onto the hill above the house and burned it. While we were burning the Christmas wrap and boxes and ribbons, we also burned another substance. We would save some of the best weed we had from that year to smoke on this occasion. We knew we had established a tradition when, one year our father-in-law joined us. I am now joined by some of our oldest grandchildren, so I know it has become a tradition.
Before each of our children married, we made sure to have a talk about family obligations regarding Christmas and Thanksgiving with them and their future mates. We understood that we had to share either Christmas or Thanksgiving with their other family, and we felt it was unfair to just choose one and say it is ours. Our solution is to alternate which holiday we get everyone. So one year our whole family gathers for Christmas, and the next year, we all gather for Thanksgiving. The other families have all accepted this arrangement, and this has worked well over the years. This ensures that we all get together for one of the holidays each year.
A Thanksgiving tradition we have was created by our oldest child, Cori. After we are all seated and have our meals in front of us, we go around the table, and we each say something that gives us thanks. The only rules are you can’t say “family” because that is a given, and that you can’t repeat something that was already mentioned. Everyone, no matter the age, participates. At first some of us moaned when Cori would start the “sharing of thanks,” but we have all learned to appreciate the exercise. It is a nice family bonding experience.
For many years, we would have a family basketball game on Christmas or soon after. We have long-established teams where team members have been drafted at their births. We would walk to a near-by elementary school and play half-court on an outdoor basketball court. There were many hard-fought games, but I am personally embarrassed by a foul I committed against my oldest son, Todd. Todd was probably 6”4” and weighed over 220 pounds at the time. I was 6’3” in my prime, but I probably shrunk to about 6’2” and weighed about 185 pounds at this time. I was guarding Todd and committed what would be called a “flagrant foul.” Unfortunately, I caught him unawares and he went flying. To make it worse, his wife, Ana caught the whole thing on her video camera!
Speaking of Todd, he created a family tradition that we all follow to this day. We were never huggers until Todd started to insist on hugs whenever anyone arrived or left. We now all hug each other as a part of greetings and goodbyes. I think our family is now known for being a hugging family. It is quite a process when a family decides to leave a family gathering. You have to allow five or ten minutes for the goodbye process. As much as I resisted the hugging in the beginning, I think it has been a very good thing. It forces us to acknowledge each other and helps us to bond as a family.
Another holiday tradition is our Easter egg hunt and hike. When we are together, or even independently, we have an Easter egg hunt. First the adults hide the eggs, and the children hunt for them. We then reverse it, and the kids hide the eggs and the adults look for them. We always count how many we find, because we are a competitive family. Sometimes, the dogs find as many as the kids. After the hunt we would go on a hike. At first, we just felt like gong on a walk after all the eggs and candy. Now it is just part of the day. When the kids were growing up with us, we would eat the Easter eggs as a part of our dinner. Mary Lou would make a white sauce and put the cut up hard-boiled eggs into it. We would then put this on toast or biscuits. When we were first married, we thought we would have healthy treats for Easter and eating the Easter eggs for dinner was a part of this. It wasn’t very long, though, when chocolate bunnies and candy corn and chocolate footballs worked their way into the Easter baskets. It didn’t help either, that the Easter bunny always left Easter candy all around the house to be discovered.
We have always gone backpacking with our children ever since they were old enough to walk on their own. We took Cori, who was six, and Todd, who was three, into the Marble Mountain wilderness for a day hike. Cori walked the whole way and had a great time. Todd walked the three miles in. We had lunch, and played for awhile before returning. On the way back, Todd started to walk, but soon it was apparent I needed to carry him. He was asleep within a few feet of me carrying him down the hill. At the end of the downhill, we stopped at a creek and refreshed ourselves. Soon, Todd was up and ready to walk the rest of the two miles out. We realized then that kids can walk a long ways, as long as you go at their pace and stop when they stop and go when they go. As long as you guide that endless energy, they can go anywhere! As time went on, we started to plan our backpacking trips for at least the 4th of July. It was nice, because the trails and lakes had far fewer people camping then. Our “fireworks” consisted of the kids getting a stick to burn in the fire, and then swishing the coal end of the stick back and forth to get red trailers of fire. Very exciting, especially when a six-year-old is waving a fire brand back and forth in front of your face! The Fourth of July continued to be a family gathering time when we started to go up to Gearhart, Oregon, to celebrate Independence Day with the Moss family. Mary Lou’s mother was getting up in age, so we thought we should visit her then while we could. Decades later, we are still making the trip north to see her. As I write this in October of 2021, she is just eight months from her 100th birthday. Our yearly Fourth of July visits to Gearhart have now become a tradition.
When I retired, I took a two year course at a local community college and learned how to make stringed musical instruments. I don’t know if this is a tradition, but I have put it out there in my family that anyone who shows an interest in playing the guitar or ukulele will get a hand-made guitar or ukulele from me. I have so far made and given away an electric guitar and six ukuleles. While I was taking my classes, I learned of a distant relative that built crazy looking ukuleles in the 1950’s and 60’s. The name of his company is “Swagerty Specialties Company, Artistry in Woods.” My son, and now his daughter, have made their own box guitars and ukuleles, so maybe the tradition of building stringed instruments is strong in this family.
It is amazing to me how many family traditions we have. I guess when something is successful, you want to repeat it. We are blessed to enjoy each other, so we seem to have fun each time we get together. Maybe that is why we have so many traditions.
Brian
I love family traditions. Family traditions can be very important. One of our family traditions was when each of our five children was born we would have a special ceremony with the children we had at the time and light a candle. The candle would signify our family and the love we had for one another. We would light another candle from the first candle to symbolize that our love for each other didn’t diminish when someone new came along, it grew. We had enough love for everyone and our love like the light of the candle just spread.
We have a lot of traditions that we follow at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Now that our children are all grown up and have families of their own we alternate having everyone come to our house for Thanksgiving and Christmas. One year we get everyone for Thanksgiving and then the next year we’ll have everyone for Christmas. This way everyone gets to be together at least once a year. Almost every year for Thanksgiving when our children were growing up, we would go to Brian’s family gathering in Stockton, California. My Swagerty Thanksgivings started with several members of my father-in-law’s family and was held at my in-laws home for several years. As the years went on and people passed away our Thanksgivings got smaller and it was just my husband (Brian)’s parents, his sisters and their families who gathered together. Now we are holding Thanksgiving at our house. We are happy to be able to have extended members of the Swagerty family come as well as our own children and their families. Another tradition I have at Thanksgiving and Christmas is that I always make fruit salad and lentil roast for the dinners. I’ve been doing this ever since I was first married and we became vegetarians. My next door neighbor in Ashland, Oregon gave me the recipe. I added a few ingredients to the recipe and we’ve been eating it every year since 1971. I grew up always having fruit salad at special meals. It’s one of my favorite things to eat. I want to be able to eat it, so I always make it.
We would always go to my parent’s home in Toledo, Oregon for Christmas. I feel very lucky that we were able to make the eight hour drive in December over the mountain passes every year. I was able to spend Christmas in Toledo for 55 years! Now we get to have our children and their families come to our house ever other year. Our Christmas traditions include everyone who wants to, can open one gift on Christmas Eve. The unmarried members of the family put on a Christmas program for the rest of the family, with the two oldest acting as the MC’s. We also, play a game made up by one of our family groups. Each of our children has their own family who make up the group. The family who wins gets the “major award”, a replica of the lamp from the movie, Christmas Story and they get to make up the game for the next year. This past year, 2020, the world was in the midst of the corona virus and we weren’t able to get together. We got together electronically through the Zoom app and played the game! Another Christmas tradition is that Brian always reads The Night Before Christmas to our children when they went to bed. Now he reads it to our grandchildren. Last year (2020), he read it to the grandchildren on Zoom.
When the children were growing up for years and years every Sunday morning I made blueberry pancakes. Now when the children are visiting I usually always make blueberry pancakes for one of our breakfasts, usually on a Sunday.
Brian always sleeps on the left side of the bed. This was a shock to me when we were first married. I liked to switch it up and sleep on different sides of the bed. I’ve been confined to the right side of the bed since May 16, 1970. It’s ok, not a big deal just a bit of a shock at first realizing my days of sleeping on the left side of the bed were over.
On the Fourth of July for years and years when the children were growing up we always went backpacking with our friends. Now that the children are grown up and have families of their own, as many of us that can go, go to Gearhart, Oregon for the Fourth. My Mom and my sister and her family live there. It gives us all a chance to reconnect. After years of backpacking and never seeing fireworks now we go to the beach and are in the midst of fireworks going off over our heads!
We always dye Easter eggs at Easter. The adults hide the eggs for the children and then the children hide the eggs for the adults. The dogs usually end up with one or two of the eggs. We almost always go on a hike somewhere with the family. For our Easter dinner when the children were growing up, I’d make a white sauce and put it over the hard boiled Easter eggs and then put the sauce with the eggs in it over toast.
At Halloween we’d always go trick or treating to the same neighborhood on the west side of Redding, CA. We’d always end our trick or treating at Martha Tinkler’s home. She lived near the neighborhood, was a friend and coworker of Brian’s and she always had delicious home-made goodies waiting for us.
My Mom and Dad had a tradition of betting each other on the World Series games. Dad would always let Mom choose the team she wanted. They’d start out betting 10 cents and then the next day it would double to 20 cents by the 7th game if the series went that far the winner would get $6.40! I always thought that was pretty neat and made me appreciate the World Series.
I made the children’s lunches every day when they were growing up and going to school. They always got a sandwich, fruit and three cookies. I am a creature of habit and find myself doing the same things over and over again. It’s kind of crazy how a lot of these things became our traditions. I think it’s nice to have traditions that carry on throughout the years and help to define our family.
Mary Lou
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 