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.
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 