My family has a lot of different traditions, but one stands out more than the others. The holiday I am talking about is Christmas. My family has always celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve. We start the celebration by going to our church’s Christmas Eve service. During this service, we sing Christmas songs and watch a video of the first Christmas. After the service, all my family goes to my grandparents’ house to open presents and have supper. The meal is different than most Christmas meals. All of my family members bring an appetizer instead of bringing a main dish. One of my cousins is Haitian and one of uncles is Italian, so we have a lot of different cultures represented. My favorite is my uncle’s meatballs. Once we eat we have two different places to sit. One is called the kids’ room and the other is the adult room. You are supposed to sit at the kids’ table if you are not married. Once we have finished eating we all head to the living room to open presents. Before we open presents, one of my younger cousins reads a Christmas poem. A different cousin reads the story every year.
When it is finally time to open presents, we always open them one person at a time and always go from youngest to oldest. We go one at a time because my grandma likes to see what everyone got. Once everyone has opened their presents, my grandma tries to recruit some people to play bingo. She likes being the person who calls out the numbers because that’s what her mom always did. We have been doing all of these things for as long as I can remember. My dad says they have been doing things this way for the last 40 years. My grandma is the main person that has been carrying on these traditions.
I would say my grandmother is the glue to our family so everyone follows her lead. I think that my other family members are so used to doing these things that they will continue to do them in the future. I would say I am a participant in this tradition. I am one of the younger grandchildren, so I do not say much or try to change anything. If I did offer a new idea, I do think my grandma would consider it. My whole family takes part in this tradition. I have six aunts and uncles and twelve cousins, so my family is pretty big. Everyone
At thanksgiving I celebrate it with my grandparents and aunts and uncles because they always love to hang out at thanksgiving. We would all sit at a big dinner table with all the food on it and we would have to at least get a little bit of everything.Tara’s family comes to their house and they all sit at a big dinner table to celebrate their thanksgiving.Brian’s family does the same at his house,but they don’t really sit at a big dinner table because not all of his family comes so they eat at a little smaller one for
One such tradition is not socializing with neighbors but only talking to her sisters or other family members. Both of my great-grandparents came from a large family and so the Sunday was always considered family day. It was nothing to see a yard off of kids playing or see the men playing a game of horseshoes as the women would set out the dinner. However, it was the winter time that holds the most memories for my mother. It was then that the families would all gather at the family pond and go ice skating and the men would build a big fire and everyone would stand around and drink hot chocolate. One such tradition in the winter time was right after the first snow fall of the season. We would take a big mixing bowl and go out and fill that bowl as full as we could. Then she would go in and make a big bowl of snow ice cream (Food in Every County). One bright sunny day, our family was going to Lake Pomme De Terre for a family picnic. Like Shteyngart, I was all set for some grilled hamburgers or hot dogs or even some fried chicken. However, that was not meant to be. Like Shteyngart, is aw food being set out that was I saw food that was familiar to my great-grandmother’s culture. Instead of grilling hamburgers, she set out chicken and noodles, mashed potatoes, green beans and for dessert a shoofly pie, sugar cookies, and schnitz pie, which is made with dried apples (Food in Every County). My mother laughed when she saw my face because later my
In my culture traditions are very important in your life. For example, one tradition that has been in my family for many years is going to the park and celebrating Easter with the family. We barbecue, play sports, and then at the end of the day we have an Easter egg hunt for the young children. Another tradition of ours is to do a Christmas Eve dinner at my great grandma’s house. During this event you are with your relatives and close friends for dinner and for a social gathering until the early morning of Christmas day. Many of our traditions revolve around getting all of our family together and spending time with them.
Every year on Thanksgiving and Christmas my whole family gathers at my great- great aunt’s house for dinner. This annual tradition has taken place since my grandma was a little girl. We join hands around the table, which is
Someone culture can identify who they are as a person. not everyone have the same culture it all depends on the Family. My culture is mixed with both, Mexican and African-American. The way my family and I do things can be extremely different compared to others. For the fact that my culture is mixed with Mexican and African-American, we do things unusual compared to other families. My family eat lots of tacos and fried chicken most of the time. It all depends on who is cooking, weather is my mom or my step dad. My mother is African-American and my step-dad is Mexican American . Whenever my mom do cook we mostly eat soul food, while my step dad mostly cook Mexican food or BBQ. My family biggest tradition will be Thanksgiving because, we
Every family is different whether it’s their race or culture and every family has different celebrations and traditions this is what makes different families unique.
According to the book “Ritual for Our Times” which was co-authored by Janine Roberts, All human cultures across time have created rituals, bringing family members together to celebrate, welcome, honor, or mourn.
Holidays in my family are celebrated in a very unique way. My grandmother always manages the holidays we celebrate, from Christmas, to Easter. For Christmas, we actually celebrate on Christmas Eve. My mother, father, and I go to my grandparents house on Christmas Eve to eat a big Christmas dinner, open each other's presents, and celebrate together. Christmas Eve is really fun and memorable every time, we all enjoy it a lot more than actual Christmas day. When Christmas day arrives the next day, it is me, my mother, and my father. We all wake up fairly early, usually out of excitement but sometimes some of us need to be manually woken up,
We all have family traditions, some of which we take pride in, some of which we dread and despise but, whether you know it or not they are what make us who we are. One of my favorite traditions that I can truly say I’m passionate for would have to be Thanksgiving dinner. The dinner for the holiday goes by in a blink of an eye because of all the enjoyment. However, the preparations that lead up to the day are long and prestigious even though they are what make the dinner so great. Since the holiday comes up before we know it, we get started as soon as the year hits mid fall.
One of these is that on Thanksgiving everybody comes together to my parents’ house in New Jersey for a huge feast. On Christmas only my mother and the children (me and my brother) travel to Illinois to spend a week with my grandparents. On New Years Eve we all get together at my parents’ house in New Jersey and toast to the New Year with champagne and apple cider. During Labor Day weekend all of my family travels to South Jersey to my grandfathers’ condo. We usually spend all of our time on the beach and barbequing, except on Sunday when we go to church. After all, my grandfather is a minister. One of our biggest family traditions is going back to Puerto Rico. Every year my mother and I travel back to Puerto Rico for a portion of our summer vacation. Now that I am older I travel there more often and stay there much longer. My father never joins because he doesn’t like my mothers side of the father too much and he thinks that we when we speak Spanish we are all plotting against him. Of course that’s not true though. My bother doesn’t speak Spanish so he doesn’t like to go either. I guess that tradition is one that belongs solely to my mother and I.
Since my family lived so close together, we had many family traditions that remain important. We gather for nearly every holiday for a meal and routine. For Easter every year, we have an Easter egg hunt and dinner at my grandmother’s house. For Christmas Eve, we always went to my great-grandparents house and had dinner and exchanged gifts. For Christmas, we celebrated at home, and then went to my grandmother's for breakfast with our cousins. The importance of all of the holidays we celebrated was that no matter what was going on in our lives,
My parents immigrated to this country from Mexico many years ago and they brought along their culture, which makes up a major part of my identity. I am Mexican American and the stereotype that we have a lot of members in our family is true, but it doesn’t tell the full story. I have a lot of aunts, uncles, and cousins and I am very grateful for them because each and every one of them has taught me important lessons that have shaped who I am today. When all of us are together we stand out because there are so many of us and we can also get very loud. We always know how to have a good time and we’re also the life of every party. Every Christmas eve we all get together at one of our aunt’s houses and celebrate the birth of Jesus. We set up a nacimiento, or Nativity set, made of figurines that represent the ones who were present during his birth. We cover the set with hay, surround it with little figurines of animals and drape Christmas lights all around the set. Then we do a rosary and commemorate the ones in our family who have passed or could not make it. During these celebrations we always have tamales, menudo, and hot chocolate. These foods are very important to us because most of the women in the family get together the day before the event and prepare the food. In this time we all have time to catch up on the latest gossip and drama that is going on in our lives. One thing that I have recently been interested in again is the traditional Aztec dances and rituals. When I was younger I used to participate in the dances with my mother but we had to quit due to the long and late hours of practice. I have started to go to retreats where we spend most of our nights dancing and praying to temples and different gods. Doing this makes me feel more connected to my ancestral roots and i feel a sense of pride.
Eating brings people closer together everyday, and for everyone, there are important memories that have been created because of food. Whether it’s a formal dinner, or an informal picnic, there will always be special bonds between people because food was involved. We need to have traditions with food because they form and strengthen the bonds between us.
As a child, my family would celebrate every holiday with grandeur, especially Christmas. We have specific traditions and rituals that we carry out during the season, but the most important of our traditions is what we do on Christmas morning. Our rituals and traditions reflect our values as well as my own of family, unity, and tradition. The morning of the holiday my mother has always woken my brother and I, and then brought us to our dad so we could all walk down to the family room. As we gather in the family room around our tree and presents, my mom serves us each a piece of her Christmas casserole, saved for this special morning. Following our video-taped walk down to our presents, my brother, mother, father, and I open one gift from each other and the first thing in our stocking. After this ritual, my brother and I would go downstairs to our in-law suite where our grandmother lived, to wake up our Mimi and pull her upstairs so that we could finish opening presents and have hot chocolate with our entire family. One Christmas morning
As the family grew older, every one separated and as my cousins and I got older and had our own children the holidays at grandmothers house have faded away. No one even goes to grandmothers house for Thanksgiving or Christmas, and there are no more Easter Sunday egg