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My Family Traditions

Decent Essays

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

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