Weird family traditions

[Redhart]

It was not unusual for the extended family to congregate at one house on Christmas Eve each year. It has been tradition that if you go to the family get-together, "The Game" was played.

Everyone brings a wrapped present worth no more than $5.00. It could be a serious, nice present or a gag gift.

All the presents are put in the center of the family and a hat is passed around with numbers. These numbers represent your order of pick.

The first person chooses one present from the pile and unwraps it.

The second person can either take the first person's present, or choose another from the pile.

If he/she chooses the first person's present, the first person can choose a new, unwrapped present from the pile.

The third person, again, can choose to take a present from one of the first two--or select a new present from the pile. If he/she chooses to take one of the first two's presents, then the one who's present was taken can take another's present (except the one he/she just lost) or choose another from the pile.

The game ends when the last person has taken his/her turn and all the presents in the middle are gone.

This game can go on for an hour or so if you have a large, extended family and is very fun. There almost is always a dud-present no one wants--and a hot present that everyone steals! Laughing is mandatory.

[coffeeandtv]

Some kids left out cookies for Santa Claus.
Some kids found eggs hidden by Easter Bunny.
Some kids couldn't wait to be visited by the tooth fairy.
But we trumped them all: we got the Vacation Chipmunk.

We drove to our vacation destination every year. The Vacation Chipmunk left us "busy" toys (how did he know when we were getting bored & restless?) such as colouring books, handheld toys, car games, books.

What I didn't know is that my parents made him up....until I mentioned him on a college road trip much to my major embarrassment & subsequent ridicule! No, I did not think he was real at that point, but I thought every family had the Vacation Chipmunk. Soon they will, because everyone I tell this story to decides that they will carry on this new tradition their next family road trip!

[Pox Voldius]

Originally Posted by Redhart

It was not unusual for the extended family to congregate at one house on Christmas Eve each year. It has been tradition that if you go to the family get-together, "The Game" was played.

Everyone brings a wrapped present worth no more than $5.00. It could be a serious, nice present or a gag gift.

All the presents are put in the center of the family and a hat is passed around with numbers. These numbers represent your order of pick.

The first person chooses one present from the pile and unwraps it.

The second person can either take the first person's present, or choose another from the pile.

If he/she chooses the first person's present, the first person can choose a new, unwrapped present from the pile.

The third person, again, can choose to take a present from one of the first two--or select a new present from the pile. If he/she chooses to take one of the first two's presents, then the one who's present was taken can take another's present (except the one he/she just lost) or choose another from the pile.

The game ends when the last person has taken his/her turn and all the presents in the middle are gone.

This game can go on for an hour or so if you have a large, extended family and is very fun. There almost is always a dud-present no one wants--and a hot present that everyone steals! Laughing is mandatory.

Ooh! My friends & I did that for Christmas once, sort of a Secret Santa type thing.... Argh! I know there's another name for this game! What's it called?

*goes to look it up*

White elephant gift exchange -- that's what it was.

[Redhart]

coffee&tea--sounds a bit like our "Grimace Deer"...but, without gifts.

To keep children busy on trips when we lived in the mountains, we told them that there were "Grimace Deer" in the woods. These are deer that hide among the bushes and trees and make faces at cars passing by. You only see them if you are looking very, very carefully. Sometimes they wear funny hats. Sometimes they stick their tongues out at passing cars.

This tradition started over 25 years ago on long trips. I was suprised to hear my daughter, now a mother in her own right, telling my 2 year old granddaughter to, "look for the Grimace deer".

My son, who is now 27, was in a band for a while. They named it "Grimace". We still have t-shirts with the name on it. He said the old Grimace deer story was the inspiration for the name.

It's funny how little things can grow into strange traditions over the years!

The legendary grimace deer:

[Fury]

Originally Posted by Dancing_Blade

Beautiful thread! There are many intresting family traditions here.

Although no kid in my family believes in Santa Claus, there is always an adult that dresses up as him. Then he/she comes into the living room, where everyone is waiting, and gives gifts to everyone-even to the grandparents! (I am going to do it someday too!)

This is kind of the way in my extended family. Every Christmas, my grandma always asks "Who wants to be Santa Claus?" and that person is the one who hands out the presents to everyone.

[8m57w6]

One thing we always do at Christmas is have Christmas Eve dinner at one family member's house, and Christmas at another. The Christmas Eve dinner is usually later, like at actual dinner time, but the actual Christmas day dinner is more at like 3 or something like that. At Eve we pass out gifts from the extended family, like grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc., and it's always the youngest who passes out the gifts to everyone. My family isn't too large, so the two youngest are myself and my cousin, and we're 15 and 13 respectively. Yet we're the youngest, so we pass them out. Also, if you're the one having Christmas day dinner at your house, then you don't have to bring your gifts to Eve dinner. And then we usually stay until about 11 or 12 at night telling stories and talking, and usually end up finding out some unteresting things about each other we never knew before. My dad and uncles have the best stories from when they were kids. We save gifts from the immeditae family, like from my mom, dad, and brother, until Christmas morning. My parents still put "From Santa" on some of the gifts, and occasionally on their gifts to each other!

[mac_attack]

When I was growing up, we would have our Thanksgiving dinner in a church. The older women would cook in the church's kitchen, and the men would set things up, while the kids and teens played basketball, tag, and hide-n-seek. That was back when we had tons of people for Thanksgiving...now everyone is grown up and have families of their own, so we hold it at my house. There aren't games going on any more either, just conversations.

We are breaking tradition this year, though, and having two Thanksgivings. One on Thansgiving Day at my cousin's house with all the family, and one on my parent's anniversary the week after that with just us.

[8m57w6]

Originally Posted by mac_attack

There aren't games going on any more either, just conversations.

That's how it happened with my family. When my brother, cousins and I were younger, we would get bored out of our minds by the adults and their thrilling conversations about refrigerators, so we'd go off and do our own thing. But as we got older, we stopped playing by ourselves, and started joining in the conversation. It was my oldest cousin first, then my next cousin, then my brother, and now I generally stay and talk, too. My younger cousin still has a rather short attention span, so he usually goes and watches something.

Also, just wondering, do other families, or did they, have a 'kids' table at holiday dinners?? For years we would set up a smaller table for my cousins, brother, and I to sit at for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Why I really have no idea, since it wasn't as if we ate different food, or were too short to reach the table or some such thing. And it wasn't like we couldn't just sit by each other at the 'normal' table either.

[Pox Voldius]

Originally Posted by 8m57w6

Also, just wondering, do other families, or did they, have a 'kids' table at holiday dinners?? For years we would set up a smaller table for my cousins, brother, and I to sit at for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Why I really have no idea, since it wasn't as if we ate different food, or were too short to reach the table or some such thing. And it wasn't like we couldn't just sit by each other at the 'normal' table either.

Mine did. Though, I suspect that may have grown, at least in part, from the fact that my grandma had 7 kids, so when all of them (or even half of them), plus their spouses and their own kids, are over at her place for a holiday dinner, you seriously need to put all of the leaves in the dining table, bring out one or two card tables, and pull out every dining room chair and folding chair in the house in order to fit everyone!
(this would be my grandmother who lives in a tiny farming town in middle-of-nowhere Iowa, btw)

[snapegirl]

My family had a kid's table. Although there is not a lot of "kids" in the family myself, my son, my husband, my cousin and her husband and my brother are always put together on the same one corner of the table. We joking call our corner the "kid's table."

[mac_attack]

We have a kid's section for the great-grandkids who show up. There's usually only like 5 kids now though, so they just sit at the end of one of the regular tables.

My family has a "cousin lunch" once every 3 months where we all get together at a restaurant and chat and eat and stuff. Until about 2 years ago me, my sisters, and the cousins closest to our age would get a separate table from the adults. The adult table is fine too...but there's only so many times you can answer the question, "so...are you in school now?" before it gets old. Why do the older people always ask the same questions??

[Pox Voldius]

Originally Posted by mac_attack

The adult table is fine too...but there's only so many times you can answer the question, "so...are you in school now?" before it gets old. Why do the older people always ask the same questions??

Well, if they're old enough, it's always possible that they've actually forgotten that they've already asked you that question

[popcornzyum]

Whenever we go to my auntie's the kid's always get to sit at the table, and the adults have to sit on the sofa's or on the floor Apparently it's because "we make too much mess"

[Lizzy_Potter]

On Halloween We have some sort of chili, whether my dad's homemade, chili dogs, chili from a can, etc.
For Christmas we wait till 7 o' clock, then we take a picture of us in our jammies on the stairs. Then we get to run like heck into the living room.

[Spirit]

Well, in my house, we decorate the house the exact same way for each holiday. All the halloween things have their place, and all the Christmas things have their place.

I guess this reflects our slight Obsessive Compulsive Disorder tendencies.

[Redhart]

We usually have the "monster dinner". I think last year I had "brains and blood' (molded spagetti in the shape of a brain with spaghetti sauce on the side).

Another year we did monster fingers (sausage) and Monster eyes (hard-boiled eggs with a little food-coloring paint).

This may gross out some people, but I have five boys and the grosser I make it, the more squeals of delight there usually are

[Kimagine]

Oh, that sounds like so much fun!! I have to try it!!

[mac_attack]

Sometimes we do "mystery dinners" where you have a halloween menu. It's all encoded, so you don't know what is what. You have to order like 6 things off the menu...say it could be Bone of the forearm, brains, monster mush, etc. All really random names that don't really tell you what you're getting. Sometimes you end up with a fork and soup or sometimes you could end up with spaghetti and applesauce with jello and no utensils. It's good fun, but it gets messy.

Another time, we had to take etiquette lessons...and then we went into the dining room where we were having a fancy dinner. The fancy dinner was actually a disguise...there was a big plastic tablecloth set up and they dumped our dinner right on the tablecloth and we weren't allowed to use our hands...just faces. It's good to have parents with a sense of humor!

[succubus]

Originally Posted by magic_is_might

not very weird but EVERY year on christmas we have to watch A Christmas Story ('you'll shoot your eye out!") and National Lampoon's Christmas vacation. i'm sooooo sik of those movies.....

Well, in my husband's family, the tradition is to start watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation once a day, every day, from Thanksgiving Day until Christmas Day. However, since my husband and his brother have always tried to 'one up' each other, my husband starting watching it earlier and earlier in the year so he can boast to his brother that he's already started watching it. Just yesterday he said that it was time to start watching it! I love the movie and don't mind the tradition, but I would rather wait until Thanksgiving is over.

Every year there is always someone that has a practical joke played on them during Christmas. Since all the in-laws live on the same piece of land around us, you never know if you will be awakened at 4 a.m. by firecrackers going off outside your bedroom window. Since my brother-in-law hadn't decorated his house with lights last year, my husband and my other brother-in-law ran a long extension cord from one house to my brother-in-law's house and draped the yard and porch with bunches of lights. It was almost as bright as Christmas Vacation over there!

Also, one year, we went on an undercover mission and stole my brother-in-law's inflatable snowman and left a ransom note. Frosty wasn't seen again until summer of the next year where he mysteriously appeared in our extra bedroom used for storage despite the $1 reward offered by my brother-in-law (he couldn't raise the thousands demanded in the ransom note).

Traditions at home when I was growing up usually centered around food. At Easter we always had a baked ham, at Thanksgiving, a turkey, and at Christmas there was always ham and turkey plus a few special desserts that were always requested. On New Year's Day we always had to eat black eyed peas and cabbage for luck and money - as kids, my brother and I hated New Year's Day because of the cabbage.

Recent traditions with my husband and two sons include fried turkey at both Thanksgiving and Christmas and always, the expected Mississippi Mud pie and yam casserole.

I'm gaining holiday weight just thinking about it!!

[mac_attack]

I'm having 3 Thanksgivings this year!! One is next thursday with my friends from church, then one on Thanksgiving day with the whole family (screaming kids and all), and then one on the 28th of November at my house with just my immediate family and our friend and her mom and brother. I'm going to be sick of turkey before the month is over, I can tell!

Did anyone else's mom make them clean the whole house on the day before Thanksgiving? My mom makes us clean the ENTIRE house every year...even parts of the house that the guests aren't even going to see!