A to Z Blogging Challenge -- Whatever! C is for Celebrations

I don't remember much about celebrations when I was a very young child.  Those memories start after my father died in 1954, when I was 7, and my mother brought me and my brother and sister to Florida from California.  

Even small celebrations were significant.  Sunday dinner was a ritual observed to celebrate family and friends and the liberty of weekends to do what we pleased and liked.  These dinners occurred at 1 pm or so on Sunday afternoon.  The dinner might be at my grandma and aunt's house, or at our house.  They were formal occasions only in that our nicest china and silverware were used.  We dressed casually, though my aunt and I were probably the most "dolled-up," as we had been at church that morning.  The dining room table groaned with the bounty of the feast -- turkey, ham, or chicken, or sometimes lamb, and lots of side dishes.  Or Mom might make a favorite dish of mine, which she called "Rice'n'Curry."  This dish would especially be served after Thanksgiving Day, using leftover turkey.  The meat was heated in a curry-infused gravy that I loved, and served over rice.  Condiments were piled on top.  It was a dish that grew on your plate.  It was fun to decorate the dish with the condiments, and colorful, too, with tomatoes, boiled egg whites and yolks, bell peppers, bacon, and more.  We often had guests at these feasts, whether local friends or visiting out-of-towners.

Easter was likewise a significant celebration.  My aunt was also my godmother, and she took those duties seriously, shepherding my Christian education in the Episcopal Church.  After the Easter church service, we'd go to either our home or the home of my grandma and aunt, and the Easter Egg Hunt would be on.  Then, of course, we feasted.  The next week at school, I would find in my lunch my favorite sandwich: egg salad, which my Mom had made from my Easter Egg Hunt finds.

Christmas was, of course, the biggest celebration of the year.  My brother and sister and I would get up, eager to get started.  But we had to wait for Mom to call us out to the living room, giving her time to put last-minute touches on the tree and last-minute gifts or special ones that defied wrapping.  Then we would come out and get into our stockings first, then into the presents under the tree.  One of us would serve as "Santa Claus," handing out the presents one at a time.  We waited while the one who had a present unwrapped it and showed off what it was.  And then -- you might think we were a bunch of lascivious gluttons -- we feasted.

 After I got married, while my husband and I lived in Jacksonville, Christmas got extended, as we would, at home, open our own presents in the morning, an event that became more fun as our daughters arrived and grew.  Then we'd go to my mother's house or my husband's parents' house in the evening, to exchange and open gifts there.  Sometime during the day or evening -- you guessed it:  we feasted.  We might have a dinner at home, or go out to one of the better restaurants.

These days, my husband and I gather with family and friends on Christmas Day either at our younger daughter's house or the home of our older daughter, her husband, and their son.  

And, yes, after opening presents, we feast.

 A to Z blogging challenge.

 

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History: New Year's Memories

Amy Coffin over at We Tree is at it again. Last year, she had 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy, with lots of ways we can improve the quality of our research. This year, in her wisdom, she is providing ways for us to get our own stories. down.   How much-needed that is, especially for me, since I'm neck-deep in the genealogy and history of the people who lived in St. Augustine, Florida, over 200 years ago!


Here is today's assignment:  Week 1: Did your family have any New Year’s traditions? How was the New Year celebrated during your childhood? Have you kept these traditions in the present day?!

My family did not have many real New Year's traditions.  One thing we enjoyed as kids was sparklers.  My mother did not really allow any other fireworks.  There were always stories she told and retold about kids getting a hand blown off or an eye put out.  But we did have fun with the sparklers.

Today my husband and I do not really have much in the way of traditions, either, except for one:  We stay home!  We stay snug in our house, out of the way of the drunks on the highways!  We might open a bottle of bubbly (usually San Sebastian Blanc de Fleur).  We do less and less at New Year's Eve, though, as the years go by.  New years don't impress us much anymore.  We've seen so doggone many of them!

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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: My Funny Valentine

Here are the instructions for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver:

1) Recall a memory of a Valentine's Day in your life. Is it the first love of your life? A special day with your lover, spouse or significant other? Do you have a picture of a Valentine's Day event, or a special Valentine that you received, to share?

2) Describe your Valentine's Day memory, activity and/or image in a blog post of your own, a comment to this blog post, or a comment on Facebook.

3) Have fun remembering a special day.

Back in my mother and father's day there was a song called "My Funny Valentine." Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald did renditions of it, among others. It was written by Rodgers and Hart, and the words were something less than complimentary but the sentiment was "Don't change a thing; I love you the way you are." Kinda sweet, in a backhanded way. But "My Funny Valentine" probably should be the theme song for my husband and me, not simply because neither one of us would win any contest for good looks (especially now in our old age), but more because humor has been a huge part of our lives and our relationship. So this SNGF won't pick on just one memory, but on the general tone of Valentine's Day around here.

We usually go for the humorous in the cards we get for each other on this day. Not the insulting humor that has such a place on the card racks -- though some of those are quite funny as well. Usually we go for the humor that reflects the absurdities of life, the little sillinesses that make life sometimes bearable in the face of increasingly disgusting news from the real world. We like the cards with puns, and the sillier the pun the more fun it is. As for our celebration, that usually revolves around food -- tomorrow night we will go to a favorite steak house that we reserve for very special occasions such as this, but do not get to visit often because it is quite expensive! Valentine's day comes one week before our anniversary, which adds a little to it, too. Next weekend, for our anniversary, we will be attending a symphony concert program of the music of John Williams. That will be fun.

And fun is a key word in any activity. Sure, an activity can be meaningful and helpful to others and contribute positively to society and all that good stuff, but if an activity or a relationship or any other thing we put our minds to can't be fun, why bother?
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Advent Calendar: Breakfast!

Well, not really breakfast -- I guess you could call it "pre-breakfast." It has been a tradition since our daughters were babies that I make hot rolls on Christmas morning and serve them with hot chocolate, to be consumed while we are delving into our stockings.

For the first many years, I made cinnamon rolls. But at about the age of 15 our younger daughter developed a true allergy to cinnamon. She can't even smell the stuff or her breathing passages swell up in an anaphylactic reaction. It has the potential of being fatal. All cinnamon left the house at that time, and hasn't been back. So for the past twenty and more years it has been orange rolls. I use a recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens bread cookbook. If I ever fail to make the rolls, the reaction is swift and sure!

So we eat our fresh-from-the-oven orange rolls and drink our homemade hot chocolate (from Hershey's cocoa powder) while we see what silly things have been stuffed in our stockings. Then it's time for real breakfast, and then the opening of the main presents.
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Advent Calendar: The Ersatz Christmas Tree

Back in the 1970s, when our daughters were small children, we had bad economic times. The economy was doing what it pretty much as been doing, again, these past couple years. We had very little money that year for Christmas, and in order to be able to afford some presents, mainly for our kids, we did not buy a Christmas tree.

But my husband very much wanted one. So he came up with a ridiculous solution: he went out into the yard and cut a raintree sapling. Not hard to come by -- the raintree that grew in the back yard, though it was beautiful to look at, was a wanton among trees. It reproduced with great abandon, to the point that the most prolific weed in our yard was raintree saplings! He stripped the sapling of its few spindly branches. He cut a bunch of ligustrum branches. We had no problem attacking the ligustrum -- we hate the nasty things. These branches were tied or otherwise affixed to the raintree sapling.

And there was our tree -- ridiculous to look at, but decorated to the nines, anyway. We laughed at the poor thing then, and we still laugh about it today, when we recall how, despite being scrawny and jury-rigged, it brightened what could have been a dismal holiday season. I do have a photo of it, but with papers and final exams looming, and being sick the past couple days, I have not had time to hunt for it.

The poor thing is long gone, but it still keeps on giving us joy every time we remember it and laugh.
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