Bruce and I started a new tradition when we got married. Actually, a year after we got married because our first Christmas tree was a fake one I picked up at Goodwill and didn’t love. Bruce and I had grown up differently in the tree department. My parents always had a fake tree in the garage that we brought out the day after thanksgiving – no fail. Bruce’s family always had a real tree that they picked up from the local grocery store and set up some time after thanksgiving. When I went into marriage, I found a really great deal on a fake tree at Goodwill for like $20 bucks and I grabbed it because I had never thought about the idea of a real tree. When we set it up and branches were falling off and it looked pretty – umm, fake – Bruce mentioned a real tree and I jumped on board with that!
I am a tradition queen. Growing up my family always made fun of me for that and also created a heavily traditioned family! We would do something once and next year at that time I would be like “Aren’t we going to buy Chinese food and eat it on the red table cloth on the floor for Valentines day like we did last year? It’s tradition!” and my parents would be like “Of course!” because I am so cute and you can’t turn down family time! Many traditions I have clung onto over the years – birthday complements around the table, Christmas breakfast before our Christmas play before opening presents (yes, the kids had to reenact the Jesus story every Christmas – tradition!), Chinese food on valentines day, operation shoe boxes, corn beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day, 4th of July in Buena Vista.. and I could go on.
Bruce is the baby in his family and his family has had several tradition series. His mom ( I just love this lady!) is the tradition reinforcer and in a hilarious family of independent kids, she always got some push back but stayed strong. Now that she has two daughter- in-laws, we have joined forces with her and maintain the Mayberry traditions (like gingerbread houses!)
Moving into married life has been fun. I am no longer the kid creating the traditions but I am the lady of the house who gets to drag everyone else into traditions! Bruce is not a big tradition person – my reasoning “it’s tradition!” doesn’t work as well on him as it did with my parents but I have learned some from Carol ( my mother-in-law) everyone has fun and enjoys it if you just make it the plan and expect people to be there 😉 So I made the tradition of getting our tree at Rick’s Garden Center (because we love shopping local) and we set up for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving because I love that. And Bruce loves it. And if we have kids like me or kids like him they will still love it because it is cool. Also, if it is two years in a row, it just has to be tradition now! Check out our year #1 Christmas Tree journey!
PS: Obviously bringing friends with us on our tree hunt has also become tradition. Because we like people!
I'm a huge lover of tradition, too. (My husband is happy to see me happy, but sounds a lot more like Bruce.) I was SO excited when I discovered that both of our families grew up traditionally having lasagna for Christmas dinner. I grew up getting funny looks for that tradition, so I just knew it was meant to be when he shared that it was one of his favorite parts of Christmas. We may still be figuring out a lot of our traditions, but Christmas lasagna is here to stay. haha.
Adorable. I am totally in the "it's tradition!" camp, and my husband is learning to love traditions too. 😉