What’s your Holiday Tradition?

Memorial Day - May 25 (this year)

As you all may have noticed, I've been trying to post a humorous meme on the Covid discussion page every few days. That is not appropriate for today.

Memorial Day is, in the USA, the day we honor our fallen that were protecting our country, or helping protect other countries (we won't go into correctness of those conflicts, because it's their memories we honor, not the battles).

Normally there would be parades with various civic groups and school bands, picnics, and weather permitting, pool parties. The Boy and Girl Scouts would plant flags in our cemeteries. And while some are not practicing social distancing during this time, most others are having a quiet day at home.

I would offer, though, while Memorial Day is traditionally for our military heroes, we need to include today, and in the future, our care givers that sadly have not been able to survive this particular war. Honor their memories and sacrifice, as well as their families',

EVery Day is a Holiday...my tradtion? Tell a Joke and play with may dogs. About the "conventional" holidays: My family life growing up was not all peaches and cream and holidays were pretty much just another day. When my sons were small I would make Christmas very big for them. From 1990 to 2002 I was workign 2 jobs, so I wasn't home on most holidays to celebrate, pesonally. The 2nd job was playing music and entertaining people at a bar/night club.. and I always thought that if someone was in a bar on Chritsmas, Thanksgiving or Easter they would need some extra cheering up, so I was always more motivated to take care of my audience better. That I guess was my first holiday tradition.

I retired in 2009, and not long afterwrds got involved with my local Fire Department as a photographer. The FD had 6 buildings throughout the city, which emeant that 25 men weould be away from home for 24 hous=rs on the hildays. Every year for 5 years I would deliver domuts and pastries to each fire house.... my way of saying thank you to these people. I moved west in late 2014 so now I don't really have any tradtions, myself.Presents for the sons, and 2 granddaghters, but Ionly see thm 1-2 times a year. No complaints, life is good. Being Santa isa pretty good job. Now I even look like him.

Well, I make Pop Tarts for breakfast. Banquet dinners for supper on Friday and Saturday. Then on Easter, I make Toaster Strudle for breaky. and pull out the top shelf Stouffer's and Marie Callendar's for dinner! *proud look*

My Easter Traditions

So, to the next Holiday - Easter. Well, really three days - Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. And of course, coloring eggs during the week!

Good Friday is a fasting day, so a lot of the food was very simple, pierogi, and again mushroom soup. Desert would be skipped.

Saturday would be like most others, finishing cleaning the house if we were hosting, otherwise making up what we were bringing to others.

Easter Sunday would be the feast. Sometimes a ham, others a roast, but the unique part was breaking the fast with a shot of Rye! While I had been given wine since I was 10, I finally joined in that tradition when I was 16! Dad was good, made sure I sipped rather than throwing it back. I preferred the wine.

The rest of the week was hard boiled eggs for breakfast!

Happy Easter Everyone!

Well, my Christmas story is probably boring to most. As a child, it was great. My family celebrated like most US families. But when I was 20, I lost my parents in an accident. By then my brother had moved very far away. So I was all alone at Christmas for many years. But then I had my two wonderful children and it has been awesome since then. We spend the day together just enjoying each other's company. We have a ham and trimmings and open presents and play games. It is so much better now and I am very fortunate. I am also very thankful that I found Noir and met such wonderful people. I want you to know I cherish you all and you each mean so much to me in your own special way!

First ! I try to keep the Cats away from the Tree !! they simply love to climb on it :)

Second ! when they are locked out of the Kitchen we do prepare food (mostly Fish)

and get the presents under the Tree...(hidden of course)

Third ! (we still do that ) bells are ringing and all come in ..music is on and we lit the

Candles ( true ones) that is why the Cats need to be out !

Celebration Time ..many hugs and all ...and finaly !!! the big fight about who is who's Parcell (lol)

jokin:)) ... perfect dinner then (true) .. i love that most ! much talking as Family is all together once a Year ...nice nice...+ yummie :)

This Year i will miss my bigger Daughter (25)as she is traveling South America with her Hubbie (oh my)

feeding Penguins at Fireland right now :)))) as they both finished study and desided to travel for 4-5 month. Well ..lil one (20)keeps me busy anyway:)))

I am looking foreward for this once a Year Celebration as we all go different ways in our life and I appreciate that a lot!

sooo.. finaly one more Thing ! NO OUZO at X-Mas eve !!

love you all

hugies

Anita

Polish American Christmas!

I grew up in a American household but steeped in Polish traditions. All of my great- grandparents came from Central Europe - where it was “country name of the year” for much of history, but the Polish influence won out.

As a family we really did not have Polish cuisine except during the Christmas holidays. During that time of year though, oh boy did it come out! First would be the baking. Babka, a bread/cake/pastry with raisins, almonds, and cinnamon, is rolled before putting in the pan so that you get layers. I know if you look it up on the internet, they say it’s Jewish in origin, but all the central European cultures in those areas basically had the same food resources to draw upon, so there was bound to be crossovers.

Challah bread was also a favorite. This bread, sometimes called, combines three or four ropes of bread dough twisted together. This was topped with poppy seeds. Wreath bread was a variation on Challah, also ropes of dough twisted together,but baked in a bundt pan, and would look like a Christmas Wreath. It would be topped with dough shaped like berries and leaves, each dyed red and green, respectively. The flavoring ingredients would be different, with the Poppy seeds lending that flavor to the Challah, and orange peel giving Wreath bread it’s flavor.

The main course of the meatless pre-Christmas meal would be pierogi. It’s similar to ravioli, in that a pocket of dough is filled, but the fillings are different. Where ravioli is usually a ricotta and egg filling (with some parmesan), pierogi would be a potato and farmer’s cheese filling or a sauerkraut flavored with caraway seed filling. Also after boiling the pierogi, would be sauteed in butter and onion and served with sour cream. No wonder so many of my relatives had high cholesterol!

Christmas dinner was more of a combination of Polish and American foods, but Mushroom soup was always the first course, usually followed by a ham - fresh, not a tinned polish ham. Desert was always cookies, my favorite were the pecan crescent butter cookies.

As for traditional activity, we were pretty Americanized. The tree, nativity, but the music - dancing would be to polkas. Pretty energetic, they helped work off all the calories of the holiday!