Questions

I wasn’t sure what my Q post was going to be, but some of you gave me the idea with your comments on my Ornaments post when you shared things about your ornaments and the stories that go with them. 

As I’ve mentioned before, my parents don’t celebrate any holidays.  So, my sister, Gabby, and I are both relatively new to celebrating holidays.  We’ve both happily embraced celebrating them.  Fortunately, Nick’s mom, Susan, is practically Santa Claus, so we’ve both had a very fun crash course in celebrating Christmas.  It also means Nick and I have never had the “that’s not how my family does it” disagreements surrounding holidays.

It does mean that I’m very curious about how other people celebrate the holidays.  I love hearing about other people’s traditions.  Last week, I learned quite a bit about how the Easter bunny works from one of the neighbor kids.  Nick told me he grew up with a different perspective on the Easter bunny, which made me even more curious about different people’s holiday traditions. 

So, I thought I’d list some of the major holidays, tell you what we do, and then ask what you do.  Feel free to comment on any or all of them, and of course, let me know if there are any you celebrate that I left out.

New Year’s Eve/Day:  We never do much for this one.  Let’s just say that Nick’s time working in the emergency services and my time working for a DUI prosecutor left us both with no desire to share the roads with people who have been drinking all night.  Early on, we used to rent a lot of movies from Blockbuster (that makes me sound old, doesn’t it?) and watch movies.  We usually end up falling asleep before midnight.  We usually only manage to stay awake on really bad years (2016 and 2020!) when we want to see them end.  Our neighbors have had us over for New Year’s Eve sometimes, and that is always fun.

Sometimes I cook collard greens and black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day, but more often than not, we don’t really do anything traditional.

I guess we’re pretty boring!  What do you do for New Year’s Eve/Day?

Valentine’s Day:  I used to think this one would be so romantic.  Now, I don’t believe in curses, but if I did, I would say Valentine’s Day is cursed for us.  Some of our Valentine’s Day misadventures include Nick having food poisoning on Valentine’s Day from us going out to dinner the night before and then being out sick from work when I had ordered chocolate-covered bananas to be delivered to him at work, my gardenia that Nick sent me at work dying because we shut down for almost a week for a snowstorm and it dying in the shipping box before we went back to work, and both of us coming down with the flu. 

Now, we never plan to do anything at all for Valentine’s Day.  It seems better for our health!  What do you do for Valentine’s Day?

St. Patrick’s Day:  Nick doesn’t drink at all, and I don’t like beer, so that eliminates most of the obvious celebrations for this holiday.  I used to attempt to make Irish stew, but I’m terrible at it, and finally gave up, deciding we had suffered enough.  Nick wears a uniform for work, so no green for him.  I always wear green.

This year, one of my co-workers went around checking everyone for green.  Another one of my co-workers said that he’d never heard of wearing green for St. Patrick’s Day.  Even as a kid, not celebrating the holidays, I thought everyone else wore green.  So, now I’m very curious.  Do you wear green for St. Patrick’s Day?  And do you do anything else for St. Patrick’s Day?

Easter:  Nick’s grandmother made the best Easter baskets.  Yes, she made them for us even though we were adults.  They always looked so pretty, and she always found a white chocolate bunny for mine. 

My first experience hiding and hunting Easter eggs was in 2019 with our neighbors.  I had no idea how much fun I had been missing out on! 

This year, they had us and some of our other neighbors over for dinner and an Easter egg hunt.  We (most of the adults and the older kids) split up to hide almost 300 eggs in multiple yards.  That’s a great thing about involving neighbors; you can use all of the yards.  The rule was you couldn’t hunt where you had hidden.  I’m terrible at finding eggs, but it was still so much fun, and the kids were very sweet and generous about sharing their eggs.  My bag somehow went from nine to twenty-seven eggs, thanks to their generosity.

One of the girls, I’ll call her Iris, since I don’t think it’s okay to name someone else’s child on my blog, told us that all you have to do is leave all of your empty eggs out in a bag and leave everyone's Easter basket out the night before Easter and that you should also leave carrots out for a snack.  Then, the Easter bunny, along with his brothers and sisters, will come and fill everyone’s Easter basket, hide some eggs in the house for a morning Easter egg hunt, and fill all of the eggs in the bag for the adults to hide later.  Iris advised us to make sure we remembered to leave Easter baskets out on Saturday night. 

Nick said he never believed in the Easter bunny, although he did believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.  He said he always knew his Easter basket was from his mom.  So now I’m curious.  What did you believe about the Easter bunny?  And what do you do for Easter?

Halloween:  I’ve only ever dressed up once; the first year we were married, when some friends had us over to hand out candy, and she loaned me a Minnie Mouse costume. 

We used to hand out candy but kept getting fewer trick-or-treaters every year, so we finally stopped.  Now, I usually make chili, and we have a movie marathon with lots of candy.

What do you do for Halloween?

Thanksgiving:  Or, as I like to call it, the BEST HOLIDAY EVER.  I know, I know, most people don’t get that excited over Thanksgiving.  That’s okay.  I get excited enough for all of us. 

I love Thanksgiving for so many reasons:  When Nick and I were first engaged, and I was still getting to know his friends, we went to someone’s house for Thanksgiving.  We weren’t planning to stay long because Nick had to work that night.  They invited me to stay the whole time and drove me home later.  It was the first time I felt like Nick’s friends accepted me for me, not just as a package deal with Nick.  Thanksgiving feels like it has all of the hope and magic of the holiday season.  It seems like so many people are exhausted and irritated by the time Christmas is over, but Thanksgiving doesn’t have that.  It feels special.  I worry a lot about getting most of the holidays wrong and seeming rude or looking like an idiot.  Thanksgiving is the one I feel completely confident celebrating.  I love to cook, and I’m reasonably good at it.  Add to that the fact that we’ve made our very own special traditions, and I just feel good about it.  

I always take the day before Thanksgiving off from work and cook and bake all day, usually from 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning until 11:00 or 12:00 that night.  That may not sound like fun to everyone, but I love it.  We take the meal to the hospice house for lunch, and then we come back and finish getting everything ready for our celebration that evening, usually around 6:00 or 7:00.  We have friends and neighbors come, and we eat and play games.  It usually lasts until around midnight.  I go to bed exhausted but incredibly happy.

What do you do for Thanksgiving?

Christmas:  Christmas is my second favorite holiday.  As you know by now, I love ornaments.  Usually, we go to my sister Gabby’s house, along with Nick’s mom and step-dad, Susan and Alan.  I know it’s probably a little unusual, but that’s our little Christmas group.  Susan and Alan are both at higher risk from COVID than we are, and Nick and Gabby have a lot of exposure from work, so we didn’t get to spend the last two Christmases with Susan and Alan.  I’m hopeful for this year. 

We watch Christmas movies, eat tons of food (Gabby cooks for Christmas like I cook for Thanksgiving), celebrate Nick’s birthday, and always end up opening our Christmas presents early.  We all talk to each other about what we’re getting for other people, so usually, everyone is excited to see everyone’s reactions to their presents.  And our excuse for not waiting is that there are so many presents, we need to open them to have more room in the living room.

What do you do for Christmas?

Like I said before, feel free to tell me what you do on any or all of the holidays and tell me if there are any others you celebrate.  I’d love to hear about your holidays.