Traditions

It is that time of year again when everyone gathers together with friends or family for that special evening. They all come expecting certain things to happen and certain people to be there. We call these things traditions. And even though they happen at other times of the year as well, there seems to be an extensive amount that happen during this holiday time of Christmas and New Years.

As people who are hardwired to like routines and like things to be a certain way, we tend to love traditions. We love the familiarity of them and love the fact that we can predict what will happen at each event. We also love to reminisce about each event and what happened at the last one at the current one. And as funny as it sounds we love to get together with the same people and do the same thing year after year. We are people of routine. So, naturally, traditions are something that we love.

Over the last little while i was thinking about my family/friend traditions and i was trying to decide which ones were my favorite. I was also trying to decide what traditions i would like to do away with and what ones i would like to start either with my friends or with my own family one day.

The traditions that i love are the Whiting Family party with the egg sausage casserole, scones with honey butter, and fruit salad to eat. At this event we also have orange juice and hot chocolate to drink with marshmallows in it. All of the Whiting family gathers together and we eat food, then we play the white elephant game where it is always funny to see what people end up with (my family brings some highly entertaining things) and then we usually have some sort of family program. It is always a blast and even though we add one or two people to our group each year, we always do the same thing.

The next tradition that i like would be the Walker Family party. This party is held at my grandparents house and everyone gathers there. At this event we have chicken wings, garlic bread, salad, and shrimp for dinner. After dinner we all gather in the living room (where we all sit on top of each other and all over the floor to fit). This would be where we have our family program. We used to all dress up as the parts of the bible story for the birth of Christ. But since we have gotten older we know take turns reading different parts and singing songs. After the program we have the gift exchange from the grandparents. They always get the girls the same thing and the boys the same thing. We each have to wait until everyone has their gift before you can open it. Then we all open them at once to see what we got. From there we proceed to take the annual picture. For this picture all of the girls put on whatever they got and line up by age. Then the boys will do the same thing. I have this picture from almost every year of my life. It is fun to line them all up and see how we all have grown.

My other favorite tradition for this time of year is the annual party with my friends. Each year we get together and go to dinner. Then we usually hang out at someones house and watch Elf while drinking hot chocolate and laughing over old times. Sometimes we go to Temple Square as well. But that all depends on how cold it is and whether it is snowing or not.

Some of my other favorite traditions that go on throughout the year would be the family vacation to Bear Lake, friend trip to St. George, Friend trip to Lake Powell, Thanksgiving dinners, week at Snowbird, and especially birthday parties and dinners. All of them are fun and all of them happen every year.

There are other traditions that go on in my life and some of them i would not mind getting rid of while there are others that i would like to start. Each of us have our own traditions in our lives. Each of us have things that we like to do every year and we expect to do them every year.

So here is my question for you, answer if you would like to. My question is what are your favorite traditions? What are the things that you like to do every year?