Our holiday traditions are scant. And I like it that way. My husband works too much, so it's nice on the days he's home to just be with our kids and not feel pressured to get dressed in nice clothes, or for him to have to drive in traffic on the one day he doesn't need to commute into the City for work. For me, I'm happy for my day off from the tyranny of car pool and lunch making. So while others are cooking, cleaning, driving and celebrating we're eating hamburgers at the local diner.
And we are all so very happy.
And we are all so very happy.
I can think of only two family traditions that we stick to every year. One is the display of our lovely light-up spinning dreidel that we acquired our first year in the 'burbs when the kids convinced us if we didn't put something up for the holidays, we'd be that house. (I'm not sure what that house is exactly, but I am sure we don't want to be it.)
So every year we take out this very delightful, slightly kitschy dreidel and put it in the front window.
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| (Also pictured, the ugly menorah and the fab Chanukkit) |
And we are all so very happy.
Our other family tradition is our annual trip to the Bronx Zoo on Christmas, which we call Merry Zoo Day.
The zoo has a decent sized group of people like ourselves who make it at yearly occasion, and we got to know other families well-enough to exchange holidays greetings and enthusiastic insider exclamations of "See you next year!"
Kay enjoyed the s'mores.
If you look closely, her puppy Lodo is wearing his Christmas sweater (as a skirt).
I envisioned the kids coming home from college on winter vacation and insisting we take our yearly trip to the zoo, despite been too grown-up for such outings. I imagined being able to say proudly, as someone else said to us on our first Merry Zoo Day, "Been coming here, let's see, must be twenty years now. Every Christmas Day."
Sadly, last year budget cuts led to the Bronx Zoo's Christmas Day closure so now we hit the Central Park Zoo instead. Not a bad change at all, and it's made especially nice with the addition of being able to add in a stop for lunch at our favorite Thai place on Ninth Avenue, Wondee Siam II .
And we are all so very happy.
The zoo has a decent sized group of people like ourselves who make it at yearly occasion, and we got to know other families well-enough to exchange holidays greetings and enthusiastic insider exclamations of "See you next year!"
Kay enjoyed the s'mores.
I envisioned the kids coming home from college on winter vacation and insisting we take our yearly trip to the zoo, despite been too grown-up for such outings. I imagined being able to say proudly, as someone else said to us on our first Merry Zoo Day, "Been coming here, let's see, must be twenty years now. Every Christmas Day."
Sadly, last year budget cuts led to the Bronx Zoo's Christmas Day closure so now we hit the Central Park Zoo instead. Not a bad change at all, and it's made especially nice with the addition of being able to add in a stop for lunch at our favorite Thai place on Ninth Avenue, Wondee Siam II .
And we are all so very happy.
What about you? Are you more or less traditional when it comes to holidays?
Hi! I loved reading this. We don't have major traditions for the holidays, other than going on some sort of trip, but now I'm thinking we'd really better start. As kids, my parents used to take us to see The Rockettes around the holidays, then we'd look at the holiday windows at Saks and Lord and Taylor's, and then we'd go get pizza at Ralph's on 9th Avenue. I have fond memories of that time; I'd like to give my kids the same.
ReplyDeleteMerry Zoo sounds like fun. I just renewed my membership so we will probably head to Central Park this week.
ReplyDeleteSounds like so much fun! What a great holiday tradition!
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