My ex-wife used to collect teddy bears. That’s not so weird, but she had a favourite that she took along on every business trip; of which, there were many. The bear wore a bear-sized sweatshirt, and everywhere the bear went and stayed at least one night, it got a pin representing the city it was visiting, to put on its sweatshirt. The pins represented where the bear had been.
It was a fun tradition, and after we split up, I figured why not keep it up? But that was her bear. So I selected a bear from the collection, got him a sweatshirt, and started taking him everywhere I travelled. So far, according to the pins on his sweatshirt, he’s been to Toronto, Regina, Las Vegas, Vancouver, Halifax, Banff, and Calgary, among many other places. Most recently, I was in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and I took the bear, and of course, he got another pin.
How about you? Any fun little, though maybe weird, traditions like that, that you do?
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I used to collect flags. These were regular size flags, not those little desk items. I’d get a flag from every country and state/province/prefecture/whatever the country called its top level division. Sadly, the whole collection went missing while I was out of state and the storage locker outfit went out of business the hard way.
Not a weird tradition, but for our anniversary instead of buying gifts for each other, we buy a gift for us. We buy a piece of art. Doesn’t have to big or elaborate or $$$.
The dogs get special doggie ice cream when ever my wife and I play chess. Which is a lot.
It’s been a long time since the kids were grown but our Christmas traditions included my juggling glass Christmas tree ornaments and the family fun of throwing ornaments at the tree instead of hanging them carefully.
We’ve mostly been going to my sister’s place for Christmas ever since she had kids, and one year, something silly happened, and my sister loudly proclaimed, “Well, now Christmas is ruined!” It was such a hit as a joke that now, every year, people compete to find the most trivial reason to declare that Christmas Is Ruined.
Any outing my sister and I do always involves having lunch somewhere or if we are at one of our homes doing something together, food is ALWAYS involved. We took our grandkids to a Halloween event Saturday afternoon. Of course, a food event was on my mind but we hadn’t planned it yet. My 11yo granddaughter asked me, “Gramma, are we going to have lunch somewhere?”. My heart melted. I told my sister what she asked me. We both laughed and I said to my granddaughter, “Welcome to our club!”.
A friend of ours got a Gumby “figurine” when she was much younger. She took Gumby with her everywhere she went, and would pose Gumby and photograph him. She kept this up through her teen years and on. Now she is in her 60s. Her Facebook feed has pictures of Gumby in different places around the globe. We look forward to the pictures.
Our one cool tradition involves dinner when we are vacationing in Saint Martin/Sint Maarten. Each day one of us suggests three places to eat dinner. The other chooses one from the three, and that’s where we dine. We switch off each day who suggests the three. It gets to be like a game of chess, where your three suggestions put the other person in a difficult spot.
Kinda weird.
When my kids were little they ran around barefoot all the time. I made everyone wash their feet before bedtime. I was kinda freakish about it.
Now the grandkids are doing it. I don’t say anything, their Mother’s started it. Now it’s just done.
The Lil’wrekker still does it.
Our goodnights always end with “Did you wash your feet?”
We have a family tradition that is very, very minor, but most guests and friends think it’s weird.
At Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other large dinners, we almost always include applesauce. The applesauce will be tinted pink with food coloring.
This is not done to make it “festive.” We do it because our grandmother made her own applesauce and barely peeled the apples. If she was using red apples, some of the color would come out in the sauce. (I’m guessing that apples back then got a touch of artificial color as well, but who knows?) As kids, we came to expect pink applesauce to be the good stuff. We no longer make it ourselves, but we do add a drop or two of red food coloring to the pan (who serves it cold?!?) to make it look like grandma’s.
On the day before Christmas, our family members try to be the first to greet each other with “Merry Christmas Eve!” Supposedly if you “get” someone first, they have to buy you an extra Christmas present, but no one has ever actually done that. We try to sneak up on each other by doing stuff like texting it (Nope, doesn’t count), or calling each other at work (a good way). Once I answered the phone that way all day at work and succeeding in catching my mother, who was trying to catch me. Other people who called my workplace that day seemed a little taken aback, but rolled with it.
Also meant to add: the practical benefit of playing this game is that it keeps relatives from calling unnecessarily on the day before the holiday, when we’re generally up to our eyeballs in trying to get things done.
Since our typical Thanksgiving feast was around noon and everyone was full for quite a while, dishes cleaned and put away, etc. we always ordered pizza delivered around 9 for dinner.
I don’t know if this counts, but my ex and I once started a party tradition. More than thirty years ago, our friend Sil who studied and lived in Dortmund invited us to her birthday party. At the day of the party, we noticed we still didn’t have a present for SIl, so my ex asked what we should get her. I remembered that Sil had once mentioned that she’d like to have a yogurt machine, but it was too late in the day to buy one because at that time, there wasn’t any electronics store in our area. So we bought her an alternative present, a book or a CD, I don’t remember, but also bought a pallet of yogurts at Aldi’s and somewhere found a cardboard box the yogurt fitted in perfectly. So we painted all kinds of knobs, scales and displays on the box, cut out a flap for dispensing the yogurt and labelled the box “Yogurt Maker 3000” or some such. This yogurt maker was a big success at the party, every guest had to admire it, and there was yogurt for all.
A short time later, Sil was invited to another party (Sil had lots of friends, and there were many student parties) and decided to refill the “Yogurt Maker 3000” and bring it as a present. Some people recognized it, for some it was new, but again it was a success. So for years, the yogurt machine became a running gag at student parties in Dortmund and reappeared at countless other places in the following years. My ex and I even were at another party three of four years later and of course, someone brought it.
Now Sil hasn’t lived in Dortmund for 25 years, I don’t visit parties in Dortmund anymore, but maybe, just maybe, the yogurt machine still makes the rounds.
I wear my Cthulhu helmet to the local convenience store on my birthday (January 22nd). I never explain why I’m wearing an octopoid mask unless somebody specifically asks me- no one ever does.
This tradition is on hold as I just moved (big hassle in any case- bigger hassle due to it being unplanned and against my will). I am not near a convenience store and I don’t know where the movers packed my helmet.
