We used to watch Wag the Dog every Election Night. Then it became a horrifying documentary.
We have a mushroom plushie. Whoever in the family spots the first wild mushroom of the day (whether on a forest walk or just out-and-about in suburbia) gets proclaimed the Mushroom King/Queen/Princess and gets to hold this trophy until the next Mushroom Royal is declared.
Is that Picacho Peak, AZ?
Mushy peas with Christmas lunch. can’t remember why, I only know that it is a non-negotiable.
Yep, heading south on I-10 on our way to Tuscon
Every New Year’s Eve, the spouse and have the same dinner: Wyler’s (used to be Soup Starter) Beef Vegetable Soup. We watch two movies (one light/fun, one serious). We (well, I) make Toll House cookies, and I eat way too much dough before baking them.
We’ve been doing this as long as I can remember. I consider it kind of a good-luck charm for the year. We’ve never been party types, so staying home with our tradition is nice.
I was originally thinking I don’t have any weird traditions, but reading this thread jogged my memory!
My mom always put gift-wrapped pens in our Christmas stockings when my brother and I were kids. We continued to have stockings every Christmas after we grew up, and after I got married, we always had a combined Christmas with both families, complete with stockings and pens. All our parents and my brother-in-laware gone now, my own kids are grown and we only get every other Christmas with one of them, and we agreed with my brother a few years ago that we’d stop exchanging gifts, but even when there are just four of us celebrating, we still have stockings and those still include gift-wrapped pens. And if I find myself getting stressed over something that’s going wrong, one of my daughters will always say dramatically, “Well, Christmas is ruined!”
A short time after I started working at a school, I found a little plastic dinosaur in the parking lot as I was getting out of the car. I set it on my computer monitor so that if someone was looking for it they’d be likely to find it. About a month later, I found another, different, little dinosaur and put it with the first. After that, people started giving me little plastic figurines they’d found in random places, and I ended up with a pretty sizeable collection by the time I retired. During my last month in the job, I gave all but a few away to some younger siblings of our students who’d been looking at them longingly.
At home, the only one I can think of is watching “A Christmas Story” on New Year’s Eve. We’ve done it for at least a few decades.
At work, a goofy tradition arose around a pink flamingo. It was brought in as a joke for someone’s tropical honeymoon, who actually took it with them and sent back photos. This evolved to everyone “kidnapping” it to take on vacation. It would disappear, and we’d get pictures of “Knip” at various locales. She (eventually, gender was decided) was photographed on mountain tops, at sea, in Death Valley, and at every place imaginable including several countries. We also began dressing her up in relevant costumes for holidays. Note: when not traveling she was kept on a table near the office entry.
In order to avoid the “with which family are we celebrating Christmas”, my wife’s family celebrates their family get-together on the 26th (if the 25th is a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday), or the following Saturday.
Sorry, but IMHO that’s not weird.
On Christmas Eve, I go into town and have a breakfast of Eggs Benedict and ale, toast and marmalade and a brandy, then I wander around the town just enjoying the atmosphere and bustle of the last minute Christmas shoppers. I always make sure my own shopping is completed before this, but I often pick up some additional small and fun presents for family members and just hide them on the tree to be found later.
Well, how’s this for weird
My little brother’s crazy elderly aunt-in-law gave him the doll for xmas one year. He looked into the doll and found out it is a very high end product that cost a significant amount. He regifted it to our sister that same year. She then regifted it to me the following xmas. The following year, I claimed we had kept her in the attic and that we heard thumping up there the past few weeks and now I couldn’t find her.
In reality I’d placed her in my nephews car, semi-hidden. When he found her it really scared him for a minute. I’ve lost track of who has her. It is said she is anatomically correct.
Definitely weird.
My aunt had a nun doll in her hutch and my grandma had one on her dresser. They must have been all the rage for Catholics back in the day!