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Family Codes and Rituals.
Well, Being inspired by This weeks' B3ta Quote of the week, I'm starting this thread.
Freddy Woo writes, "as a child we used to have a 'whoever cuts doesn't choose the slice' rule with cake. It worked brilliantly, but it's left me completely anal about dividing up food - my wife just takes the piss as I ritually compare all the slice sizes."
What codes and rituals does your family have?
One per post, yeah?
My mother grew up in a small town up north, that we go to often. Every time when we were younger, she used to point out a particular house, and tell us about how she used to rollerskate in the ballroom of that grand old house. Fast forward a few years, everyone is telling the story together. Fast forward a few more - Every time we pass it, we mention it. Even if we're on our own, or with non-family people. The look of confusion on my Girlfriend's face was priceless.
Freddy Woo writes, "as a child we used to have a 'whoever cuts doesn't choose the slice' rule with cake. It worked brilliantly, but it's left me completely anal about dividing up food - my wife just takes the piss as I ritually compare all the slice sizes."
What codes and rituals does your family have?
One per post, yeah?
My mother grew up in a small town up north, that we go to often. Every time when we were younger, she used to point out a particular house, and tell us about how she used to rollerskate in the ballroom of that grand old house. Fast forward a few years, everyone is telling the story together. Fast forward a few more - Every time we pass it, we mention it. Even if we're on our own, or with non-family people. The look of confusion on my Girlfriend's face was priceless.
Comments
Oh, and we have a pretty solid ritual when it comes to playing Pictionary, which the family plays fairly often. We team up into two teams of two, and then whichever team I'm on proceeds to utterly cream the other team. It's one of my favourite rituals of all.
We get a shitload of "gifts" together, most of them are stuff that people got for Christmas from the last year and are re-gifting, or just some lame gift that will end up getting re-gifted anyhow (candles, $10 makeup kits, ornaments, etc). Despite that, everyone always loves to play it.
Basically, you put a few gifts on a table, then pass around 2 die. If you roll a 7 or 11 you get a gift. After all the gifts are gone, you open them. Then there is a 2 minute stealing round where if you roll a 7 or 11, you get to take a gift from someone. After the 2 minutes are up, everyone gets 1 last roll. Then you keep your gift(s) after that.
Awhile ago I used to come back from 7-11 with some decent candy or something like that, but this year I came up dry, and mostly by choice since there was almost nothing worth...anything, unfortunately.
I think in the coming years we need to enforce a quality over quantity rule. I think people like the quantity since it kills more time (more gifts = more rounds). But really, most of the gifts have been horrible lately, and we've been having like 5+ rounds a year. I think if we cut down all the gifts and just had enough for 2-3 rounds, but made the gifts actually worth 2 shits, it might end up a little better.
Thanksgiving plus one - Asian food
Thanksgiving plus two - Turkey soup
Always.
Also, every Thanksgiving my grandmother calls me a Nazi. Her logic is that as Hitler was a vegetarian, all vegetarians are servants of the Third Reich.
Christmas: Me and my brother could wake up pretty early, and as soon as our parents were up, we could each open one present. Then we would have Christmas breakfast, which ritually includes pancakes and a hot chocolate concoction made by my father known to involve steamed milk and melted Hershey's Chocolate, in addition to other unknown ingredients. This drink is heavy. Really, really heavy, to the point of one year forcing me and my brother to go lie down, on Christmas morning, instead of opening presents. After breakfasts, all presents are opened.