The season of holiday traditions

With the temperature decreasing and excitement for the holidays increasing, families everywhere are anticipating taking part in their favorite holiday traditions. 

Traditions usually come from a long line of family values and celebrations, but they can also be created each year. Popular traditions include family meals, corny celebrations, cheesy fun games, or even sentimental moments of prayer.

Some families get in the holiday spirit with the annual tradition of matching holiday-wear.

“My mom will buy my whole family a new pair of matching Christmas pajamas every year for us to open the night before, and then on Christmas day, we all wake up wearing them,” said Coleman Smart, Associate Pastor of Music & Worship and Director of Events at North Cleveland Church of God.

Food is also a major part of many family’s holiday celebrations.

“Most of our holiday traditions center around food; a meal is always involved,” Smart said.

Internationally, traditions can also be seen as a time of togetherness.

While Thanksgiving is not a traditional Bahamian holiday, Shelby Sawyer, senior nursing major, and her family take time to give thanks and have a celebratory dinner just as Americans do.

“We have Thanksgiving dinner in our own way,” Sawyer said, “We eat a dish known as ‘peas and rice’ and make Guava based desserts for each holiday.”

Whether it’s food or matching pj’s bringing families closer for the holiday season, some traditions begin randomly one holiday and simply seem to stick.

Cassidy Rogers, senior discipleship major at Lee University, said her unique Thanksgiving tradition started back in 2015. 

“Every year my family watches a movie called Freebirds and we order pizza and watch the movie while we eat,'' said Rogers. “The movie is about turkeys who go back in time to change the typical tradition of people eating turkey on thanksgiving and instead change it to people  eating pizza. So, every Thanksgiving, we have pizza!” 

Traditions can create lifelong memories.  

Teressa Brown, a member of the Cleveland community, said that her family loves attending outdoor festivals and picking apples at Mercier Orchard in Blue Ridge, Georgia.

“We make apple cakes each year from the apples we get from the orchard,” Brown said. 

For many at Christmas, one tree is enough, but for Brown, it takes 12 trees to put her in the holiday spirit. 

“I have 12 trees to decorate with different themes that I set out each year, but what I most look forward to is my travel tree,” said Brown “I collect ornaments from around the world as I travel, and these become my travel themed tree.” 

Traditions have the potential to make a family feel closer as they gather for annual celebrations each year and as those traditions are passed down over time.

Rogers hopes to continue her family traditions in the future: “It's special to your family. We’ve created a bonding experience over a specific thing that I hope will continue as we grow older and start our own families.”