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Fred931's avatar

What's the weirdest family tradition either side of your family celebrates?

Asked by Fred931 (9434points) November 20th, 2009

My dad’s side has an ugly Hawaiian t-shirt party on occasion, but not annually. It started when an uncle of mine was broke and out of a job, and Christmas was approaching. By Christmas eve, everyone was opening one present each when the uncle that I do not remember the name of because there are 6 on that side of the family comes in the front door with Wal-Mart bags full of Hawaiian t-shirts and then randomly throws a single bag at each family member. A few years afterwards, when my uncle was in better financial stability, someone had the inspiration to throw an ugly Hawaiian t-shirt party. Simply enough, the ugliest shirt won a bowling trophy with a man wearing – guess what? – another ugly Hawaiian t-shirt.

What’s your weird family tradition, annual or not?

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12 Answers

Simone_De_Beauvoir's avatar

It’s not weird to us, but weird to others who hear about it…we have a lot of deathday ‘celebrations’...in that each year we get together and have a big dinner and hoopla on each of the days one of our family members have passed…the only difference between these deathday celebrations and birthday celebrations is that we don’t clink the glasses when we toast

Psychedelic_Zebra's avatar

Appropriate food for the holidays. We have venison on Giftmas, rabbit on Easter, Turkey on Thanksgiving, and Alligator on Halloween.

emma193's avatar

My family has an Easter egg roll each year where we march around the backyard, each with a Cadbury creme filled egg, and take turns planting a cardboard Easter egg on a stick in the ground and then we all step back, take turns, tossing our eggs, and then see who gets closest – and they get a prize of more chocolate. It’s like bocce ball with chocolate eggs – rather strange but guests always seem to enjoy it.

rangerr's avatar

Christmas = Shrimp.
Throw a plastic table cloth on the table, scatter unpeeled shrimp around it, then each person gets a bowl of cocktail sauce and a glass of sweet tea.
Giant bowl in the middle is for the shells.
That’s all we have for that meal.

Supacase's avatar

@Simone_De_Beauvoir What is the significance of clinking glasses?

Mamradpivo's avatar

My mother decided about ten years ago that everyone should fling tortillas off the balcony at New Years. It’s become a thing for all of us now. My wife and I toss tortillas from the porch at our apartment. It’s kinda fun, actually.

kellylet's avatar

Thankgiving became my Dad’s holiday after my parents’ divorce. He would get up early 2 cook, we’d go to the high school football and then in the afternoon we looked forward to hearing Alice’s Restaurant on the radio. It’s an 20min song by Arlo Guthry about his Thanksgiving. They don’t play it anymore but I got my dad the cd. No one else gets it but it’s hysterical to us!

ccrow's avatar

@Mamradpivo that does sound fun, actually.
@kellylet Some stations still play it; I’ve heard it on in the last year or two.

I don’t have any weird tradition, I don’t think, but one year for Thanksgiving we had lasagna, to the great dismay of my children.

Simone_De_Beauvoir's avatar

@Supacase I guess when it’s a solemn occasion, you don’t want the clinking
originally, in general, the clinking of the glasses was done so that everyone’s drink spilled over into other people’s because people were afraid of poisons in their drinks and this was one way to ensure that it wasn’t in there

Judi's avatar

Some of these are fun. I especially like the tortilla toss! Now that’s weird!

We have a tradition of Potato Salad at all holiday meals. I’ grew up thinking it was a holiday food. (Never even thought of it for picnics.) When I was a young bride my new in-laws had a lot of fun teasing me for having to have potato salad at all the holiday celebrations.

Tomfafa's avatar

Jewish women throw bridal showers dressed in underclothes only.

Kayak8's avatar

Although he has been dead for many years now, I had a great, great uncle who was mustard-gassed in WWI and lost a son at sea in WWII. Every spring the family would get together at the farm and the uncle would try to drown himself in the farm pond, then a young uncle would go pull him out and we would all have a picnic with fried chicken and red and white table cloths. Never struck me as strange at the time, but in retrospect I think the whole family is a bubble or two off.

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