Traditions

Graham and I have been having conversations on and off surrounding family traditions. I am realizing that my family had a LOT of traditions, many of which involved holidays and celebrations. I look back on them very fondly and hope to continue some and then start some new ones in our home.

In my house growing up, there was no such thing as "Easter." The church we were attending at the time always referred to the holiday as "Resurrection Sunday." I'm sure all of our unchurched friends probably thought we were crazy as we talked with eagerness about the upcoming Resurrection Sunday. Of course, although bunnies and eggs and any other pagan symbols were strongly discouraged as a part of the day, my parents let us celebrate as I think most "normal" kids did. We would always attend our church's Good Friday Service and then, after a somber departure, we would return home to dye eggs (there's probably something wrong with combining the two but.....) On "Resurrection Sunday" morning, we would wake up to a full breakfast of my mom's famous coffee cake, colored hard boiled eggs and of course an Easter basket filled with candy and a chocolate bunny. After church, we would all have to stay in our Easter outfits for our annual family picture with Peeps in from of the garage door (this was something my dad's family has done ever since he was little.) We then would have a nice lunch followed by an Easter egg hunt. Now here's the kicker which Graham finds absolutely hilarious: after hunting down all the plastic eggs, all of us kids would then meet together and dump out all of the contents onto the floor. We would proceed with dividing up equally between us, every single type of candy, going as far as to make sure that we each had an equal amount of each color of jelly bean or Robin's egg (yes, my family definitely valued fairness). :o)

As I type this post, I have eggs boiling in a stockpot and a loaf of Easter challah bread rising in the breadmachine. Graham and I are definitely carrying on the egg dying tradition but he told me that I don't need to give him an Easter basket or set up an egg hunt for him until we actually have kids. I think I've started a new annual tradition with the challah bread---yum! I picked up some Peeps today just so that we can take a nice "family" picture (even though I despise those yellow sugary blobs!) This is actually our first Easter at home as a married couple so it's our chance to set some traditions.

Last year we were in Italy on Easter in the Cinque Terre...we couldn't find any Peeps there (thankfully!) and we didn't have a garage door to pose in front of so we took this not so glamorous shot in front of the church we attending that morning (all in Italian).

It was rainy that day but we went hiking anyway and saw some great views.

We had Easter dinner in this town of Vernazza.

Since going to Italy is not likely to be an annual possibility, we're working on making some new traditions this year. What are your traditions?