National Grandparent’s Day 2008: Sharing Family Traditions
Thanks to Hazel Cole Kendle, Jennifer Liu Bryan, and Next Chapter Press for telling this great story (in hardcover for one of you!) and for sharing some simple, yet creative, ideas for celebrating our grandparents this Sunday!
Don’t Let Your Family’s History Slip Away
Ten ways to preserve your family’s unique story this National Grandparents Day
Grandparents can take the lead in helping younger generations preserve their family history this National Grandparent’s Day, according to Milford, Ohio resident Hazel Cole Kendle, the 88-year-old first-time author of the just-released Cole Family Christmas. This year’s National Grandparent’s Day will mark its 30th anniversary on Sept. 7.
“It’s a myth that young people don’t want to hear the stories their grandparents can tell,” said Kendle. “However, too often grandparents and great-grandparents feel like they must wait to be asked before telling those stories. Realize that family members often won’t ask for the first story, but once you start talking, they’ll be begging for more.”
Jennifer Liu Bryan of Alexandria, Virginia, Kendle’s granddaughter-in-law and co-author, points out that grandparents don’t have to stop with stories, either.
“There are many ways to pass along family traditions,” said Bryan. “Remember the favorite dessert your grandmother used to make or the dishes she received on her wedding day. Each item serves as a connection to the past, but we have to work to keep that chain from breaking.”
For this reason, Kendle and Bryan suggest 10 ways families can preserve their memories this Grandparents Day.
1. Construct a family memory book. Gather pictures of family members across generations and make a scrapbook by writing in the stories that have been passed on through generations.
2. Play a game the grandparents used to play. Kids had fun long before video games were invented. Play a game from the analog era to show the grandchildren how it was done.
3. Read a book your grandparents read when they were your age. Grandparents can make classic children’s literature even more rewarding by adding in details of what life was like at the time.
4. Learn how to cook grandma’s favorite recipe. Whether that’s a traditional holiday dish or her secret cookie recipe, spend time in the kitchen with grandma cooking a recipe that can be passed down to the next generation.
5. Take part in a grandparent’s favorite hobby. Whether that is painting, gardening, or putting together puzzles, spend time with your grandparents and learn about the daily activities that bring them joy.
6. Pick out one interesting, unique or strange family heirloom. Grandparents can explain the history of the item and why it is special to the family.
7. Learn where you came from. Drive through your grandparents’ old neighborhood and listen to stories about their old neighbors or family outings at the local park.
8. Go back in time to the movies. Rent a classic the grandparents enjoyed seeing on the big screen years ago. There are plenty of great old movies other than just the ones that run during the holidays.
9. Ask to look at your grandparent’s wedding pictures or high school yearbooks. Learn about their best friends and see pictures of them when they were so much younger.
10. Preserve a memory for future generations. Make a home video with them and let them discuss their favorite stories.
Next Chapter Press has released 60,000 copies of “Cole Family Christmas”, a true, tender, and wholly unforgettable tale that has been passed down from generation to generation through a coal miner’s family.
When one of Mama’s few possessions, a treasured purple glass bowl with fluted edges, is accidentally broken by exuberant children rushing in from the outdoors, and an unlikely blizzard prevents Papa from coming home after working extra hours at the coal mine on Christmas Eve, hopes for a picture perfect Christmas were quickly quelled. However, the hours that followed that turbulent Christmas morning created a joyful story that has lived in family lore for years.
Now, let’s celebrate your family’s history on iMommies!
So what does National Grandparent’s Day have to do with the “Cole Family Christmas”? They both celebrate grandparents and the vast mountains of wisdom and truly remarkable stories they have to share! Whether you’re a grandchild, parent, or grandparent (or all three!), you’ll enjoy sharing the “Cole Family Christmas” with your entire family! Chances are…it will bring up some of your own family stories from days gone by…
If you’d like to order a copy of this book, click HERE. If you’d like to enter the drawing for a FREE copy of the book, enter a comment below with one of your favorite family traditions. On Tuesday, September 9th, we’ll draw a name from the list of comments and the winner will receive a free copy of “Cole Family Christmas”, written by a grandmother-granddaughter team.
(Whether your name is drawn or not, you’ll benefit by reading the list of traditions submitted by families from across the country!)
We go on a Labor Day hike with my in-Laws. We have a lot of fun
Our family tradition is that my siblings, their kids, their new extended families, my kids, my extended family and all grandparents and friends go to my mom and dads house for Thanksgiving. No matter where they live we all try to get together and enjoy really good food, family, football, fun and naps. The tradition continues the next day. All of the girls get up really early and head out shopping for all the good deals they scoped out the night before-waiting in line, the hustle and bustle, running for that ONE item and just being together is alot of fun for us!
We are all about tradition. My son was born on Christmas Eve and is named Cole. Our favorite saying on his birthday is, ” Santa gave us Cole for Christmas”. He always says you must have been bad then
We spend Christmas eve with Take-out Chinese and driving to see the lights.
Because my kids are adults now, we have a Christmas morning breakfast every year. It has become our family tradition. That is the one time of year that we make sure we are all together and we all look forward to it. I am divorced but my exhusband is part of it every year as well.
My family gathers together the first Sunday in August for a family reunion. We first came to this country in 1647, and there have been Putnams in every war this country has fought, including those who served on both sides of the Civil War. As odd as it sounds, we have a picnic grounds annexed onto our family burial grounds. We come together there, in Waco, North Carolina, to celebrate our war dead (my father was in WWII) by placing flowers on their graves, going to church together, and then sharing a meal together. Putnams come from every state in the Union to celebrate our history and our heritage as a family.
I was born on Christmas and was delivered in a stocking to my mom all cleaned up. my tradition is to deliver a few dolls on christmas to some unfortunate families in a stocking to little girls i know who would like a doll..
For as long as I can remember, my family heads out to Lake Powell every summer for a week full of camping, waterskiing and jet-skis, horseshoes, volleyball, and lots of card games. As we’ve grown, our family has expanded to include husbands, wives and grand-children. Our most recent trip last month had 48 attendees with just our family alone!
I just learned how to can tomatoes with my grandparents. I haven’t ever done that before, and my gramma learned from her mother. I hope to pass this and some of her other recipes on to my son!
We have a small family (my Father passed away 27 years ago when I was 14 and my sister 19).
Since then we have lost both Grandmothers’,Grand-
father,and now 5 months ago my Mother. No matter what happens we always come together on Christmas Eve. We go to the Candlelight service and then come home and eat appetizers and cookies and cakes (we splurge it is Christmas after all!). Then the next day we wake up early (or rather my daughter wakes us up) to open gifts (my brother-in-law,sister,nephew,and my daughter and I). Then we eat a big lunch and snooze,talk, and eat some more!!!
Our family traditions center around food. We have a specific item to make on each holiday. Easter is polish sausage, Christmas is molases cookies, Birthdays is a cheese torte and the list goes on. We have a general reciepe to follow but their are a few secret ingredients in each item that is not written on the reciepe and the kids now love to whisper the secret ingredients while making the food. It is so much fun plus it passes on the “secrets” to the children.
When my great grandmother was a girl, all she and her siblings ever got for Christmas was on orange and a pencil. Every year we get an orange in our stocking in remembrance of those sparse times. Another tradition I like is we celebrate the name day of our child in addition to her or her birthday. For example, it is traditionally thought that St. James died on July 25th, so we celebrate my son’s name day that day since he is named after James.
When I was little, all of my grandparents & my great grandparents would always share their stories with us. Now that they are all gone, and my kids never got to meet them, I repeat their stories so my kids & their kids (someday) will know them through my memories!
Thanks for working so hard for us Jen!!!
Our favorite tradition is that Pap (grandpa) reads the story of Jesus’ birth on Christmas before any presents are opened. Our kids are grown, but now their kids wait patiently for Pap to get started. We all admire this tradition.
I love all the ideas you have listed, thanks for the great list!
One tradition we do, is the girls usually get pajamas on christmas even to sleep in. We also use spend xmas even with my grandma & then christmas with our closer family members.
Our favorite family tradition is our White Elephant Gift exchange - it’s fun to see what comes out of everyone’s basement to give as a gag gift at Christmas!
Love your site - I’m an avid reader - thanks for all the great freebies!
My favorite tradition is putting up the Christmas tree on Thanksgiving day at my parent’s house. The grandkids love it.
We share a three generation love of gardening/ growing flowers. So in the fall, all 3 generations gather to share the tradition of planting our fall garden and pansies and johnny jump ups that we learned from previous generations.
We call it the PAPA planting day. (after my great grand parents and my grandfather who strarted it) It lets us share and hopefully pass on the joy of fall and family.
Traditions are many - big and smalll. But every Christmas morning after our grandchildren open presents at their home they come to our home and open just as many presents at our house from us as they got from Santa. Then we eat a big meal. It’s a speacial and wonderful day with family.
Our family Has the best Christmas Eve We start the morning with a trip to Build a Bear workshop. To bring a new Bear into our home for the holiday. Then we find something free to do like visiting a hospital to sing Carols to the patients. We then ask for an early Santa delivery so that when we get back home we can distroy the living room in the traditional unwrapping of the Santas deposits. After a quick clean-up we have a great home made feast that could feed an army, of the same delicious treat from the last 40 years. Baked brisket, turkey and dressing, and of course the sides, Potato- onion Bake, green bean cassarole, cranbery sauce (made from fresh cranberries), Brussel Sprouts, Jello ( some kind of mold), And hte famous christmas cookies, homade fudge, truffles, pies ( pumpkin, mince meat, apple, and pecan), ginger bread houses and a ton of love. I can’t wait just thinking about it makes me feel all fuzzy and warm in side.
Carole p
cpar12225@yahoo.com
Thank you so much for your news letter!
A favorite tradition of our family’s is cooking a full fledged Thanksgiving dinner even though there are only three of us!
I live in what used to be my grandparents’ house, so I have the wonderful benefit of my children sleeping in the same rooms where I had sleepovers as a child, and having my entire family over to eat Thanksgiving dinner from the same table I ate from as a young person (once I moved up to the big table, of course)! There are times when I cook in my grandmother’s kitchen and my food smells like hers used to, and I just feel so blessed.
Now that we have a one year old, our Christmas’s are extra special and our tradition is just beginning. Prior to her arrival, we would volunteer at the Festival of Lights in our town with all monies going toward charity. It consists of large lighted decorations donated by local groups and businesses. Many of those nights are frigid cold but well worth the cause. I look forward to taking our daughter in the years to come and drive through to view all the wonderful lighted and some moving decorations.
Well, First off let me start off by saying that I live in Oak Hill,WV where Grandparent’s Day was first started by Mrs. Marian McQuade. I was raised by my grandparents…and I have met Mrs. McQuade, on a couple of occasions years ago. She and my grandmother used to talk some. She even sent a rolling pin and a couple of towels to me when my gradmother held my bridial shower…the note with the rolling pin said something like: Use on your husband if he ever gets out of line! LOL
My grandparents were very special people, and took me in when I was about 7 months old and raised me. I lost my grandfather in 1985, and on New year’s Day 1991 I lost my gradmother. I kind of have my own tradition in memory of them, retelling some of the many stories they shared with me. When I think about some of them I realize how funny they both could be! Of course at the time I didn’t really ‘get’ some of them lol But, now that I do, I can relate these on to my own children. My kids have heard about my grandparents all through their lives and on many occasions I have heard them say “man I wish I could’ve me them!” Their grandparents live so far away that we don’t get to see them very often, so my husband and I always have some kind of story to tell them, especially during the holidays when we are all spending time together cooking and reminincing!!! (I now live in the house I grew up in,too)
Our family and all of the relatives on my ex’s side gather together Christmas Eve about
11:00 pm to get ready to go to midnight mass at our Catholic Church that Grandma and
Grandpa/Mom and Dad have gone to since the day that they were married. We all leave
together in our vehicles one right after the other, following Mom/Dad in the front. As we arrive we all wait untill Mom/Dad are ready to lead all of us (about 20) into the church.
Every sunday we always sit in the first 3 pew rows to the right side in the church. Everyone
always knows that WE sit there. (most people don’t want the front rows anyway). THe reason Grandma always sits there is she says the kids will be good if they are sitting up
front where the Priest can see them.
After Mass is over we go back up to MOM/DAD’S for our annual opening of the
christmas gifts that they bought everyone. Children are always first. Grandma always makes
lots of Italian food ( Conolas is my favorite) for everyone to munch on while you
wait for your turn to open yours. This has been a tradition in the family long before I
ever married into it. Even the divorced Ex’s and children are invited to this gathering.
To Mom/Dad they will always be apart of the family.
My father-in-law spent years constructing his family history and then being creative, he constructed a beautiful wooden case for the history and reprinted and constructed a history for each of the children and grandchildren. This was always an interesting way for him and the grandchildren to spend time, and has become a favorite book for the great-grandchildren to hear stories from. I hope your family has a special way to share stories and old tales about their family history.
Diana Mercer Henderson
My husband and I collect ornaments signifying a special occassion for that year….vacation, new home, new pet, etc.
This year’s ornament will be very special since we had our first baby!
For Thanksgiving, our family travels from Indiana to Iowa to visit my sister. Thanksgiving day we all pile in the cars and attend the annual “Turkey Run”, a 2 mile and 5 mile run/walk around the Iowa State Fair grounds. We have fun trying to beat our times and our luck at winning a pumpkin pie. After the refreshing walk/run we go back to the house and indulge in the good food without feeling too guilty since we just burned hundreds of calories in our fun race.
[...] to all who shared their family traditions in celebration of the 30th National Grandparent’s Day this past Sunday (I shared several of your traditions with my family)! One name was randomly drawn [...]