The Book of New Family Traditions (32 page)

One great way to celebrate Arbor Day is to appreciate trees in your area by simply going for a long walk or hike in a nearby park. You will have your cell phone along, most likely, so why not download one of of the excellent free apps that help to identify all the tree species you find on your walk?

The app called TreeBook covers the 100 most common trees found in North America.

Another app is LeafSnap, which includes more species and gorgeous photos and was developed by researchers at two universities and the Smithsonian Institution. You can find out more at the website,
LeafSnap.com
.

May Day

The first day of May is a fascinating holiday because its history is so diverse. Centuries ago in Europe, it was raucously celebrated as a spring festival and fertility rite, with feasting, crowning of May Queens, and dancing around a maypole. Devout religious types frowned on all the wild drinking and partying, including the Puritans who came to this country. What celebration is done in the United States today tends to be somewhat muted, though flowers still figure as an important element, and some schools and community groups erect maypoles. In Hawaii, May Day is “Lei Day,” and the local people drape one another with those colorful flower necklaces. Still another aspect is May Day’s association with worker’s rights: At the end of the nineteenth century, union organizers were fighting hard for the right to an eight-hour workday and had big May Day rallies in support of this.

Here are some ideas for families who want to mold this background into traditions of their own.

Flower Garlands

Flower crowns and garlands are lovely, but the flowers quickly die. Instead of using live flowers, get some small dried or silk flowers at a craft store, and using florist’s wire and ribbon, make a crown to fit the head of each young girl in the family. Tie additional bright ribbons to the back, so they stream down past the girl’s waist. Improvise your own May Day party and feast, with music and dancing. If you haven’t yet, start working in your garden on this day.

Flowers Forever

Kate Smith helps her kids gather flowers on May Day and then preserve them. They make a simple flower press, placing the blooms between two layers of cardboard, then squishing them together with heavy books such as phone books. Leave the flowers to dry and flatten, then glue them to picture frames, turn plain paper into pretty stationery, or glue the flowers into a diary or other special book.

Because the flowers take some time to dry (two to four weeks pressed in a book), you could pick your flowers several weeks before May Day but turn your dried flowers into craft projects on the day itself. For lots of advice on how to dry and press flowers, including in the microwave, go to
http://preservedgardens.com/how-to-press.htm
.

Maypole Festival

Nancy Goddard shares a property in Sebastopol, California, with several other families in what they call a “co-housing international community” named La Tierra. They have their own homes but share a garden and many tools, and love to throw a major celebration every year for May Day. They erect a forty-foot pine pole and up to 300 people wind up dancing around it.

“This ceremony is about the renewal of life,” says Nancy. “It’s a celebration of the season of fertility and growth, and the weaving together of our lives and our community. And it’s great fun.”

Here is how they do their maypole dance: They staple about sixty ribbons onto the top of the pole. It takes a long time to wind down the ribbon on a pole this tall, so it’s a progressive type of thing, whoever wants to start doing the dance jumps in. People are positioned so that every other person around the pole faces the opposite direction. They dance over and under each other while holding the ribbon. When one person gets tired, somebody else picks up their ribbon and keeps going. Everybody sings. Then, when the ribbons are all woven down to the end, and the people are all clumped together close to the pole, everybody hoots and hollers and we tie the ends down so it doesn’t pull apart.

Not to worry: A maypole doesn’t require 300 people and a forty-foot pole. Your local lumberyard will be happy to cut a ten-foot-long wooden pole in a standard diameter of one and five-eighths inches. There are various ways to lodge it firmly in the ground, including planting a metal cylinder (from the hardware store) in your yard and then slipping the pole into the cylinder. Half a dozen or so eager children is sufficient to weave the ribbons and cover the pole. Play any lively music you like, or you can always play the “Spring” section from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons or Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony (the Pastoral).

How to Make a May Day Basket

Materials

Paper plates, either floral or colored, or white ones if your kids would prefer to decorate and color them

Crayons, markers, or stickers

Instruction

Bend each plate into the shape of a cone, and staple the place where the sides meet. Glue or staple a pretty ribbon to the inside of the top of the cone, so you can hang the “basket” on someone’s doorknob.

Fill the basket with daisies or other spring flowers, and if the recipient of the May Day basket won’t be home, wrap the stems in a wet paper towel covered with plastic wrap to keep the plate dry.

Deliver the baskets to the homes of special friends and relatives.

In Casper, Wyoming, Mary Sutton’s children often fill their May Day baskets with candy or homemade cookies instead of flowers. There are many elderly people living in their neighborhood, and they love to leave the baskets at their homes, anonymously. Her kids sneak up to the house, place the basket on the doorknob, ring the bell, and then run. Kunni Biener and her daughters had another method: They made May baskets using Dixie cups with ribbon handles. They would put a marigold plant in each one, then hang them on neighbors’ doors: One year, they put a May marigold cup on the door of all seventy-seven houses in their development. Now in their twenties, the girls still talk about this tradition and make the May cups for their college roommates.

Family Job Tree

To honor the history of labor in your family, create a family tree going back several generations that shows not only family members’ names but also what work they did during their lives. Talk about the history of work and labor, the movement away from agrarian life in this country, and imagine jobs and work in future times, including the adulthood of your kids.

Websites for Lei Day and Maypole Dancing

Study the culture of Hawaii with your kids by learning more about the tradition of Lei Day on May 1, and try your hand at making your own leis from paper flowers or other artificial ones you pick up at a craft store. A good website for background is LeiDay.net.

Have you always itched to make your own community maypole? It’s not as hard as you might think. You won’t find a better resource for celebrating with a maypole dance, including how to coach the children and the optimum number of dancers (six to twelve), than the website of the Atwood-Smith family. They call themselves “Smatters,” and their award-winning site includes everything from wedding photos to family recipes. See
www.smat.us/maypole

Mother’s Day

Here’s a little quiz to start us out. Who invented Mother’s Day?

If you answered “the greeting card companies,” then bzzzzzzt, you lose.

Generations ago in England, there was an annual custom known as “mothering Sunday,” in which it was customary to visit one’s mum, take her a cake, and do the midday cooking so she could attend church. Although Americans assume our Mother’s Day tradition was created to sell stuff, the originator of the celebration was actually a very churchy lady named Anna M. Jarvis. A genteel spinster who spent her life caring for a blind sister, Jarvis started lobbying in 1905 for a special day to honor mothers, including her own, recently deceased. Her idea for celebrating was very church-focused, and she was said to be alarmed at how commercial the holiday became during her lifetime.

As for me, I’m totally cool with family members buying me stuff on Mother’s Day, and I will never forgot how thrilled I was the first time I got a card: It came from my stepdaughter while I was still pregnant with my son. As the years go by, I know I can count on a lot of hugs and special treatment on this day, even now that Max is a teenager. I usually take the day as a gardening holiday, heading off to my favorite nursery to load up with spring flowers.

Breakfast Out of Bed

Judy Elkin finally confessed that she hated getting breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day: all those crumbs in the sheets, plus she would rather eat with her kids than alone. So her family came up with a creative twist: They don’t bring her food, but rather a menu. She decides whether she wants pancakes or eggs, and while the kids and her husband cook, she lounges in bed drinking coffee and reading. When it’s time to eat, she joins them downstairs and receives flowers and homemade cards.

Role Reversal

For a full day, have your kids mother you. They can pick out your clothes, cook your breakfast, kiss your boo-boos, read you a story, and tuck you in bed at the end of the day. You’ll probably also get some lollipops and new toys.

Mother Wisdom

If you’re like most mothers, there are probably a handful of sayings and certain types of practical advice (also called nagging) for which you are known. Your husband or an older child can get each of the kids to write on sheets of letter-size paper something they’ve learned from you that’s proved valuable, or something they promise to pay more attention to in the future. The sheets can be stapled together in a sort of book.

Queen for a Day

Remember the old television show
Queen for a Day
? Get the kids and your husband prepared in advance to bow down to your commands, and get a robe and tiara ready. Have them give you flowers when they dress you in your robe and crown, then have an “audience” with them while they tell you just why they think you are a royally spectacular mother. It’s also important that they prepare a feast, and that you don’t do any dishes.