The Book of New Family Traditions (34 page)

Fireworks Apps and a Few Good History Websites

If you live in a part of the country where firework sales are illegal, as I do, or you just want to be able to take a fireworks show go, check out one of the many firework apps now available for various cell phones and other devices. Two good ones for Apple-made devices are iLoveFireworks (99 cents) and FireworksArcade. The latter puts a fireworks show in the palm of your hand and includes a number of firework games. It is free, but if you want the embedded ads to disappear, you have to pay 99 cents.

There is also a free app for downloading the Declaration, located in the Reference section of iTunes. Look for Declaration for iPhone and iPod Touch, and the developer is Clint Bagwell Consulting. (They also have a free Constitution app.)

To bring history to your celebration, go to this amazing website: ushistory .org, created and hosted by the Independence Hall Association of Philadelphia. This deep resource includes many options, including a virtual tour of historic Philadelphia, and a series of changing virtual exhibits and explainers. You can even buy bronze replicas of the Liberty Bell, or buy a flag. Especially nifty is the chance to click through to the sister site on the Declaration of Independence: Your family can read the document and also click on the name of each person who signed it to read that man’s story.

Although the History Channel on cable television is sometimes attacked for inaccurate portrayals of historical events and silly reality programs, their website has some good resources, including many short videos. Go to History .com and click on Topics, where you will find, among other things, a good four-minute video about the Declaration.

Halloween

What is now called Halloween has its roots in ancient Celtic celebrations of New Year’s: October 31 was the last day of summer in the ancient Irish calendar. People believed that on October 31, the barrier between the worlds of living and dead got thin, and the spirits of the dead could walk among the living. To frighten away those spirits, the villagers would dress in ghoulish costumes and party loudly. Another ancient Celtic tradition was to ritually cast out all the evil from the year just ending, to prepare for a good new year. It was the latter tradition that inspired Lucinda Herring to create the unusual ritual described in the box on page 247.

At my house, we aren’t fanatics about Halloween, but my son has always loved the tradition of inventing (or buying if we run out of time) a creative costume and going trick-or-treating. Because our house is set far back from the road and we don’t live in a good area for this activity, we have developed a tradition of taking him over to the apartment complex where my husband’s ex-wife lives. Every year, we pick up a pizza on the way to her house, and after we eat it together, she and her dog (who often wears a costume) go from door to door with our son, while I stay at her house and hand out candy to the kids who come to her door in the meantime.

Harvest Festival

Families that wish to steer clear of gory, scary Halloween celebrations can follow the example of the Gines family of Michigan. They celebrate the month of October as a continuous Harvest Festival. One weekend, they take a hayride at a local orchard and pick their own apples and pumpkins. One week, they make a scarecrow as a family. And one weekend they make “sun catchers”: they collect fall leaves, grasses, and flowers and lay them down on waxed paper, then shred crayons on top of them, cover it all with a second layer of paper, and then iron the waxed paper till the crayons melt. They cut the paper into circles and other shapes, poke a hole in the top, and hang their sun catchers around the kitchen, to catch the fall light.

Pumpkin Burial

It’s wonderful fun and a great family project at my house to carve one or more pumpkins every year. Even the annual outing to the local farm that grows pumpkins is festive, as we eat donuts and drink cider and make sure we pick exactly the right specimens from the vast pumpkin patch.

Once they are carved, we usually put one by the front door and a second one on the screened-in back porch with a candle inside, so we can see it from the kitchen table. We turn out the lights inside and light the pumpkin’s candle, for a great spooky effect.

But a carved pumpkin, especially one kept outdoors in the weather, starts to cave in and get gross after just a few days, and then you’ve got to dispose of this squishy orange and black thing.

The family that maintains a website called Pumpkin Carving 101 (no family name appears on the site) provides terrific resources on pumpkin-carving patterns, but I especially like their personal ritual for disposing of their crumpled pumpkins after the holiday. “It seems so heartless, cruel and undignified to simply toss them in a bag to be hauled off with the trash,” they write. So they created a small patch in the backyard, where they bury their old pumpkins every year with a small bit of ceremony. “We think the Great Pumpkin would be very impressed,” they write. And I agree.

Here is their simple eulogy:

We are gathered here to pay homage to our dearly departed Jack O’Lanterns.
Throughout their short lives our Halloween Pumpkins
Have brought both us and our Trick or Treaters much joy.
We now consign them to the earth where they first came.
May They Rest in Peace.

How to Toast Pumpkin Seeds

Separate seeds from strings and toss with a spoonful of vegetable oil. Spread seeds across a cookie sheet and sprinkle with salt. Bake at 250° for 90 minutes to dry, then raise heat to 350° to toast. Done when lightly brown.

Gkoulisk Fun

Kyna Tabor of Salem, Illinois, takes her kids to a nearby graveyard every Halloween Eve day to make grave rubbings. This particular graveyard dates to the Civil War, and many of the graves are old, with interesting markings. She uses butcher’s paper, which you can get from your local supermarket, and either charcoal or sidewalk chalk. If your kids are older, you can sit around in the dark, with only the light of candles (in or out of carved pumpkins), and take turns telling ghost stories.

Gloom Dolls: A Healing Activity for Halloween

This idea comes from Lucinda Herring, a writer and educator who lives with her daughter, Eliza, on an island off the coast of Washington state.

Materials

Paper

Pencils or crayons

White cloth cut into squares measuring twelve by twelve inches (you can use an old sheet)

Newspapers or wood, and matches, to make a fire

Instructions

Have each person write his or her “glooms” on pieces of paper. These are things and feelings that family members don’t like about their lives, from not making the soccer team to a serious illness or other crisis in the family. Unless the children need someone to write for them or want to share their glooms, these should be private. After the glooms are written down, crumble the paper into a ball. This will be the doll’s head. Stick it in the middle of the fabric square, then use a piece of string to tie the fabric around the balled up paper, thus forming a head and letting the rest of the square form a ghostlike body. In a fireplace inside or a grill outside, start a small fire. Talk first about letting go of all the bad feelings that “haunt” us, and then let everyone throw their gloom dolls into the fire and watch them burn.

Super Halloween Websites

There is a mega-website that lists the links to a lot of Halloween-related sites.
HalloweenWebsites.com
will lead you to recipes, costume ideas, ghost stories, and tips on safe trick-or-treating.

For the app-happy parent, there are loads of downloadable apps, with everything from costume ideas and pumpkin-cutting patterns to a Halloween-themed version of the hot game Angry Birds.

Thanksgiving

The core emotional truth of Thanksgiving is the expression of gratitude, and the best model for kids is a joyful tradition of giving thanks.

Corn Kernel

Put three kernels of corn next to each place setting for Thanksgiving dinner, and at some point, have each person count out three things for which he or she is grateful.

Thanksgiving Scroll

Each year before the feast, the Butman family of Walkersville, Maryland, unrolls a paper scroll across the kitchen table. (Arts and crafts stores sell paper rolls, which are about one foot wide.) To start, Bryan Butman or one of his three kids picks out a Bible verse having to do with giving thanks, and they write it across the top. The paper is taped to the table and divided into five sections, one for each family member. All of them draw or color something they were thankful for that year, whether a pet, good grades, or close friends. The Butmans keep adding on to the same scroll until it’s full, but you could also cut off each year’s section and carefully tape it to the dining room wall while eating your feast.

Tkankful Box

Put a cardboard box with a slit cut into the top on the kitchen counter the week before Thanksgiving, with a pile of blank paper and a pencil next to it. Have your whole family write down things they’re thankful for. Read them aloud during the feast, and guess who wrote what.

Tkank-You Notes

Kim Meisenheimer realized that many of the people for whom her kids were thankful didn’t come to their Thanksgiving dinner. So she started having her sons write (and mail) two or three special thank-you notes a year to special people, anyone from the soccer coach to Grandma. On Thanksgiving Day itself, each family member could be required to write a thank-you note to each other person attending the feast. Slip them under the plates before the meal.

Gratitude Walk

Stacey Sharp practiced a simple but profound Thanksgiving ritual as a child that anyone can practice, with or without children. “Every year when I was a kid, my mom and I would take a walk in the morning and go over each month of the past year and find something to be thankful for in each month. We were migrant workers for some of those years so you can imagine there wasn’t always a lot to find, but we always did. It might just be the memory of an apple pie with donated apples. My mother is gone now and my own circumstances have improved, but I still take that walk every Thanksgiving morning.”

A to Z Tkanksgiving Countdown