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Challenge: Open Discussion

Why don't we have any traditions?

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Last weekend my husband, 3 year old son and 1 year old daughter, and I were watching our new favorite movie; Coco. The kids and I had already seen it a few times, but it was my husbands first viewing. In the middle of the movie, my husband turns to me with a concerned look on his face and says "Why don't we have any traditions?"

The question caught me off guard, and I stopped to think about it. We aren't of Mexican descent, so El Dia De Los Muertos, isn't something we celebrate, but he did have a point. My Grandmother came from Ireland 70 years ago and left all of her traditions behind when she left. The remainder of my family and my husband's are all locally born and raised. We celebrate the Christian holidays, birthday's and U.S holiday's, but otherwise that's it. Initial thinking that we didn't have traditions to pass down to our children made me sad (If you haven't yet seen Coco, you should know that the movie itself will take you for an emotional roller coaster ride).

Then I thought about the things we do as a family that are uniquely ours. We make Cinnamon Rolls on Christmas Eve every year. We celebrate birthday's as if they were national holiday's; complete with cake and balloons (no matter what age). We always go up to Petoskey, Michigan to celebrate our wedding anniversary (going on 6 years now!), and we tell stories about our loved ones that we've lost to our children so that they know who their family is. Thinking about this made me realize that while we don't have any ancient traditions that we follow or an Ofrenda that we put up for our loved ones, we do have traditions. We have traditions that our kids love to participate in. One's that will make and bring back fond memories for years to come. They are our traditions and are sacred, because of that fact.

I haven't told my husband this, but I think he would agree, that while we didn't inherit traditions from our families, we made our own, ones that may or may not pass down to future generations.

I wonder if others are in a similar position. Coco visualize the importance of family and tradition very vividly. I am fortunate that my children are too young to understand all of the elements of the movie and are mostly fascinated with the colors, music and for my son, the skeletons :). I would love to hear others thoughts on our situation.

Thanks for reading!

-T

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