24 Dates in 2024

24 Dates in 2024 – Date #20

I’m unsure when an activity crosses over to an official “tradition.” 

Some things, like Momma Williams’ ban on washing clothes from New Year’s Eve through New Year’s Day, are passed down from generation to generation. Ken, for instance, is not entirely sure why we do that, but the general concept is sweet.  “We don’t want to wash the people we love out of our lives.” 

We keep it going because it allows Ken to keep a touch of his mom, the incredible woman who raised him and his three brothers, alive through our family. It’s a thread that connects us to our past and to each other.

I am 100% sure my mother-in-love wanted a break from doing laundry and whipped up that tradition for sanity’s sake. Regardless, it’s what we do now.

Other traditions, like the “stealing” of Christmas trees with my father the day before or after Christmas, need to be passed over.  (I’m not ready to explain this!)

Traditions also typically arise from a group setting, with family or friends.  Think, “We always go to Uncle Dave’s, who is not our uncle, for Fourth of July pool parties.” Or New Year’s Day collard greens and black-eyed peas are mandatory grub for good luck and prosperity for the New Year.

I don’t know if we give much thought into how traditions are created, especially the profoundly entrenched ones that nearly “everyone” participates in.  Like celebrating birthdays with cake.  I watched a video of a young boy happy to celebrate his birthday with loved ones participating in the obligatory off-key sing-along. The camera slowly panning to his birthday candle perfectly propped up by a roasted chicken.  Mom shared that her boy hated cake and was obsessed with roasted chicken. 

Immediate admiration for Mom swelled in my eyes as I watched. Kudos to her for not shoving a standing social tradition down her boy’s throat because “That’s how we celebrate.”  She fully embraced a tradition with a twist and one that respected her son’s celebration. I mean – it was HIS birthday!

It’s like I knew the day Ken and I rolled a cart of expired pumpkins down our street, collecting gourds and our neighbor’s Salvador Dalí pumpkins as we made our way to the woods to smash pumpkins and feed the wildlife, that this would be a new tradition for us.

Date #20 of our 24 dates in 2024 was our second annual Pumpkin-Smashing Day. We have not chosen a specific date but agreed the day shall commence when we recognize our pumpkins look like images from a horror movie. The day must be a sunny, slightly bone-chilling, blue-sky kind of day. We shall feed our local wildlife and release our – (mostly mine) rage against the machine. It’s a day of laughter, pumpkin guts, and the joy of creating a new tradition together.

Something way too satisfying with this new tradition. It’s a mixed bag of feels, like we are doing something environmentally kind, creating new traditions sans our children, releasing mid-life angst, and enjoying it together.

Who knows.

We may be blessed to take grandkids someday, and they can take their kids and share the tradition of when “Pop and LaLa smashed pumpkins.” To keep a touch of us alive in their families