Whatever holidays you celebrate or not, the period between late November and January often involves family/friend gatherings, festive meals, and traditional events. In addition to the standard offerings of expansive menus, decorated firs, candles, toys, and other accoutrements, many of us have unusual events or items that have become personal traditions. A friend brought an outdated frozen turkey excavated from the the bottom of her freezer to our Thanksgiving feast one year and we bowled with it, attempting to knock over plastic traffic cones. For many years after, the usual T-day crew pulled out other frozen dated items for what we called Turkey Bowling, even if we used leg of lamb or a giant blob of ancient blackberries. The first Turkey Bowling event was even more special because a friend’s foreign exchange student from Japan was visiting, excited for her first traditional American holiday.
Let’s hear stories about your oddball holiday traditions. I’ve seeded the conversation with an online story about reindeer poop and one from my childhood Christmas eves at a steel mill
Twisted in Hagerstown (from Carolyn Hax’s column in the WaPo, 12/04/2000)
I added the hyperlink for Linda Tripp because I’d forgotten her.
About 15 years ago, my brother gave my sister the Reindeer Poop Award for being a huge brat before Christmas (He was 18, she was 13.) He found real deer poop in the woods, dried it out, shellacked it and then glued it to a nice wooden plaque with a brass plate reading "Reindeer Poop Award for Un-Christmaslike Behavior." Every Christmas since, the plaque is hung in my parents' living room and we write nominees on a sheet of paper below it. Last year it was the Y2K fear-mongers, the year before, Linda Tripp. You get the idea.
Vote in the poll (below) for the honoree of the 2023 Reindeer Poop Award.
Bésame’s Christmas Eve at the Steel Mill
My family celebrated Christmas Eve with my paternal grandfather and grandmother, mom, dad, my 3 brothers and me at my grandparents’ home in Lorain Ohio. Our celebration always began with a sunset dinner and ended near midnight after gift exchanges and desserts. After dinner and before gifts, my dad and grandfather took us four kids away from the house so mom and Nana could clear away the dinner mess and enjoy a break before the frenzied thrill of opening our gifts. Very 1950s.
I don’t know whose idea it was to visit the steel mill, but we kids were thrilled by the opportunity and the adults ensured it remained an xmas special by not offering this event any other time of the year. My grandfather was my favorite person ever, my refuge, a horticulturist with a delightful combo of awareness and frivolity. My father was an asshole who was on his best behavior when around his parents.
It was Ohio before climate change overheated winter, thus usually snowy and frigid where the steel mill loomed over nearly frozen Lake Erie. Dad drove us 10 minutes away to the fence that blocked off the steel mill from the main road and my grandfather’s friend, the mill guard on duty, would let us drive in through the gate to park opposite the slag dump.
Bundled up in our warmest winter gear, we huddled about 100 feet away and watched invisible containers dump out massive piles of hot steel mill waste that cascaded down a slope, landing in a spray of fireworks. Smelled awful looked glorious. The video below isn’t as spectacular as what I remember seeing as a child, partly because the night’s darkness hid everything but the fiery slag, and the slag fell down a much longer slope, load after load shooting sparks into the dark sky.
As a child, I never thought about what a dangerous nasty situation that was, standing there breathing in industrial toxins, batting embers from my winter parka with my new xmas mittens—very 1950s. At the time, however, it was a special once-a-year gift—a visual spectacle, a free pass from helping clean up after dinner, and my father’s temporary suspension of assholery.
Your turn! Tell us your weird holiday or winter tradition.
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