Belated Question of the Day: December 13, 2018

[brin_bellway]

questionoftheday asks: Does your family have any unique holiday traditions? What's the story behind them?

My answer: For Rosh Hashanah, we bake a birthday cake for the world. Weather permitting, we take it outside and have the wind blow it out.

For New Year's Eve, we eat a chocolate orange. Originally this was because we had usually picked one up on Boxing Day (just about the only time they're reasonably priced), but the tradition has fossilised enough that when Sobey's had a post-Easter sale on chocolate oranges and we saw they didn't expire until January, we went ahead and bought our New Year's orange then. It's been sitting in the cupboard since spring, and its time has almost come.

Comments

[sophus]

My family has a similar tradition for Xmas, but with the classic, non-chocolate variety of oranges.
Interestingly, giving citrus-related gifts for the winter holidays is apparently a very old tradition, dating back to at least the 1800s!

[brin_bellway]

I had vaguely heard about this before--I think during Christmastime field trips to historical sites--but it's nice to see the article go into some detail.

(Although I do object to them insulting socks at the end. We had a Sock Night this Hanukkah because 3/4 of us *asked* for them (Mom got a different piece of clothing that night instead), and the extra-warm winter socks I got are even better than I was expecting. They're so fluffy on the inside! They're like slippers you can sit cross-legged in or stuff inside your snow boots!

And they turned out to be on sale *after* we had already decided we were willing to buy them for full price (full price was CAD$32 for 3 pairs, I think, and sale price was mid-20s), and they're in ace pride colours. (While I don't currently consider being asexual to be a *major* part of my identity, I am ace enough to be amused by this colour scheme.))

[sophus]

True, their research on oranges may be good, but their opinion on socks is Wrong. I've put fuzzy socks on my wishlist five years running, and I've enjoyed every pair I received! You know you're an adult when

[brin_bellway]

You know you're an adult when

Yeah, now that her kids are grown† Mom gets frustrated around gift-giving holidays by how intensely practical everyone else in her household is, especially me (which is admittedly kind of a trauma thing, but it is what it is). She keeps being like "aren't there any books you want? games?" and I'm like "we have unlimited Internet: I have more entertainment material than I could ever possibly use".

We have mostly been compromising with emergency-preparedness stuff. For Hanukkah this year I got a LifeStraw portable water filter, a mini roll of duct tape suitable for keeping in one's bag (a pair of them, actually, since they came in two-packs), a seatbelt-cutter/window-hammer for escaping from a broken car, and the socks. For my birthday the previous month, I got a solar-powered external phone battery and (unexpectedly; as Mom's way of coping with her loving surprise gifts and everyone else hating them) a variety pack of weirdly-flavoured Kit Kats.

---

†To clarify, my current household structure:
A married het couple, age mid-50s (their first marriage; biological parents of:)
Their 25-year-old daughter (me; has vague plans to stay and inherit the house)
Their 20-year-old son (has vague plans to move out, but is currently willing to stay until we are no longer dependent on his income (we're working on it, but no firm ETA))