Traditions

I just finished reading all my favorite blogs and as usual, our nephew Doug had some insightful comments on holidays. His situation is that Valentine's Day & their anniversary are so close that he can only muster enough romantic energy into one of these events (shortened version). I can empathize with this predicament.
Our anniversary and Mother's Day are usually within the same week and my Doug has the same problem. Both of these events are fairly HUGE in our culture, however right or wrong, we take a lower key approach to this (which I am alright with). We usually do an overnighter somewhere for the anniversary in which we make sure we're still in love, analyze the kids, make some goals, and enjoy a quiet evening. However, one year right after we opened The Charleston and were exhausted, we did do a candlelight dinner at home and the kids were the waiter/waitress (priceless).

FAMILY ADVICE: Do what works for your family! Make new traditions.

I would love to know some of your holiday traditions, so please comment. I am including some of ours that we found work.
New Years Eve: Get together w/ friends & kids at someone's house, do potluck, play games, watch the ball drop
Valentine's Day: Kids get a small treat from us; dinner out or dinner in (served by the kids); card for spouses, flowers for spouses
St. Patrick's Day: Buy everyone a shirt from Old Navy or a small token of green for kids to wear to school.
Easter: One chocolate bunny (too much sugar makes the kids NUTS); book and/or activity book.
Mother's Day/Father's Day: Kids cook breakfast & make the gifts & clean up
Memorial Day/Flag Day/4th of July/Pioneer Day/Patriotic Days: We all wear Flag shirts from Old Navy ($5 each)
Birthdays: Fairly big deal, family parties, friend parties, out to dinner, and usually one BIG gift
Halloween: start a costume box early in your marriage & start throwing things in. On Halloween open it up and let the kids choose whatever they wish. Our kids never really required elaborate costumes. They just love getting the candy. After they all come home, we go through the candy and keep half and donate the other half to our dentist (they give great prizes when you do this). The parents dip into the stash for church classes too!
Thanksgiving: Every other year we go out to eat. Thanksgiving night we put up the Christmas tree and put out all the decorations. It's nice now b/c the kids are old enough to put the tree up and decorate all by themselves. They seem to love this. They look at all the ornaments and talk about when they were younger.
Christmas: BIGGEST HOLIDAY OF THE YEAR! However, we learned to set a date and have all the shopping done at the beginning of the month. We then enjoy all the parties, TV specials and christmas music the rest of the month w/o hassle. Of course, we have to have a picture w/ Santa (although the older ones are starting to protest). We also learned that grandparents love to buy gifts and kids sometimes get a little bratty (overwhelmed) if there are too many gifts. Since the wisemen only brought 3 gifts, we ask our kids to choose their Top 3 all time WANTs and submit those to Santa in a letter that mom/dad mail. This way Santa can pick the one he wants and give the grandparents ideas of other items that Santa doesn't have time to make/obtain.

One other tradition the kids really love is that we buy them each an ornament for the tree every year. It is usually something they were into that year that was special to them (i.e., Sam learned tennis last year, so her little ornament was a little blonde tennis player). I put their name and year on each ornament. They love talking about all the different ornaments and what they did when they were little. My plan is to box all of their ornaments up and give them to each kid as a wedding gift. I also buy an ornament on each trip we take that says the name of the place we visited. It helps us remember all the fun times we had together!

Traditions are fun. We all have them. What are some of yours?