Growing up, Eve Mannes looked forward to loading up in the car with her parents and cruising her Livingston, N.J., neighborhood in search of “over the top” Christmas decorations.
It was a childhood tradition, like the wearing of pilgrim hats at Thanksgiving, she passed to her children and now her grandchildren.
“It’s nice to have that because you know you’re going to do it and you know you’re going to have fun,” Mannes said. “I feel like a kid again.”
Whether you wake up for Black Friday shopping, or look forward to watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade or the recent Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony, such traditions peak during the holiday season when people here and across the country participate in very specific annual activities.
Michael Gitter, author of the nostalgia book series “Do You Remember?” and co-founder of DoYouRemember.com, a social website based on nostalgia, said the holiday season more than any other time of year is full of traditions. Some are more common, like decorating a Christmas tree, he said, and others are more quirky, like a contest between siblings for the most profanely decorated Santa cookie.
“The season invites tradition, which allows us to take time from our busy schedules to gather and pay tribute to our relationships,” Gitter said. “It is a time for reflection, a condoned, worldwide period where we live and breathe nostalgia.”
For the past three years, Mannes of Sandy Springs said she has spent Christmas Eve with old neighbors and Christmas Day with a gathering of friends, who each bring a designated potluck dish.
“The folks that attend are both Jewish and Christian,” she said. “We call it a mostly Jewish Christmas.”
Three generations of Terry Thoms’ Athens family participate each year in a rough and tough game of flag football after Thanksgiving dinner.
Dubbed the Turkey Bowl, the game has been a family tradition for nearly 30 years, said Brittany Thoms, one of his daughters-in-law.
“There have been trophies, yearlong bragging rights, video highlights and more,” she said. “It is hilarious.”
Whether it’s cooking Christmas dinner, decorating the Christmas tree or reliving traditions passed down by our grandparents, Gitter said traditions connect us to our past and to each other.
“They bring us together at the same moment they individuate us,” he said. “They serve as a rite of passage, like figuring out Santa is your mom, and evoke a sense of home, of the stability we all crave.”
In a world where we are constantly driven by technology, money and success, holiday traditions put a pause on our daily routine and remind us of what is important.
“Objects and occurrences carry history and are placeholders for moments that make us who we are,” he said.
