Create your own holiday!

[rosarugosa]

What would it be? When would it be celebrated? How? With whom? We're the adults now - we can create our own traditions!
I want a holiday where the meal is centered around lobster/assorted shellfish with lots of adult beverages, maybe during the Summer Solstice. It should be done solo or in small groups. If solo, then a great, long awaited book or video would accompany dessert. Or not, as one desires. And cognac would be nice too:D
I've always wondered why the Great American Celebration was focused on turkey. Really? I mean turkey is OK, but I would never build a holiday around it. How mediocre. In Rosa-land, all holidays are focused on seafood (and lots of fine wine).
I also like the idea of a small impromptu champagne gathering when the xxxx first start to bloom. Lilacs, Datura, Dandelions? We could have a whole bunch of little holidays/cocktail parties (I fear censorship in this sentence) every time something started to bloom. Mojitos at Rosa's place for the Blooming of the Ragweed Celebration anyone? lol
!pow!

Wow, I got to say "cocktails" on SLN and lived to tell about it!

[iris lily]

What would it be? When would it be celebrated? How? With whom? We're the adults now - we can create our own traditions!
I want a holiday where the meal is centered around lobster/assorted shellfish with lots of adult beverages, maybe during the Summer Solstice. It should be done solo or in small groups. If solo, then a great, long awaited book or video would accompany dessert. Or not, as one desires. And cognac would be nice too:D
I've always wondered why the Great American Celebration was focused on turkey. Really? I mean turkey is OK, but I would never build a holiday around it. How mediocre. In Rosa-land, all holidays are focused on seafood (and lots of fine wine).
I also like the idea of a small impromptu champagne gathering when the xxxx first start to bloom. Lilacs, Datura, Dandelions? We could have a whole bunch of little holidays/cocktail parties (I fear censorship in this sentence) every time something started to bloom. Mojitos at Rosa's place for the Blooming of the Ragweed Celebration anyone? lol
!pow!

Wow, I got to say "cocktails" on SLN and lived to tell about it!

I don't know how you got away with that c o c k word. Maybe there is new software here now?

Oh I like turkey, nothing wrong with it. Turkey and stuffing once or twice a year is great.

But I really like you idea of multiple celebrations throughout the year. Celebrating lilac season would be wonderful! But for me, if it because the norm every year, I'd bail on it. It's that "Every year we must do X" that bugs me.

[ApatheticNoMore]

What would it be? When would it be celebrated? How? With whom? We're the adults now - we can create our own traditions!

I like holidays that are somewhat opposed to the culture like Halloween, not to the point of social breakdown of course, but toying with boundaries you know, as a release. I also like seasonal and weather based holidays.


I've always wondered why the Great American Celebration was focused on turkey. Really? I mean turkey is OK, but I would never build a holiday around it. How mediocre. In Rosa-land, all holidays are focused on seafood (and lots of fine wine).

Yea, agree turkeys are getting b-o-r-i-n-g, but I can't even talk my family out of it so ... I'll probably pick one up :\. I like seafood but it's kind of a staple for me. But ... sockeye or king salmon when it's FRESH not frozen (this holidays is in spring right?), some of the other fatty fish like sustainable chilean sea bass are good too. But I think we need a winter holiday focused around homemade vegetarian lasagna!!! To me that's celebratory. Is it the healthiest thing in the world? Um, it's noodles and cheese and tomato sauce plus tomato paste, not really, and I don't eat it often but ... it's great, I like it with marinated mushrooms on the side. And that seems to me very wintery, it's canned tomatoes, doesn't rely on anything out of season really, it's warm and filling. What to serve with? Wine will work. Summer holidays, focus them around fruit, 1000 variations on the theme of fruit, how creative can you get with fruit, including sangria. Berries and salmon, we need a berries and salmon holiday in honor of bears if you ask me. Unfortunately I'm not sure the fish population is up to it.


I also like the idea of a small impromptu champagne gathering when the xxxx first start to bloom. Lilacs, Datura, Dandelions? We could have a whole bunch of little holidays/cocktail parties (I fear censorship in this sentence) every time something started to bloom. Mojitos at Rosa's place for the Blooming of the Ragweed Celebration anyone? lol

we need holidays for when the weather is interesting (it's too often boring :~))

[Zoebird]

Our family seems to do two holidays: winter and summer.

In the winter, we mostly make a nice meal and doing christmas-y and winter-y things. In summer, we did a BBQ last year that was neat, but this year, we want to recreate our firebird festival on the small scale.

[ToomuchStuff]

I'll take the turkey and keep breathing, thank you! I would prefer a holiday, where I got to go in an bother all the people like government employee's who want to come into my work, when they are off for the holiday's and expect the help to visit (others are off, we are busier). I could sit around their offices, and interfere with them getting their work done and they be forced to be nice to "the customer".

[sweetana3]

As a former Federal worker, I worked every day after Thanksgiving or took a vacation day. I mostly always worked because of the craziness. For decades, I also worked all the work days around Christmas so others could take a vacation. We did not have kids and did not want to visit relatives when it was cold and snowy.

[Stella]

I am a big celebrator. We celebrate constantly throughout the year.

To start with, we are Catholic, so we have lots of feast days to choose from. We usually celebrate a couple each month, particularly our family's name days. December we will celebrate St Nicholas Day (Cheyenne's name day, middle name Nicole) by filling our shoes overnight with goodies. Santa Lucia day we will have lussekater and coffee for breakfast. We've got the feast of the Immaculate Conception and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We will have Mexican Food for the latter. The day after Christmas is mine and my dad's name days (Feast of St Stephen). I usually celebrate that by having a quiet breakfast out with either Zach, my dad or a friend.

Last year a bunch of women in my neighborhood had a midsummer potluck. That was lovely. We sat our on our neighbor's patio drinking Sangria and eating lovely, lovely food and talking until the sun went down.

I have also been known to celebrate things like National Bundt Cake day (which was just the other day) or Talk Like a Pirate Day. I like the idea of a celebration in the spring. Here in the great white North that is a thing to be celebrated for sure. Doesn't Macinac Island have a lilac festival? Something like that would be lovely. Now you have me thinking. We have been discussing having a Music on the Green night in our neighborhood with a neighbor who is a wonderful violinist playing while we have a potluck. Now I'm envisioning this in May with a buffet table with a white linen tablecloth and a big bouquet of lilacs in the middle. We'll hang the parasols we used to decorate at the spring tea from the trees and have some luminarias and white Christmas lights for accent lighting. People can sit picnic style on blankets or maybe we can set up tables. Thanks for the idea!

[Stella]

BTW, does anyone remember the Tasha Tudor book A Time to Keep? I think that is where I started my love of celebrating everything. I still someday want to float a birthday cake down a river. So awesome.

http://pinterest.com/pin/146789269074164559/

[domestic goddess]

Heavens, you can celebrate anything! Anytime! There is no need to wait for the calendar or someone to tell you "It is time to celebrate."
Since no one here drinks or really likes seafood, our celebrations are a bit more traditional, food-wise. And we do enjoy the Thanksgiving turkey, since it is only made once a year. But I do find myself waling a fine line between tradition and, well, not really boredom, but same-old, same-old. I am apparently the only one who feels this way, so I generally let the majority rule. We have a lot of summertime birthdays in the family, so summer celebrating is pretty easy. I think we need to come up with some more traditions for wintertime. Maybe a "first snowfall" celebration?

[Gardenarian]

Stella - I love Tasha Tudor - the floating birthday cake is so charming!

I'm creating a little fairyland in my front yard; kind of Christmas-y but different. I got the idea from someone in town who did a Halloween fairy garden for toddlers - it was so sweet! Anyway, it will be under our cherry tree. I'll post a photo when we get it set up.

We're going to the Revels (http://californiarevels.org/) this year, and I'm really looking forward to it (tho' I won't be able to hear much.) We got very inexpensive tickets through our homeschool co-op.

We are pagans (Druids, really) and celebrate the wheel of the year, but kind of make it all up as we go along. Lots of bonfires, gratitude, active games, music.
As I posted some time ago, we celebrate May Day (Beltane) by leaving small bouquets of flowers on people's doorsteps. Groundhog day (Imbolc) is celebrated with a big vegetable stew feast.

[Zoebird]

We just changed thanksgiving.

Instead of a meal (since it's spring here anyway), we decided to write thank-you notes to people whom we feel really impacted our lives this past year. We shared stories on how, wrote them up, printed it on DS's paintings (his choice), and then we'll mail them out tomorrow. :)

Gratitude day. :)

[Gardenarian]

Zoebird - very nice idea!

[frugalone]

For some odd reason, around here we say "highballs" instead of "cocktails." I was an adult before I realized there's no such drink as a "highball"--it's a generic term.

[AmeliaJane]

I love Neil Gaiman's idea of All Hallow's Read, in which you give someone a scary (appropriate to them) book for Halloween. http://www.allhallowsread.com/the-faq/

[ToomuchStuff]

For some odd reason, around here we say "highballs" instead of "cocktails." I was an adult before I realized there's no such drink as a "highball"--it's a generic term.


Around here, my drinker friends (I don't) use the term highballs for larger then what is sold as a cocktail.