On Traditions

Later today, I will meet up with my mom, my niece Cassandra and some of my aunts and uncle. They are too kind to meet up somewhere closer to me so I won’t have a hard time commuting. I was inspired to write this post since I’ll be seeing my family today and our family is pretty serious when it comes to traditions. I’m listing down some things that our family has been doing for years and these are what I want to pass on to my son as well.

• Celebrate birthdays – even in the simplest of ways. A birthday greeting in the morning, a hug and a kiss will surely make your day even without the huge birthday cake.
• Almost monthly family reunions – our family gets together quite a lot all throughout the year. We always, always find reasons to get together – be it a town fiesta, an all in one birthday celebration, christenings. Even a non-event day like today.
• Annual summer outings
• November 1 at the Golden Haven and Manila Memorial Park. We do this every year to visit our uncle and our grandparents who already passed away. This is also the time when we finalize the plans for Christmas and talk about what each family’s color designation would be.
• Christmas Eve the way we celebrate it at home. We usually watch some shows until midnight. Mama will be busy preparing the usual noche buena feast – beef caldereta, spaghetti, lumpiang shanghai, she’ll be cutting the ham already and storing it inside the fridge for frying later. Papa will be making the hot chocolate and will be slicing his favorite keso de bola. By 12 midnight, everyone should be awake, christmas carols will be blasting from the radio, we’ll greet merry christmas and happy birthday, jesus then we’ll exchange gifts and then we’ll eat. Sometimes, our parents will hide money at the garden while we kids stay inside the room until they call us out to find the treasures.
• Christmas morning and lunch with the Tan Family. It wouldn’t seem like Christmas without the traditional “aguinaldo”, giving out of gifts by all of the working “pamangkins”, shower of coins and candies, parlor games and the annual family picture.
• Christmas dinner with the Yboa Clan.It won't be the same without Tita Menia's (Papa's sister) infamous Morcon, Beef Kaldereta, Callos and Pancit. Sometimes there will also be some treats from the province - prawns, crabs and some local delicacies.