Tomorrow is Bonfire Night in the U.K. As a child, it was one of my favorite nights of the year, second only to Christmas Eve.
We’d have a bonfire in the backyard, and my dad would bring home a box of fireworks to set off and a couple of packets of sparklers. We’d have baked potatoes and roast chestnuts, and my mum would make parkin and gooey, delicious bonfire toffee. It was an evening spent outdoors, clustered around the fire. It was about friends and food and a little bit of danger.
It’s one of the many things I miss about my homeland, and it’s one of the traditions I would have enjoyed sharing with my children. And that’s the topic for this week’s Whiny Wednesday:
Traditions you won’t get to share with your children
Happy Bonfire Night and happy whining.
There is tradition with every holiday. Gathering for Thanksgiving, putting up the Christmas Tree the day after while listening to Christmas music. Getting a new ornament every year that has meaning to your life from the past year, staying up to midnight New Years Eve, Valentine treats from mom, the “leprechaun” leaving treats on St. Patricks Day. Easter Baskets and Easter egg hunts, family gatherings for Memorial, Independents, and Labor days, Back to school shopping….My mom made everything special because she didn’t have anything growing up. I won’t get to do any of that. I have started taking my nieces and nephews out for lunch and shopping on their birthdays one on one. They are the only children I will “have”.
I agree. It’s not just one but all of them including the tooth fairy, summer vacations, cookouts on the 4th of July,…….
Yep, that’s one that we have here too, and one I won’t get to share with kids. I do however get to sit in my living room, and look at all the fireworks from all the houses across the valleys. Sometimes it makes me feel lonely. Other times, I’m glad I can share in it from afar.
We didn’t have a lot of family traditions growing up. I’m a first generation American and we only had 2 family members close by who were an aunt and uncle. I spent a lot of time with this aunt (Rose) who also never had children, and all the loving things she did with me, I did with my nieces and nephews. I am blessed to have had that relationship with her. Sometimes my sister calls me the Aunt Rose of our family and that makes me happy and little sad at the same time.
The one tradition I can say we had in our family was my religious faith and upbringing in our church. I did want to raise my child with that faith. I usually go to church alone because my husband doesn’t want to go with me. When I go to church and see mothers with their children doing what I had hoped to do, it does make me lonely and sad. I tend to go to church on Saturdays where there are mostly seniors who are alone because I feel like I fit in with them.
I know this pain well. For me it is to do with the fact that I don’t get to celebrate those moments with my own children; but part of the pain is also that I would actually enjoy them tremendously as an adult too, only I don’t have “permission” to do so from society if I don’t have a child as a pretext :).
Thank god, or rather, my friends, who made me the godmother of their younger son!
I will take him to the autumn fair in my hometown on saturday which is a huge funfair all over the city. And we will ride on the merry-go-round and stuff our faces with sweets. And then on 6th of december I guess we will go looking for Saint Nicolas in the forest. Yay!
I always feel the sting of this around the holidays – especially Christmas. My family had so many little traditions that were so special to me as a child. I still try to carry some of them on as best I can with nieces and nephews but it’s not quite the same, as their families have developed their own traditions. Every year it’s a bit of a painful realization for me that I can’t pass down the traditions that I’ve always held so dear.