There’s always something absolutely golden about finding out something you thought was a universal truth is actually some ridiculous bullshit your parents and family created, and the tradition stuck. Like calling the microwave a ‘zapper’ and the blender a ‘wazzer’, shit you don’t realise isn’t a common occurrence, and just your family fucking around for time eternal. Well, get ready for the motherload, because people have been sharing their own family traditions online.
Sparked by my favourite online human Nicole Cliffe, people all over the shop have shared things their family have done their whole lives that are unconventional traditions, but they just assumed for years that everyone else did it.
https://twitter.com/Nicole_Cliffe/status/1303093821824069633?s=20
And, as you’d expect, some of them are just straight-up cooked.
My mother had many turns of phrase that I thought were just normal sayings but either completely weren’t or were very uncommon outside of our household.
“Big Bird, what to do?” and “Heavens to Murgatroyd!” are the two that come to mind.
— Valerie Woolard (@valeriecodes) September 7, 2020
My grandma wrote the name of the person who would inherit each item in her home with felt marker on the bottom of said item. So you’d pick up a tin of buttons and read “to Wendy when I die” written on it. Turns out no one else’s family does that.
— Arley Cruthers (McNeney) (@Arley_McNeney) September 7, 2020
I was always told that you had to drink a glass of milk whenever you ate peanut butter or else your body couldn’t digest the peanuts and then one day my sister told her fiance to drink a glass of milk with his PB&J and she called me so fast with the Big News.
— John Gary (@johngary) September 7, 2020
My family has a Generalissimo Francisco Franco Christmas ornament, and every year when we trim the tree, whoever unpacks that ornament yells “The Chubby Guy!” and puts it on the tree. We also play Twisted Christmas albums and I legit don’t know the real words to some carols.
— Alice is Staying Home and You Should Too (@AliSayNew) September 7, 2020
My God, I love this.
Actually, a lot of them pertained to weird-ass Christmas traditions their family held.
Not until I was married did I learn not everyone puts a clementine/mandarin orange in the toe of a Christmas stocking. I feel we were right though.
— Tara Ariano (@TaraAriano) September 7, 2020
Each Christmas Eve, each family member had to write down the sin we were repenting of that year on a scrap of paper; those papers were put on a box, which was wrapped like a Christmas gift, & then we would drive to a nativity set & leave the gift for the baby Jesus. BUT … (1/2)
— Riane Konc (@theillustrious) September 8, 2020
… this used to just be at some random public nativity, which is weird enough. But the town took the public nativities down, so for years after, my parents would just drive until they saw a nativity set in some rando’s yard and LEAVE THE WRAPPED BOX FULL OF OUR SINS THERE
— Riane Konc (@theillustrious) September 8, 2020
We shout CHRISTMAS EVE GIFT at each other as soon as we can on Christmas Eve. The first person to do it in the whole family Allegedly gets $20 from the current matriarch but it never actually happens. We are still very competitive about this despite being mostly estranged.
— rachel (@madamradams) September 8, 2020
Some of the family traditions are very obviously the product of incredible parenting.
My parents taught us there were “no bad words, only bad timing,” and curse words were reserved for playing video games and other at-home frustrations, not school or grandma’s house. As such, we called cursing “Nintendo language.”
— Molly Kleinman, Ph.D. ???????????????? (@mollyali) September 7, 2020
And dads being, well, massive dads.
My dad told my brother and I we had a brother and sister named Peter and Suzie but they were bad so they had to live under the house. I freaked out when we moved when I was 5 and didn’t take them. Weird to realize this was not a typical threat to get your kids to behave
— this fraudulent christmas prince (@thexmasprince) September 7, 2020
my dad’s approach to parenting was “the child is there for my amusement” so he would make up stories like he was an alien from outer space and get all his friends in on it. Turns out “lying to children if it’s funny” isn’t super normal, but it was fun and kept me on my toes
— Hannah Groch-Begley (@grouchybagels) September 7, 2020
My dad “cooked” once a week by yelling “smorgasbord night!” and taking everything out of the fridge and putting it on the counter like a buffet. We could make whatever we wanted w/ the random assortment – there were no rules! Turns out that’s not how most people deal w leftovers.
— Hannah Wanebo (@hannahwanebo) September 7, 2020
The kitchen spider. There’s always at least one spider in the kitchen at all times and the spider is treasured, almost like a pet. Once my mom sent an email with subject “sad news”. It was about the current spider’s demise.
— Bess Hamilton (@bess_p_hamilton) September 7, 2020
Road trips start at 4:45 am at the latest. The first time I traveled with someone who wanted to have breakfast before getting on the road, my jaw hit the floor.
— Christiana Thomas (@yanathomas) September 8, 2020
I feel this. I feel this deep in my soul.
And I truly wish I grew up in this house specifically.
we had a rule that if you didn’t put your napkin on your lap, at dinner, & someone spotted it on the table, you had to stand by front door & hop on one leg 10 times.
it was MASSIVELY popular & the HEIGHT of embarrassment from ages 5-8, which peaked when we caught my Dad out.
— Danielle Builta (@Builtahouse) September 7, 2020
OH I also didn’t know until about 8th grade that other people didn’t keep a giant whiteboard next to the dining room table for easy-access illustration for whichever concept they were talking about (from presidents to bible verses to “Dad explaining elevator engineering”.)
— Danielle Builta (@Builtahouse) September 7, 2020
Other family traditions are more wholesome, like what PEDESTRIAN.TV Deputy Editor Alex Bruce-Smith grew up with.
getting fanatical about the weekend paper quiz. it was brought out at birthdays, fancy dinners, saved for BBQs. there were rules (if you know the answer, you can’t just yell it out).
— Alex Bruce-Smith (@alexbrucesmith) September 7, 2020
And me? Well, it took me a long time to realise not everyone had a silent half-hour every night for mum’s stories.
7pm every night was half an hour of pretty much silence so my stepmum could watch Home & Away. Also usually coincided with dinner time, and we only talked in the ad breaks
— creamy (@courtwhip) September 7, 2020
Normal stuff. Normal, normal stuff.
