Family Traditions

As some of you may have noticed, my daughter and I have in common a sick and twisted sense of humor. Need proof?


Julie is in charge of making sure that my obituary is published as follows:

"Ma croaked."


Yep, my husband is fine with this - or else he has just given up. I would have.


When lil man was just a baby, my daughter's paternal great-grandmother died. Nonnie was 93 when she died and I went to stay with Julie's brood while she went to the funeral. The day before she came home, the kids and I made her a frog cake. We wanted to cheer her up 'cause her Nonnie had croaked. The cake was a white Jello poke cake with green Jello (frog blood, you know). I frosted it with white icing and then stencilled a green frog on the top.


Julie's stepdaughters were not sure that Mom was gonna like this. I told them she would. They remained unconvinced. I promised to take all of the blame. They were still not sure.


She loved it - and a tradition was born. We commemorate all family deaths with frogs.


*Julie read this and reminded me of the joke that started it all:

I must "fix" your post....the whole thing orignated with a joke:

A little boy crawled up on his grandpa's lap and said "Grampa, can you make a noise like a frog?"

"Umm, yes but why?"

"Cause mommy said when you croak, we are going to Disneyland!"

Traditions We Didn't Know We Had

I am going to preface this by saying that Julie and I had the same upbringing which is kind of odd for a mother and daughter. She was raised by her paternal grandparents for more years than I care to think of. This leads to some odd conversations between us.


We were watching the movie 28 days yesterday on TV as Julie was getting ready to go to work. There is a scene with an incredibly drunk chick who wrecks her sister’s wedding.


Juls mentioned that at least there were no drunks at her wedding. I agreed with her and said that it was a good thing. She chuckled and said it was because her father was not there (her father and her dad are two separate people). She laughed again and said that her father had not been at either of her weddings.


I laughed and said that it must be a tradition - my father was not at any of my weddings.


She chuckled again and said that my father had been at her wedding!


We laugh at the oddest things.

Not all warm and fuzzy

So, my blog today was supposed to be a warm and fuzzy post about another annual tradition - the Salvation Army Angel Tree.

Last night, we (lil man, hubby, and I) were supposed to go the big town, have dinner at Johnny Carino's and then go to the mall, where the Angel Tree lives.

Instead, we sat at home and ate Taco Bell because I had no dinner cooked and was too ticked to cook anything on the spur of the moment.

Why, you ask? Was there 10 feet of water over the highway? Was there 6 feet of snow blocking the roadway. Was there an area wide power outage?

No, to all of the above.

What there was was a small selfish child who took 30 minutes to whip out his spelling homework (20 words written twice each and 10 original sentences using the 1st ten words) and then took 3 1/2 friggin' hours to write 7 sentences that he was assigned as punishment for misbehaving at school.

I was not amused.

His grampits was not amused.

His evening was not pleasant but, as I pointed out to him, I am sure that it was more pleasant than the Christmas morning of some poor child who will have no Christmas gift to open because I was not there to buy one.

(We are going Thursday night - he does not know it)

12 Days of Christmas

Catholics in England during the period 1558 to 1829 were prohibited by law to practice their faith either in public or private. It was illegal to be Catholic until Parliament finally emancipated Catholics in England in 1829.

"The Twelve Days of Christmas" was written in England as one of the "catechism songs" to help young Catholics learn the basics of their faith. In short, it was a coded-message, a memory aid. Since the song sounded like rhyming nonsense, young Catholics could sing the song without fear of imprisonment. The authorities would not know that it was a religious song."The 12 Days of Christmas" is in a sense an allegory.

Each of the items in the song represents something significant to the teachings of the Catholic faith.

The hidden meaning of each gift was designed to help Catholic children learn their faith. The better acquainted one is with the Bible, the more these interpretations have significance.

The song goes, "On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me…"

The "true love" mentioned in the song doesn’t refer to an earthly suitor, but it refers to God Himself. The "me" who receives the presents refers to every baptized person. i.e. the Church.

1st Day:
The partridge in a pear tree is Christ Jesus upon the Cross. In the song, Christ is symbolically presented as a mother partridge because she would feign injury to decoy a predator away from her nestlings. She was even willing to die for them. The tree is the symbol of the fall of the human race through the sin of Adam and Eve. It is also the symbol of its redemption by Jesus Christ on the tree of the Cross.

2nd Day:
The "two turtle doves" refers to the Old and New Testaments.

3rd Day:
The "three French hens" stand for faith, hope and love—the three gifts of the Spirit that abide (1 Corinthians 13).

4th Day:
The "four calling birds" refers to the four evangelists who wrote the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—which sing the song of salvation through Jesus Christ.

5th Day:
The "five golden rings" represents the first five books of the Bible, also called the Jewish Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

6th Day:
The "six geese a-laying" is the six days of creation.

7th Day:
The "seven swans a-swimming" refers to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord.

8th Day:
The "eight maids a milking " reminded children of the eight beatitudes listed in the Sermon on the Mount.

9th Day:
The "nine ladies dancing" were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

10th Day:
The "ten lords a-leaping" represents the Ten Commandments.

11th Day:
The "eleven pipers piping" refers to the eleven faithful apostles.

12th Day:
The ‘twelve drummers drumming" were the twelve points of belief expressed in the Apostles’ Creed: belief in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, that Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, made man, crucified, died and arose on the third day, that he sits at the right hand of the father and will come again, the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting.

So the next time you hear "the Twelve Days of Christmas" consider how this otherwise non-religious sounding song had its origins in keeping alive the teaching of the Catholic faith.

information courtesy of www.appleseeds.org