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How My Family’s Holiday Traditions Have Changed with Time

Alicia M Prater, PhD
GenTales
Published in
4 min readDec 13, 2024

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Photo by Saad Ahmad on Unsplash

I have very few holiday traditions. Each year my husband and I decide what we want the holidays to be based on what is happening at the time. In a way, this is how I grew up, too. The one constant has been the food.

Family holidays as a child

I grew up on a small farm in a rural part of Indiana. My maternal grandparents moved to the town 15 minutes away when I was 5. I don’t remember what the holidays were like prior to that. What I do remember is Thanksgiving was usually at Grandma’s house with my aunt’s family. We would arrive either just as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was starting or not leave home until it was over (we had to see Santa!). We often did Christmas dinner there, too. One year we also spent Christmas Eve at Grandma’s so the three cousins at the time could all open presents together.

My dad’s rather large extended family lived relatively nearby, though we didn’t have relationships with most of them. One set of cousins we often exchanged “family gifts” with — tins of cookies, baked breads, gift baskets. It was the one time of year we would definitely visit my paternal grandmother to give her our most recent school pictures. I remember that she had a very shiny Christmas tree in her sun room.

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GenTales
GenTales

Published in GenTales

GenTales tells the stories of ancestors and family trees in the context of history and heritage.

Alicia M Prater, PhD
Alicia M Prater, PhD

Written by Alicia M Prater, PhD

Scientific editor with Medical Science PhD, former researcher and lecturer, long-time writer and genealogist

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