Your (and yours alone) Family Traditions

RiderOnTheStorm

Have always loved hearing about other families strange / quaint traditions and weird names for things. Stuff that makes no sense to anyone not in the group but is now tradition or canon.

Some of the Rider family quirks

"Quiet! The cricket is on ….. " said by my brother once when he just wanted everyone to shut up. none of us like cricket. now the phrase has grown to mean something that is trivial and yet more important than you / what youre saying (a kind of burn i guess)

"Oh my oochie-moochie!" …. said by my son when a football hit him in the groin. Lovely word to get some uumph behind for emphasis

Having Crimbo dinner on Christmas Eve and eating chocolate for breakfast on Easter sunday morn (not too weird, i guess)

Getting the kids to duck when driving under a bridge

Whats yours?

freshpopcorn

We call the immersion ''The Hot Switch''

Gregor Samsa

My mother used to do like a Mexican wave with her arms and let out a little cheer every time she drove over a county border. I still do it.

RiderOnTheStorm

reminds me of a couple more car related ones …

My kids still call a certain bend in the road "the magic corner" as its the last major junction before they get to their granny's house and they know they are close to the end of the journey …. they are in their late 20's now!

As we cross a county border I always said to the kids "thats the last house in county X" … Now Mrs Rider says it to me (no kids in the car) and she knows Im sentimental about these things ….

Sid 1984

D'Auld Fella every time we'd pass a graveyard…"That's the dead centre" of wherever we were passing through.

6 of us crammed into a 70's 5 seater family car jammed with a weeks holiday luggage passing a hitchhiker (remember those?) "Ah sure where would we put you" as he signalled to the hiker that we were turning off further up the road to ease his conscience for not stopping.

taxAHcruel

It was funnier in the moment than it is in retrospect - but during a competition recently where both of my kids were not sure they were going to win and they were getting upset about it - my dad randomly came out with "even jesus would find it easy to turn this whinging into whines" and it some how cracked us up and my kids went out there and - got Silver and bronze. But. In fairness they wouldn't have tried otherwise :)

taxAHcruel

We also grow our own goose for christmas every year. So my kids each year name the goose. So I am waiting to hear what this years geese are going to be called. I reckon in ireland this is not common ? :o

HalloweenJack

Specifically among my siblings: calling our grandparents by their first names. Don't know how it got started but I'm the youngest and it was firmly established by then. Seems to confuse our cousins on both sides.