My sister got married in the summer of 2007, the same summer I moved to Chicago. I'm fairly certain that with a sibling's marriage comes the inevitable transformation of family holiday traditions.
Besides the marriage, my extended family is huge, and growing. My dad comes from a family of eight kids—my mom, six. I lost count of my cousins somewhere around 50 or 60. They're getting married and reproducing at such a steady rate that it's hard to get everyone in one place anymore.
Part of me wants to keep old family traditions going—the part of me that hates change and losing touch. But the other part of me knows that it's time to move on and accept that many of us will go our separate ways. It's logistically impossible for all of my cousins to get together for Thanksgiving forever.
My family is definitely going through the transformation phase right now, and it will probably take a while. My sister is having a baby in June, which, I suppose is the beginning of new traditions for our family.
Tags: Thanksgiving, tradition
Stephanie Zilles
Your sister is having a baby!? That is awesome.
As far as family traditions go, ours are changing too. I haven’t had Thanksgiving with my parents since high school, and this year will be the first year I don’t spend Christmas with them. Marriage changes everything, but Thomas and I have managed to compromise.
Luckily, he only has one cousin, and I only have four, so I think we’ll be keeping in touch with them
Laurie | Your Ill-fitting Overcoat
I was just talking to some friends about this the other day– that as we all grow up and get married, it changes the way that we interact with our families. It becomes rare that we go home for a visit and spend time alone with our parents or siblings. If our partner’s family lives far from ours, we have to choose where to spend the holidays. It’s one of the sad parts of growing up, for sure.