Tradition, Tradition!

First of all, if you're not immediately clapping your hands and singing along with Tevye, I don't know who you are. ;) Remember live theater?  Mom and I saw that almost a year ago. Happy sigh. 

As the holiday season comes to a close, I've been thinking a lot about traditions, especially those that are specific to my family. Recently, I was informed by close friends that one of my family's Thanksgiving traditions was rather unknown to the rest of the world. I texted the group that I was proud of the nut cups I had made. There were hearts, and "good job"s followed almost immediately by "what's a nut cup?",  and possibly 1-2 hilarious side comments that I know don't need repeating.  😉 I took to the Internet to find examples of nut cups, because how did they not know?  What I found was that while nut cups are not unknown to the Internet, they do not appear to be a widely known tradition. So, for those outside the Acton household: A nut cup is a little cup of nuts and chocolate that you can snack on while you're waiting for the turkey to be cut, or for the mashed potatoes to come down to your end of the table. We've had them at Thanksgiving for as long as I can remember. I will say that having moved closer to Bruce's Candy Kitchen, their overall makeup has tilted more into the "chocolate cup" category...

Thanksgiving 2015

These are them! I still can't believe I made these cuties!

Another tradition we have in our family is one that I know is specific to us. It's The Pot. The Pot is a large cereal bowl sized blue and white speckled tin...pot. My dad used it as a child for a chamber pot before there was indoor plumbing. I've experienced, face to face,  the look you're making at your computer right now. But wait, it gets weirder. We put gifts in it every year! 

My personal favorite was the year my mom made a peppermint cake in The Pot. It was like a giant, delicious, cupcake.  

Christmas 2012

I think dad's favorite would be the year he took The Pot to Godiva Chocolates in Bellevue Square and had them fill it with chocolate for mom. Imagine their faces! 🤣 This year, for mom, we put a kintsugi kit in along with some cherished broken dishes. (If you've never read about kintsugi, this article is a pretty powerful description of the art, and what it can mean.)

Which brings me to another Christmas morning tradition.  My dad looks at a gift tag like a blank slate: "I wonder what kind of Klingon poetry I can write on this?" Which means Christmas morning the tags are completely unknowable. I mean we know who it's from, but as to what the tag means, and who the present should be delivered to, it's a guess. Plus, he doesn't remember either, so every gift is like a mystery bag! I mean, thank goodness there are only three of us! Ha!

This year, mom and I got him a Frome of Ocean's Eleven.

At Frome they take the main colors from every scene in a movie and make it into a thin strip of color. So what you get is a piece of art from a single movie. Cool, eh? And then we got totally self amused and decided to make each tag for his gifts be a line from the movie. Beat him at his own game! Plus, Ocean's Eleven is one of our favorites because it has so many quotable lines. I don't know if we laughed more writing the tags, or if he laughed more opening each gift, but it was hilarious! Here are my favorites:

"Ted Nugent called, he wants his shirt back."        Shirt

"You think we need one more? You think we need one more. All right, we'll get one more."   Another shirt

"Guys like us don't change. We stay sharp or we get sloppy. We don't change."   Spam Cookbook

"I like that you like it."   Pair of shoes

"Don't use seven words when four will do."   Scrabble

And you know what? This year his tags were all" To: Erica, From: Dad"! 🤣🤣 

Hope you had yours had a wonderful holiday season! 🥰