Burning the hat and other family traditions

Once upon a time the St. Louis Cardinals went to the World Series and through an odd series of events, lost every game. Swept in four to that team from boston. Rob was home from college the following New Years and stumbled upon a red sox hat in our mud room that one of Caroline's friends had left. "What's this doing here?" he asked as he tossed it in the fireplace. That alone was not enough to start a tradition but the fact that it was new years caused someone to say, "we should do this every year", and it came about that we have.

Family traditions are great. It's part of the cement that holds a family together. Some of ours are things that many others do, such as attending midnight mass on Christmas eve, gathering at the same place every Labor Day weekend, stopping at Cracker Barrel on vacations, Godfather marathons, going to fireworks on July 4th, gathering for prayer for each other.

Some were passed on from our parents, such as saying a prayer in the car before we pull down the driveway on a long vacation drive. We open family gifts on Christmas eve while reserving the Christmas morning for Santa. Thanksgiving and Christmas are unimaginable without sweet potato casserole, a tradition from Robin's family.

Some were unique to places we have lived, such as trips to Ted Drewes for custard after Cardinals games, or keeping a plastic pinwheel imbedded in our St. Louis yard, as Caroline insisted. Thanksgiving hikes up Pinnacle mountain in Little Rock, annual excursions in Arkansas to cut down our own Christmas tree.

Some came to us from our forefathers and go back perhaps hundreds of years such as egg fighting at Easter, and eating blackeyed peas on New Years for good luck. Rob called today while he was driving around St. Louis in search of a can of blackeyes, Rachel is cooking them at her house and we had 'em for lunch here.

But other are things that are probably unique to us. Pepsi biscuits, tracking license plates on styrofoam cups on vacation, burning a red sox hat on New Years Day, keeping Pepto Bismol in the fridge, wearing peanut earrings at baseball games, grinding cheese crackers in our teeth on road trips. In other words, we're a bunch of morons with a pack of silly habits that no one else would appreciate.