Hello and Welcome to T Day!
Today we’re going to veer off a bit from going through the first names of direct lineage genetic kin because, believe it or not, I don’t have any whose name begins with the letter T!
Now, to be honest, the above feels a little strange to say, despite my years of healing around my DNA discovery, because my Dad, the man who raised me as his own, is named Tim. So, yes, I could go the way of talking about him because there are many wonderful things I could say about him, but in the interest of privacy (he is still alive, thank goodness), I’m going to go into today’s post a little sideways by talking about traditions and tables. Still relevant to family history, though not specific to a single person.
Traditions:
Whether it is by a lack of formal rites of passage in the larger United States or by a lack of formal religion in the more recent generations of my nuclear family, the majority of our traditions revolve around birthdays, holidays, everyday meals.
As a child, we always celebrated the typical holidays. Thanksgiving involved turkey with all the fixings and when my brother was old enough to try his first bite of turkey the tradition began of my vegetarian dad eating one bite to show him it wasn’t poison.
Christmas brought vegetarian lasagna with a big salad and French Bread.
There was a Bunny Basket at Easter and sparklers for the 4th of July and surely other little tidbits I’m forgetting at the moment.
My Grandma Eve always brought in a small branch from a fruit tree to blossom in her house and decorated it with blown eggs at Easter. But that was her tradition, not ours. Though I do have fantasies of recreated that tradition someday.
My mom, brother, and I would visit Picuris Pueblo every August to help prepare for and celebrate the Feast of San Lorenzo with my aunt, uncle, and cousins.
But we lived away from most extended family and so there weren’t ever large meals or big family gatherings to spice up one holiday from the next.
When my mom died in 2006, I took my role as the Keeper of the Family to heart and began insisting we share meals on important days. I began creating extravagant Thanksgiving dinners, adapted my mom’s lasagna at Christmas, and pulled everyone together on their respective Birthdays.
It’s been nearly 20 years since I unofficially (and then officially per my brother and eldest cousin in separate conversations) took on the role of Matriarch. I’ve calmed a bit about how each meal is prepared and how extravagant it all is, but I am still the gatherer of the family.
There’s still lasagna at Christmas and turkey at Thanksgiving (though we raise many of the ingredients ourselves now, including the main course) and my wife and I have created a few of our own traditions so that our daughters might carry them forward as well. Simple traditions like making dandelion cookies each Spring and eating crab on New Years Eve to fill our bellies and our hearts.
Tables:
When I think about all the women in my family who either didn’t like to cook, or simply didn’t cook, I’ve felt a bit of a loss at the potential time around the dining table that might have been.
However, sometime in the 1980s, my dad took a job for a local shopping center right off the Santa Fe Plaza. This job asked him to create all of the wood railings and banisters throughout the multi-floored center. Additionally, he built wooden trash can covers, benches for seating, and a beautiful ceiling for the glass elevator. All of this woodwork was carved with simple and beautiful decorations.
As my dad has been known to do during a large job like this, he used the style of it all to build a table for our home with a bench and five chairs for us to share meals around.
This table was given to me around 2001, has travelled from house to house with us, and has hosted countless family meals, cups of hot and cold beverages, and many a game night. It has been scribbled on by kiddos and chewed on by toddlers 🙂
It has become my happiest tradition to gather people around that table to share time and space.
In Your Research/Experience…
Are there family traditions you follow and know where they originated? Did/do you share large family gatherings? Has important furniture been passed down to you that holds the memories of many?
Housekeeping
My theme for the 2025 A to Z Challenge is Kin! The first names of direct lineage kin, to be more specific.
I’m spending the majority of the month focusing on the first names of many of my direct lineage kin. I’ll include their full names, any vital information I’ve found in my research, their relation to me, any fun tidbits/characteristics/experiences, and any commonalities I may have gleaned between myself and them.
In a couple of cases, where I have not identified an ancestor whose first name starts with a particular letter, I will choose a unique middle name, a direct line surname, and/or ancestral lands/places of significance.
Pop over here to read my full theme reveal: A to Z 2025 Challenge Theme Reveal: Kin
Pop over here to visit our host and see what they’re up to throughout this year’s challenge: A to Z Challenge
If you’re visiting from the A to Z Challenge please leave a comment so I can visit you, too! If your comment bio doesn’t link back to your site, please feel free to add the link to your most recent post to the comment field so I can be sure to find you.
Thanks for being here! See you again soon!
Onward,
Melissa
Traditions & Tables is a great post title, and the post itself was wonderful too. It made me think of my childhood and dinner time. Two working parents, I often ate at the table alone. When I started dating my non-husband his mother always had the family around the dinner table and wanted to claim all Sundays for that purpose. I didn’t understand it at the time. Now, though I eat dinner every night at the table with my family (no electronics) and we talk about our day. Love the tradition of family meals.
Stopping in from A-to-Z: https://brewingcoffeetwistingwordsbreakingpencils.ca/2025/04/23/tools-and-resources/#comment-8544
I love that you are carrying forward a new tradition for your family! I love how we can pick things up that we care about and drop the ones that don’t serve us. My wife was a latch-key kid and never ate at the table so we balance comfy eating on the couch and meals at the table 🙂 It works!
How funny that no one has a T name. There always seems to be one letter (and not one of the letters you’d think) that just doesn’t work well. You’ve got some interesting traditions.
I have been surprised by where there have been gaps! There are several T last names, but I’ve done most of them for first name letters.
Beautiful post.
I grew up far from our extended relatives. One drive through a blizzard, when I was about six, ended all attempts to join them for winter gatherings. But we made a point of inventing our own traditions — including a table that my mother scoured antique stores until she found precisely the one she wanted. And, now, I have it!
I love this and am so glad you have the memory of the table! And yes, I totally understand about those winter blizzards. My dad’s family was in Kansas so we went to see them each summer. The heat sucked but at least the weather wasn’t dangerous!