My “Six-Year Sleep-Over” that Changed my Traditions

The six-year sleepover, a sleepover that never ended but traditions that did. I was at my friend’s house for the summer. We did many fun things together. The summer left us to camping, going to either the beach or the lake down the road, hiking, biking, walking the nearby neighborhood, or just simply playing outside. However, one day I received a phone call from my sister. She said a man was coming over and was going to be asking me questions that I should answer. After this visit, I soon began to live with them. Once I began to live there my original traditions were gone.

Before moving in with my new household, I always had the same traditions year to year with my biological family. We celebrated each holiday in a different way, but usually following the same concept and always on time with each other. No matter how old we were we always played along because it was something fun to do with one another. Plus my mother had us all convinced that, Cupid, leprechauns, tooth fairies, and even Santa Claus were real for such a long time. The only reason I found out was that one day my teacher just went, “well you guys are all old enough to know that Santa Claus and all those made up people and things are not actually real”. However, even with knowing this information I played along, especially since my little brother was still much young.

No matter how silly it might have even been. Even for the holidays like St. Patrick’s Day and Easter. For St. Patrick’s Day we always made leprechaun traps so that we could hopefully catch one, made sure to wear green, and then celebrated the end of the day with a traditional dinner with one another. For Easter, we would do an Easter egg hunt competition between us siblings to see who would find the most eggs that the “Easter Bunny” left behind for us.

Growing up Christmas was always my favorite. It was the most “magical” holiday for us kids. Preparation the week of Christmas was always filled with us making decorations with one another, hang them around the house, making sure we have carrots and everything to make cookies for Santa and his Reindeer and wrapping Christmas-gifts that we got for one another. Then we would put all the gifts in the designated corner, my mom would always stack them so high that they would either reach or almost reach the ceiling. When it came to Christmas Eve, we would all spend the day with each other baking cookies, finishing up any wrapping we had left to do, and playing outside in the snow with each other. When we played outside with each other we would be, having snowball fights, creating snow statues, snow forts/caves, and igloos, then we would go sledding and end with a snowball fight. My mother would also make sure that she went out and got donuts for Christmas Morning. Before it got too dark we would create a path of sparkles and I think granola for “Santa and his reindeer” so they knew where they should land. Then we were able to open just one Christmas gift early, usually of our choice. As I grew older I was allowed to help bring in the “special gifts” that my mom and sister had hidden in our camper as a surprise for my brother (and me till I got older and started helping). Then they would have me go to sleep so that “Santa could come”.

In the morning we all would wake up, eat our donuts and open our stockings. Once everyone was awake we would all gather in the living room and sit in a circle with my mother and grandfather. Then we would all open our gifts with one another, and for every gift, we just “had” to take a picture. After that, we would play around with our gifts, that we got, thanked one another, and watched Christmas movies / Parades. Afterward, we would help my mother cook dinner, and once it was ready we would all sit down and enjoy Christmas dinner with one another.

When I moved in with my “new family” all of these traditions went away and changed into new ones. Quite honestly at first I was not all for it either. My first year was off visiting my bio-family for the major holidays. Then it turned into staying at my new home for the holidays. These ones seemed to be a lot more “half-assed” and not as family oriented. They were also not as bonded as it originally was. There was not the “togetherness” and they were very “short ended”. However, this would make sense because when you have a new child move in and also a new adult, it makes for new changes.

However, after a couple of years of living with them we began to share our holidays with my now ex’s family. These celebrations brought us all together and made another new “tradition” and we did this for about 4 years. These ones were more enjoyable than the ones we originally had together and allowed for us all to “come together more as one”. However, with a break-up, this left us to not getting together for the holidays and made for a new version of the old original traditions to come about again and this time they were even more disconnected or we just did not do anything at all.

For me being that I had this connection with my bio-family, I was able to actually experience the traditions of my family. Not only their traditions but traditions of another family that I was added to. As I grow older and go into adulthood I plan to follow the traditions that I originally grew up with, but to also intertwine them with the new ones I have been introduced to. I guess you could say that I can connect with what Vargus has to say at the end of his story, about the kind of living a “different reality”. I had one normal “reality” that was changed into a new one that was then changed again. Having this experience has allowed me to be able to see the differences that can happen from family to family or between families. For me, I hope that when I grow older and create my own traditions, that I keep consistent and makes changes not as drastically quick as I had.

Photo by: Sandy Mann