Families can be so much fun. Every family has their own personality and family tradition that come out when they all gather. I love to think about all of the traditions my family has. The yummiest tradition is our Christmas brunch and the cheesy egg casserole we only get once a year! However, not all traditions happen around the holidays.
Late at night while I was in the kitchen pouring myself a late night snack of OH’s cereal, I could not help but laugh at the thought of how weird one of my family traditions is. Honestly, you would be so confused and maybe even feel uncomfortable if you are there when the tradition happens.
Our Tradition
When all of my mom’s side of the family get together and eat a meal my Papa will pray. Sometimes we are that family who holds hands, but not often. My family does something very uncommon. Our weird and uncommon tradition is singing the first verse of Johnny Appleseed! Yep, we often sing our prayer! My grandfather will hold out the starting word “OHHHHHH…” and we will all join in with “the Lords been good to me…” and so on. No, we are not an extremely musical family so it is nothing fancy. The song is something that we sing so often, I had never thought about how weird and uncommon it was until I was pouring out my bowl of OH’s.
How This Started
After laughing about my thought, I went back out to the livingroom and was telling my mom about how weird it is. This got my mom thinking how did this tradition start? She then remembered that good friends of my grandparents taught this song to our family. The song Johnny Appleseed was something that they learned at a camp. This story gets even better, the couple meet at the camp one summer because they were both counselors. They must have really loved each other because they then got married. I am not sure if this song meant something to them but they continued to sing it just like my family sings it now. So I guess me and my family sing someone else’s love song.
This is a tradition that I pray will never die in my family. I want to continue singing this song with my loved ones for the rest of my life! All families have these weird traditions. Think hard about what yours may be because you definitely have one it just may seem normal to you.
Below is a picture of my family and below that a picture of my aunt, uncle and cousins!
