One of my favorite Christmas traditions growing up was making fried apple pies with my mom on Christmas morning. Every Christmas morning since I was a senior in High School we would wake up, put on our aprons, flour the counter top and roll out biscuits to make apple pies that we would fry in a pan of oil. If you have never made fried apple pies before, it is truly a southern art! If the oil is too hot the pie will burn, if it is not hot enough the pie absorbs the oil...gross...but, if you get the temperature of the oil just right the pie transforms into a crispy scrumptious treat. This was an important tradition that I carried into my marriage and hoped to continue with my child one day.
One of our favorite fall traditions is apple picking! |
It's hard as a parent to give up the ways we have always done things, and it can challenge our creative prowess to attempt to adapt our traditions to new situations. I just want to encourage every reader that it can be done! There are lots of reasons as to why our traditions may need to adapt. I think the biggest key to creating change is having parents who are on board and are able to get those around them excited about the new way of doing things! This is not always easy, but it is possible...and perhaps the process can keep us young with new ideas. If you already have kids and it is an existing tradition that you are trying to change, include your children in the problem solving effort. If you are needing to change a tradition and it's your first child, like us, including our extended family and friends in the problem solving process has helped us feel loved and supported along the way. Below are ways some of our traditions have metamorphosed:
Pumpkin Pie- Yes, you can make filling for pumpkin pie virtually fat free pretty easily. You just substitute eggs for egg whites, and evaporated milk for fat-free evaporated milk. When Christopher was small we just used custard dishes with no crust...and it was still yummy! As he has gotten older, and can have more fat, we have created a graham cracker crust using "Erewhon" graham crackers (the lowest in fat I have found) and non-fat yogurt.
Can't beat cookie making! |
Pizza- What kid doesn't look forward to a movie night with pizza and friends? And how many birthday parties do we go to a year where pizza is the main medium of food! Pizza is a fun treat, but when you go out or order pizza there is just way too much fat for a kid who can only have 9 grams of fat for the entire day! This tradition has adapted significantly in our family. Pizza nights are no longer the "laid back" nights where I get a break from cooking. Instead, they have become a creative adventure we experience with friends, neighbors and family. We make our own dough at home, with no oil. We roll out our own pizzas and then we all get to decorate however we would like! I have found that this has not only become a fun family tradition but a lot of Christopher's friends enjoy
Another successful pizza making adventure! |
Halloween- Halloween and trick or treating is something we only did until I was in third grade, and then we did fall festivals. I loved dressing up as a kid, it allowed my inner actress to come out and be thoroughly represented. Christopher did not fall far from the tree! This year he dressed up as Chewbacca from Star Wars. He practiced those noises for hours! (Perhaps we should have encouraged a different character...) In years past we have not encouraged trick or treating. Ryan is a teacher at the local school and a lot of his students come by our house, so Christopher was very content to dress up and pass out candy. This seemed perfect because then we didn't have to go through the process of sorting out candy, and belabor what he can and can't have. This year was different. Christopher really wanted to go trick or treating. We talked about the fact that there would be a lot of things he couldn't consume, but he still wanted to go, so we thought we would let him try. He and his best friend from school, Ireon, dressed up and we all went out together. This whole experience was heart touching, and believe me I never thought Halloween would feel sentimental. I had three neighborhood families contact me to make sure they had treats that Christopher could have, and then the evening of Halloween when I took Christopher
Look at all of their Halloween booty! |
Dad, Christopher and Uncle Joey enjoying breakfast! |
Fried Apples Pies- Did you notice I said apple pies in the above paragraph? Yes! Upon feeling defeated about our Fried Apple Pie tradition, my mom suggest that we try baking some apple pies. Not only did it work, but I have found the pies just as tasty! Christopher loves the baked apple pies and now can participate in the tradition! Truth be told my mom and I still fry a couple for ourselves for old times sake, but honestly I love the baked pies!
Traditions are so important, not only to kids but their parents too! I find so much hope in knowing that adaptions can allow us to participate in the traditions that are most important to us. G.K. Chesterton put all of this into perspective for me in his selection, "Enjoying Floods and Other Disasters." In this writing he shares a story about a man who every day struggled to open a drawer in his dresser. Every day the drawer was jammed and every day he would become more and more frustrated. Chesterton suggested to his friend that how one views the situation can vitally change one's outlook. If everyday you get up and you view yourself going to battle against this drawer, of course you will end up angry and frustrated, but if you can wake up and imagine, as you are pulling on the drawer, that you are "tugging a life-boat out of the sea" or "roping a fellow-creature out of an Alpine crevass" then the problem becomes an adventure. He goes on to say, "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered." (G.K.Chesterton, "Enjoying Floods and Other Disasters", Spiritual Classics, 303) Chesterton pushed me to view my greatest moments of defeat, frustration and uncertainties as a way to access my ability to be creative. And when changing a tradition feels utterly overwhelming, I think about that drawer-and how our kids' situations give us the opportunity to become more creative and adventurous than we ever thought possible.