Crazy Holiday Traditions ~ Roosters & Hens & Beets, Oh My!

December 24, 2009 at 10:52 am | Category: blog

If you gather with family every year for the holidays, I’m sure there’s got to be one holiday tradition that stands out for you. Whether it comes from way back, or in my case, was created as a practical joke…

Yeah, you read it right. Practical Joke.

But, I’ll get to that in a second. As I was saying, traditions abound during the holidays. There are some steeped in old lore, Catholic, and Pagan, and everything else. Some are even a combination. I was just reading up on the holiday tradition of Kucios, which is what I celebrate with the husband’s family each Christmas Eve. It is a traditional Lithuanian celebration. And it is a total mixture of Catholic and Pagan practices. And really, I find it all very cool.

Now, we don’t follow all of the things mentioned in the Wiki about Kucios…Ummm, cause I might have been a little icked out, shocked at the very least, by the practice of pulling a rooster and hen from beneath the stove (Seriously? They just sort of hang out under there? I mean, with the whole house available to them?) and their tails are tied together. (Riiiight). So, if the rooster pulls the hen to the door, (Umm, why didn’t he try freedom in the first place…) there will be a wedding that year. But if he pulls her back under the stove, no wedding. Hmmm. Something’s got to be going on under that stove. Maybe they’ve got it backwards. Maybe there’s gonna be lots of little hens and roosters later that spring cause of the fun that’s had under that stove…

*Ahem* ANYWAY, there are some really cool rituals and traditions that are practiced during Kucios. Only some of the more tame ones, like passing the wafer to each person around the table, are what we do. As they break a piece off, the person handing it to them makes a wish for the coming year. In our family, this can be a time of jesting and good natured teasing.  Or, it can be heartfelt and endearing.  None of us care which type of wish we get.  It’s all about the gathering, after all.

So, that’s what the Barkevich family will be doing this…what?  That practical joke tradition?  Sigh.  I suppose I did say I’d tell you all about it.  Okay, here it is~

When I first met my now husband, he invited me to spend Christmas Eve with his family.  This would be the first large dinner I’d be spending with them.  In fact, there would be new members of the family I had yet to meet there.  I was a little nervous.  That aside, I was also excited.  I love my extended family.  They’re lots of fun and full of love.  They’re wonderful people.  Okay, so my then boyfriend, tells his mother that I was raised to eat whatever is placed before me.  No matter my like or DISLIKE of the food in question.  (Hey!  My mom brought me up well.  What can I say. I make my kidlets do the same thing.)

Well, he also informed her of my great, huge, IMENCE, dislike of beets.  Blech.  They taste like dirt.  Seriously, I do not like them…not with ham, not with…oh, um.  I digress.

So, my future mother-in-law decided to inform me of the very important old family tradition of eating beets on Christmas Eve.  It’s a must.  Eating beets on Christmas Eve will bring prosperity and good fortune in the coming year.  (Mind you, I’d have eaten them regardless.  The whole, you have to eat whatever is placed before you rule, and all.)

Man, oh man, I choked those things down.  My eyes watered, my stomach turned, but I got ‘em down.  And had a lovely time with my new family.

It wasn’t until the following summer that my future mother-in-law came clean.  She confessed her dirty little secret.  There was never a beet tradition.  She’d made the whole thing up. Nope.  Eating beets didn’t bring prosperity or good fortune…

Except, it had.  For me.  I was with a wonderful family, I’d gotten a new, much better paying job, I was in love.  Those beets did hold some magic for me.  And to this day, I eat beets once a year.  ONLY ONCE A YEAR.  On Christmas Eve.  And my wonderful mother-in-law, that I love with all my heart, has spent each year trying to find a beet recipe that I will actually like.  (And she kind of did.  Last year.  It wasn’t so bad, the beet soup, she made.  I requested it again this year.)

So, what does your family do this time of year?  What’s your big, or small, family tradition?

Happy Holidays!

~Sandy

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