QOTD: Weird Holiday Traditions
We're taking a break from car-related QOTDs today because a) it's almost Christmas and b) I can't think of one, anyway.
Instead, I am wondering what weird/unusual Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa traditions you may have.
I'd start, but my family is pretty standard when it comes to this sort of thing. My parents do give me a car-related ornament just about every year, but I don't think that's particularly weird. Maybe you've got something a bit more interesting. Sound off below.
[Image: Elena Shashkina/Shutterstock.com]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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Christmas is a serious holiday. Not the time for weird things.
Airing of Grievances. I'm kidding -- my family does that all year long.
Merry Christmas!
This is our year to get the big bag of (occasionally replaced when worn out) novelty wind-up toys that causes more hilarity than it should as it cycles between various family members every Christmas.
From the time I was born, until I was about 45, we always went to a friend's house and had dinner, almost always burgers, fried shrimp, or fried fish (As long as bird wasn't involved, I was happy), and we would stay there until 3-5am. The highlights were messing with the older son's very badly done model train set, the constant derailments were just ridiculous. Worst track laying I've ever seen. But the best part, especially when we were older, and drunk, was playing pool on their insanely warped table. The parents were known for being, uhhh, "frugal" and that crap pool table was one of the times it burned them. I got one of those wobbly cue balls one year and it seriously made little difference in actual play, since the table was so badly warped. Nobody even knew I had switched the cue balls! Another tradition was my always severe allergy to pine trees and just being around their tree would, by the time dinner was over, have my nose running like a faucet and my eyes all red, etc. One year, I don't remember why, I brought my dogs, King and Molly. The host's daughter brought her mentally deranged puppy, who came to life when King and Molly walked in. It's the only time I saw Max appear to even slightly be happy to be alive. He was miserable for over 15 years. They about lost their minds when they got the next normal one, who was a very happy dog who got into everything. He just went last year at 15 also.
Sadly, all the parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, are long gone, and while all us that were kids back then are still alive, only a couple of us still remain in NW Ohio, so no more Christmas at their house. I miss it.