When a special activity evolves into a tradition within a family, it creates meaning, connection, and community and makes common occasions more momentous and memorable. Establishing a sense of stability and shared history has never been more important to parents than it is today, as families become more fractured and scattered. THE JOY OF FAMILY TRADITIONS offers more than 400 fresh ideas and creative approaches to cultivating birthday, anniversary, holiday, and other rite-of-passage and seasonal traditions that strengthen personal bonds and reflect a family's individual style, spirituality, and values.
Inspires and instructs families on how to create, personalize, adapt, and preserve relevant traditions that reflect how we live today. Explores the historical, cultural, and often quirky origins of holidays, customs, and milestones, both uncommon and familiar. Includes holidays, holy days, annual events, once-in-a-lifetime occasions, and personal celebrations. Reviews"A lovely new book that pays tribute to hundreds of celebrations from around the world and offers new ideas for marking important occasions."—Pregnancy Magazin "Be inspired to preserve, personalize and create meaningful holiday and year round traditions with the more than 400 multi-cultural activities found in The Joy of Family Traditions."—Senior Wire News Service "...read The Joy of Family Traditions by Jennifer Trainer Thompson, so you can celebrate the holidays even better than you celebrate them now."—Washington Post Recommended in Q&A Column"If you love family traditions, you will take pleasure in The Joy of Family Traditions by Jennifer Trainer Thompson."-Tom McMahon's syndicated "Kid Tips" Column appears in 62 newspapers nationwideFeatured in two wedding themed pieces on 5/1/08 and 5/8/08.-Content That Works
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* Explores the historical, cultural, and often quirky origins of holidays, customs, and milestones, both uncommon and familiar.
About the Author
JENNIFER TRAINER THOMPSON is the author of the best-selling Beyond Einstein, as well as seven cookbooks. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where she and her young family are developing family traditions of their own.
THE AUTHOR SCOOP
What's been sitting in the back of your fridge for more than a year? Armageddon Hot Sauce. It’s made by a former Navy Sea Dog who runs a bar in the Adirondacks that you can only get to by snowmobile in the winter. He marinates chicken wings in this incendiary sauce, and if you can eat a dozen, you get your name on his “Wall of Flame” next to his live tarantula. (I have not succeeded.) Are you "six degrees of separation" away from anyone famous? Well, my father’s name is Harry Potter Trainer. My kids think it’s pretty cool, and a Boston radio station once reported that Harry Potter was alive and well living in the Bay State. Last year he had stickers made up that say “Harry Potter was here” and leaves them all around – on the examining table at the doctor’s office, on the underside of the toilet seat in my kids’ bathroom, and so on. What was your first job? My first real job was supposed to be at the U.N., editing a new magazine about the African kingdom of Lesotho. The night before I was to start my job, I got a call that the king had been deposed and the job was off. I already had my car packed, so I moved down to New York anyway, found an apartment in the East Village, and got a job working as a lowly editor’s assistant at Simon & Schuster. I got fired after six months, and my boss told me I should be writing instead – best advice I ever got, and I signed my first book contract several months later.Where were you when you found out your first book would be published? I was in my apartment in the East Village, which had been abandoned by the owner (we tenants were just starting to figure that out because we’d gone over a month with no hot water or heat and the landlord was unresponsive - he was in Hawaii, avoiding city authorities and a jail sentence). It was very cold in the apartment, and I was all bundled up; I remember I was wearing gloves and making myself tea, when I got a call from Carol Houck Smith at W.W. Norton. It was like getting a call from God. She remains a friend to this day. Do you have pets?It’s a joint family effort, led mostly by my nine-year-old son. He has a pet gecko and we also have 5 chickens. We live in a really small town — last year when some dogs crashed through the chicken fencing, our neighbor (thankfully) called the dog officer, who called the chief of police. When the chief of police couldn’t find me, he called my husband’s office and told his secretary to get him out of an important meeting – it was a “chicken emergency.” The girls, as we call them, are good layers, providing us with eggs and atmosphere daily.
THE AUTHOR SCOOP
What's been sitting in the back of your fridge for more than a year? Armageddon Hot Sauce. It’s made by a former Navy Sea Dog who runs a bar in the Adirondacks that you can only get to by snowmobile in the winter. He marinates chicken wings in this incendiary sauce, and if you can eat a dozen, you get your name on his “Wall of Flame” next to his live tarantula. (I have not succeeded.) Are you "six degrees of separation" away from anyone famous? Well, my father’s name is Harry Potter Trainer. My kids think it’s pretty cool, and a Boston radio station once reported that Harry Potter was alive and well living in the Bay State. Last year he had stickers made up that say “Harry Potter was here” and leaves them all around – on the examining table at the doctor’s office, on the underside of the toilet seat in my kids’ bathroom, and so on. What was your first job? My first real job was supposed to be at the U.N., editing a new magazine about the African kingdom of Lesotho. The night before I was to start my job, I got a call that the king had been deposed and the job was off. I already had my car packed, so I moved down to New York anyway, found an apartment in the East Village, and got a job working as a lowly editor’s assistant at Simon & Schuster. I got fired after six months, and my boss told me I should be writing instead – best advice I ever got, and I signed my first book contract several months later.Where were you when you found out your first book would be published? I was in my apartment in the East Village, which had been abandoned by the owner (we tenants were just starting to figure that out because we’d gone over a month with no hot water or heat and the landlord was unresponsive - he was in Hawaii, avoiding city authorities and a jail sentence). It was very cold in the apartment, and I was all bundled up; I remember I was wearing gloves and making myself tea, when I got a call from Carol Houck Smith at W.W. Norton. It was like getting a call from God. She remains a friend to this day. Do you have pets?It’s a joint family effort, led mostly by my nine-year-old son. He has a pet gecko and we also have 5 chickens. We live in a really small town — last year when some dogs crashed through the chicken fencing, our neighbor (thankfully) called the dog officer, who called the chief of police. When the chief of police couldn’t find me, he called my husband’s office and told his secretary to get him out of an important meeting – it was a “chicken emergency.” The girls, as we call them, are good layers, providing us with eggs and atmosphere daily.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Unique, Charming and Informative Book,
By SA Francis "Steph" (Irvine, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Joy of Family Traditions: A Season-by-Season Companion to 400 Celebrations and Activities (Paperback)
I just finished reading this wonderful new book and found it to be both a fascinating history lesson (it provides lots of background information about holidays and traditions from around the world) and an accurate view of family life in modern America. The suggestions it provides are practical and realistic for families who are trying to combine many different cultural backgrounds or step-parents and -siblings.
Most of the other traditions books out there are more of a how-to handbook (with recipe-like instructions) to be consulted on occasion, not a book you can sit down and read cover to cover like this one. The Joy of Family Traditions is a beautiful book with a warm, cozy feel. I also appreciated the sections of this book that talked about family traditions that involve charitable giving, and volunteering. I highly recommend it.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent resource,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Joy of Family Traditions: A Season-by-Season Companion to 400 Celebrations and Activities (Paperback)
I'm a new mom, and I was looking for information on traditions I can start in my new family. My parents had a small number of things they did with us kids regularly, and they are some of my favorite memories. I was looking to expand on that and find new ways to interact with my kids that honor the special moments in their lives and that make our time together as a family more memorable.
This book is a great resource for that. The book is broken down into the four seasons, and within those seasons, the various holidays, festivals, and historic celebration periods are explained. The author gives examples of how some families celebrate these events and makes suggestions about how you can incorporate the meaning of these celebrations into your own life, starting new or enhancing existing traditions in your family. Even beyond the examples and suggestions, the information really gets your own creative juices flowing. The book is incredibly rich, and it's good for people with or without children in their lives. I'm so glad I bought it!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Every Mother Should Have This One,
By
This review is from: The Joy of Family Traditions: A Season-by-Season Companion to 400 Celebrations and Activities (Paperback)
A beautiful book with creative ideas, like having a family hibernation weekend in February. The author recognizes that not all families are the same and that their traditions should reflect family members' heritage, culture, ethnicity, and personalities. She is also very sensitive to the challenges of creating meaningful traditions in blended (step) families. It is the Mother's Handbook for building family bonds.
Not only that, but it is so beautifully designed from cover to cover that it is the perfect holiday hostess gift or Mothers' Day gift. And whatever you do, DON'T skip the introduction. Lucy Adams author of If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny
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Inside This Book
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United States, Memorial Day, New York, Mardi Gras, Patrick's Day, Christmas Eve, Yom Kippur, Santa Claus, Civil War, Mother's Day, Twelfth Night, New Orleans, African American, New Year, Valentine's Day, Shrove Tuesday, Father's Day, May Day, Native Americans, Middle Ages, Cinco de Mayo, New England, Christmas Day, North America, Eric Kerns Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
United States, Memorial Day, New York, Mardi Gras, Patrick's Day, Christmas Eve, Yom Kippur, Santa Claus, Civil War, Mother's Day, Twelfth Night, New Orleans, African American, New Year, Valentine's Day, Shrove Tuesday, Father's Day, May Day, Native Americans, Middle Ages, Cinco de Mayo, New England, Christmas Day, North America, Eric Kerns Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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