I’ve recently been thinking about new “traditions” that our kids are seeing that we didn’t have growing up.  Or maybe these are Southern things that I just wasn’t familiar with. Holiday traditions may be a bit off of my main blog topic, but since I live in Atlanta and learned about them while living in Vinings I’d like to hear other comments on whether this is national or a local phenomena.

“Booing” – this one I like.  Sometimes a couple of weeks before Halloween and recently just a few days before.  You’ll get a knock on your door and see a costumed child running away.  Left at your doorstep is a bag of candy.  The tradition is that you mark your house as “booed” and then you “boo” 3-5 others.  We don’t do it quite like that as my son loves to be “booed”, so we accept all booing that comes our way.

An action shot of my son, Chase, after "Booing" a neighbor's house. He loves it!

This year I was busier than normal and came home late one night to see him all dressed up and ready to roll.  Usually we’d spend a few days getting up to 12 bags ready to take on our booing adventure.  This night we only did about 5.

He’s gotten good at it as he’s gotten older, I have to park up the street and he runs down in mask and costume and rings the doorbell.  He only got busted this year as one mom saw me and told some others and they figured it out.  That’s OK, we got more booing back that way!  Booing makes the Halloween holiday last longer and its fun to try to not get caught.  Maybe this is like the devils night in the “olden” days.  I remember kids doing bad things the night before Halloween, that doesn’t seem to happen anymore.

“Elf on the Shelf” – I was warned about this new tradition and never got started with it.  Apparently the month before Christmas the elf comes out and does crazy things at night.  A neighbor said he ends up in the cereal box, he’s put toys out all over the place etc.  It’s a month of being creative and trying to find things to do with the elf!

My poor son doesn’t understand why he doesn’t have an elf, oh well, we do have one but he just sits there, he doesn’t do bad things and that’s OK with me!  Here’s where you can buy your Elf on the Shelf….should you choose to do so! And, now there’s a video coming out too. 

St Patty’s Day – Heck we always use to drink green beer and that was the extent of traditions.  Well it seems in elementary schools here there are elves that run around and do crazy things on St Patty’s day every year.  They are particularly fond of turning over desks and things like that.

I just saw something recently about an angel around Christmas.  Someone has written a book and is trying to sell angels.  I guess they probably do “nice” things around Christmas.

My sister-in-law has this Christmas pickle.  Now I guess she has 2 pickles.  The kids get money on Christmas morning for finding the pickle.  Might be something Italian about that or just her family.

A friend from Romania has a tradition where they put their socks out and get gifts before Christmas – I’ll have to follow up on this and learn more about it.

I’d love to hear of anything else that you’ve seen lately or your family does that might be of interest to others.  If its easy enough or fun enough, maybe we’ll do it – we sure love booing!