When I Grow Up…

When I grow up…I’ll continue my family’s traditions & create new ones

I love coming home and being around the family. During this past Thanksgiving break, I began to recognize and appreciate even more the uniqueness of my family’s culture. Some of our customs we’ve created ourselves and some we’ve inherited from our ancestors. All of them show our closeness and how much we love each other.

Here are a few things the Noel clan does around the holiday season:

The Turkey Leg Match: Dark Skins vs Light Skins

There are four of us siblings that have the same parents – two are “dark skinned” like Dad and the other two are “light skinned” like Mom.  And as politically incorrect as it may be, we sometimes compete against each other in Light Skins vs Dark Skins teams. Yea, our sense of humor is very tongue-in-cheek.

Not too sure how long we’ve done this tradition, but the rules are whichever team calls dibs on the turkey leg at midnight on Thanksgiving Eve, will be able to eat it the next day during Thanksgiving dinner. To be honest, I don’t think any of us really loves the turkey leg like that [I've been vegetarian for a couple of years and I usually end up giving mine away to one of the losing light skins :-p] but I’m guessing the tradition started back when we did. We keep it going because it’s good-natured family fun that cracks us up.

Guests who come over for the holidays either shake their heads in disbelief or join in and pick sides.

‘Tis the Season to Spend QT with the Family

The siblings and I have done away with Christmas gift giving. Instead, we spend the day eating, reminiscing and giving Mom an extra hand around the house.  At night, we round up a large group of family and friends and head to the movies.

Unity Creates Strength

One tradition that’s not a Noel-Telson original, is making, drinking and sharing Soup Joumou every New Years day, which is also the day Haiti was declared a free republic. During France’s colonization of Haiti, enslaved Haitians weren’t allowed to drink the soup since it was considered a delicacy.

Representing freedom, unity and good fortune for the new year, we sit down as a family and drink the soup first thing in the morning of January 1. The next part of the tradition is to share homemade Soup Joumou with relatives and friends, as a symbol of wishing them good fortune as well. My mom always packs several tupperwares and sends my stepdad out to deliver them to our loved ones. He later comes back with a few more that he picked up along the way.

What are your family traditions?

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