This month at Apartment Therapy we’ve focused on the trials and triumphs of setting up your new home. We expect occasional surprises and learning curves with every new place (rental or purchase). But have you ever encountered a well-established tradition that was affiliated with your new home and had to decide whether or not to continue that custom?
Recently an acquaintance of mine, while looking for a new home, came across a beauty with an interesting history. Not only was the house over 100 years old but since 1945 this home (and its several homeowners) has been “famous” for passing out homemade gingerbread cookies on Halloween. Every kid in the neighborhood, as well as the adults that grew up in the neighborhood, knows about the gingerbread house. So this friend needed to think: what would happen if they moved in and decided to not uphold this long-standing neighborhood ritual? Would it cause feelings of shame? Guilt? Nothing? It made me think about the homes I’d known from my childhood, the homes with long-standing traditions that I’d grown to count on.
There was the neighborhood with incredible car-stopping Christmas decorations that we would tour every year. The house that for decades displayed “NOEL” across the four columns of their home. The neighborhood with such fabulous Halloween trick-or-treating traditions that now, due to the incredible foot traffic, request that every kiddo bring with them a donation for the city’s local food center. (Now there’s a tradition that has morphed from inactive viewing to active participation from the people visiting the neighborhood.)
So let me ask our readers: Have you ever moved into a new home or neighborhood only to discover the (burden? blessing?) of a long-standing tradition? If so, did you decide to uphold the ritual, let it go completely or start your own new annual ceremony or statement?
Image: Flickr user AR McLin licensed under Creative Commons
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the day after we moved into our apartment, 10 or so kids came racing up the driveway and dispersed throughout our back yard playing. my partner and i stood in the kitchen dumbfounded. we went outside and said hello, at which point we were informed that this was THE yard to play in on the block. the tenants before us had kids the age of the neighborhood kids and over the years the neighborhood kids had come to see this swath of green are *theirs*. we talked about it (we had two major concerns: 1. a kid getting hurt on our property and 2. wanting to be able to spend some quiet time out there uninterrupted...it was, after all, part of why we'd moved into this particular house) and decided to just go with it. nearly 2 years later, i have to say our lives are richer for being the place the neighbor kids play and also that it made our transition into the neighborhood go much more quickly.
That hasn't happened to me, but if it'd did I'd so go with it! I love traditions, and it seems like a great way to get to know your neighbors!
Not really a tradition, but there was an old poplar planted in my back garden which was a tradition of the family that lived here originally (to plant a poplar wherever they moved).
I wanted to keep it, but the snow from two years back killed many of the branches (that were overhanging my neighbors yard), so I had to let it go.
Yep there was one house that always had a haunted house set up in their garage for the neighborhood kids to go in and be terrified. All year long I couldn't look at that house without thinking it was the haunted house.
I just moved into my grandmother's house this year. She used to have Easter here every year in her epic garden. This year I did a buttload of work in that garden and all the nieces and nephews came over and ran amok with sugar and plastic rabbits. Next year will be even more elaborate. It could only be better if she was still here.
Soon after we moved in I noticed a man snapping pics of our house. Of course I had to ask why.
He had visited back in the 50's when the owners threw elaborate cocktail parties in the basement.
(we had gutted it as there were only remnants of its past glory, the faux-leather and cotton batting bar complete with brass grommets and black mold, the broken mirrored mosaic bar back in grape motif, the built in aquarium cutouts in the knotty pine paneling, broken neon lighting around the perimeter and 2" of mouse poop on top of the dropped ceiling tiles and dred crow in the fireplace)
He said the owner built a plane in our garage and flew at the local airport with the actor Jimmy Stewart who later would come to the parties> even sent me pictures that his parents had saved from their visits.
What a secret life our little house lead! Made me feel guilty for all the cursing I did when renovating =-)
*dead crow. lol the "dreaded dead crow"
Upon buying my home in July two years ago I was informed that our cul-de-sac does a big party every Halloween. And my home is at the end of the cul-de-sac, right where the party is held! I didn't give it a second thought and jumped right in at Halloween, going all out in decorating the yard and joining in the party. We had a blast and it only got bigger and better last year.
Our house had no such traditions but my aunt and uncle`s did. They lived on King Street and every house has a lit up crown on their roof in the holiday and winter season. So naturally when they sold their house the crown was included. The new owners better have cooperated...the neighbors would have known they had the crown!
As a kid, I remember my parents passing on a home in a neighborhood with a Christmas lights tradition. My parents thought an abundance of lights to be gaudy and a) didn't want to have to look at it all every night for weeks and b) go through all the work. Of course, now that there are grandchildren, touring that neighborhood is always on the holiday agenda...
Growing up, there was a big Victorian house in my town that would carve and display hundreds of pumpkins around halloween. We used to take field trips at school to go see it every year! I'm not sure when it started, but each time someone new bought the house, the pumpkin display got bigger and bigger until I'm sure it got to the point that it was too expensive and too labor-intensive to continue. There's another street in town that we call "Christmas street". It's a little cul-de-sac that puts a GIANT tree in the center and puts lawn stakes that spell out The Night Before Christmas on each person's lawn, so that, starting at one end, driving around the tree and back to the starting point, you can read the whole book start to finish. I heard somewhere that the street has established a homeowners association to ensure that the tradition continues. People buying into the street have to sign a contract saying they'll do their part or they can't buy the house. I don't know if it's true or not, but it wouldn't surprise me if it is!
I guess I'm a curmudgeon. I would probably abandon any "traditions" associated with my new home, unless they just appealed to me for some reason, and most would not. My neighborhood is brand new and we have a 6 house "homeowner's association" so any new neighborhood "traditions" would have to be approved ty the group, mostly made up of hermits like me. So no worries! We each do what we feel like doing in the way of decorations and parties with (or without) each other, and everybody is happy.