Original and Meaningful Family Tradition: Passing On A Legacy of Love

Every year, in preparation for Thanksgiving Day, my family holds “Baking Day”. This began a few years ago and has become very important to our family. This is one of our most meaningful family traditions and is nearly prized as much as Thanksgiving Day itself.

Thanksgiving Day has changed over the years. Especially now that we kids grew up and started families of our own. I remember Thanksgiving Days with over 40 people in my parents’ house. I remember Thanksgivings where I spent half the day with Mom and the other half with Dad. Now my husband and I alternate Thanksgiving between his family and my family every other year. But with all the changes that have occurred other the years, the one thing that remains constant is Baking Day.

Our Thanksgiving Family Tradition

Back when we would have 40ish people for Thanksgiving we used to bake ALL DAY. From morning until evening. It was exhausting. Back in those days we would bake pumpkin rolls (9-12), pumpkin pie (2-3), chocolate chip cookies & peanut butter blossom cookies (3-4 dozen each), and great grandma’s love noodles. Now that Thanksgiving celebrations are smaller, we have modified the amounts to reflect that. But still bake more than is necessary so we can share the goodies with our friends & neighbors.

Love Noodles

The most meaningful goodie that we work on during the baking day is great grandma’s love noodles. To everyone else, there is truly nothing special about them. They are simply homemade egg noodles. But for us, we go to town on this recipe. We use all her heirloom kitchen items to make them and we talk about memories.

When I was little and great grandma was still with us, I asked her for her noodle recipe. I felt like her noodles were the best I’d ever tasted in my life. So, she grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and at the top she named the recipe “Love Noodles” because she felt the most important ingredient in this recipe was the love that went into creating them.

On Baking Day, it is the responsibility of everyone present to make one batch of love noodles. After they are all made, we stick them on the cookie sheet and freeze them until Thanksgiving Day when we serve great grandma’s love noodles beside mashed potatoes, stuffing, & turkey. For me, if the noodles weren’t there it would be terrible. I understand that this is not a typical Thanksgiving dish, but for me, it’s more than the status quo. It’s about the memories and legacy. Great Grandma’s Noodles must always be served for Thanksgiving Day.

Why This Thanksgiving Family Tradition?

To Prepare in Advance

Like I mentioned earlier, one of the reasons this tradition began was because of the years when we had a house full. When I say we baked from morning to evening, I’m not kidding. Nearly every year when the baking day is complete almost everyone is napping. It’s a race to fall asleep. Whoever is the last one to fall asleep is responsible for making sure that the last batch of chocolate chip cookies makes it out of the oven without getting burnt. I’m gonna let you in on a little secret…sometimes that last batch gets burnt haha!!

To Love On Others

Baking Day is certainly about preparing for Thanksgiving and doing things ahead of time to give us more time to relax and enjoy the day once it arrives. But it’s also a day to get together and plan out who all we want to love on by baking them fall goodies. We have our regulars who we bake for every year, and then sometimes we add friends. Like this year! Our neighbor is a local police officer and to show him how grateful we are we will be delivering yummy goodies to his station. (The girls have been begging me to take them to see him while he is at work and I think this is a pretty good excuse!

To Pass On A Legacy of Love

My girls never met their great-great-grandma. But it was one of the most amazing things standing beside them, coaching them through the process and teaching them the steps all while I was sharing my memories of her. We talked about how she was probably smiling knowing that her great-great-granddaughters were making a batch of her famous love noodles. But most importantly we talked about love. We talked about how loved they were and how we should in turn love other people.

Create A Family Tradition to Pass On A Legacy of Love

This isn’t the only family tradition we have, and it’s not the only family tradition that has love at the center. But it is certainly one of our favorites. There is something irreplaceable about passing down the legacy of love that we have experienced in our lives.

It doesn’t have to be a big huge scheduled event with a grocery list a mile long to count. I sit down reading Dr. Suess books that my grammy read to me when I was a little girl to my little girls most nights. The way they light up knowing that Great-Grammy read the very same book to me when I was their age is special. We experience the legacy of love in something as simple as that.

If you missed last week’s post, I put together a quick and simple Thanksgiving Table to inspire conversation. Go check it out!

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Open Your Doors,
Aliya