Passover is one of my favorite holidays.

It is like a Spring Thanksgiving with food that is not quite as good. It is a time for our family to get together, sit around a table and make memories. I have such wonderful memories of Passover when I was growing up. It was always at our house and we had 2 large tables packed with people…all of our relatives and anyone who didn’t have family to go home to. We drank Welch’s grape juice out of these little special silver cups, looked for the hidden Affikomen and each of us got $5 were unmarried (even my divorced sister, Nancy, used to get money).

Adam and I have now been married almost 18 years and we have gotten into a rhythm of spending Passover with his parents in New Jersey.

My family then gets Thanksgiving. The first years away from my family was very hard but now it is just our routine. What it does mean is that while we have many traditions for Thanksgiving that we head up (e.g. Dessert Night), Passover is not under our control. We are also reformed so we do not change over our house for Passover or keep strict Passover during the holiday.

This year, I wanted to find a way to start a tradition of us for Passover and do this before we head to New Jersey for our Sedars.

Lucy is 8 and I figure that if we start now we can make this a tradition that she will remember and maybe even carry on. I have three things I am going to try this year and see what if any of them stick and what we want to do again next year. Here are my ideas that I am going to give a try:

1. Spring Cleaning

Just like many people clean up their kitchens and get rid of non-Passover foods, we are going to clean up our entire house to get ready for the holiday. We are going to make a game out of it and take just 2 hours to see how much we can each clean by ourselves. The goal is to collect gently used items (clothing, kitchen items, toys, DVDs) that we do not use that we can donate to others in need.

2. A Pre-Sedar

We are going to have a mini-sedar this weekend just the three of us. We are going to have the Passover foods we all like : chicken soup with matzo balls, harrosett, and chocolate lace cookies. Lucy will be able to say the four questions and we are going to sing an English song (sung to the tune of Clementine) about the 4 sons that my dad used to sing with us.

3. Tell The Story

We are going to take an evening to tell the Passover story. There are some great kid books you can get that do it in a simple but interesting way. We are then going to talk about the lessons of Passover and see what we can each take out of it to improve ourselves.

So as you can see, Passover for the Rockmore’s is not traditional and not very religious.

That being said, it is a time we do want to pause, remember the holiday and its traditions. Please let me know if you have any more ideas we should give a try. I would love to hear what traditions you celebrate. Holidays are some of the best memories you can make with your family so be it Passover, Easter or anything else, don’t miss out on this time of year to create them!
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