The Heartbeat of Family Traditions

What if the essence of your family's past was captured in the rituals of your holiday gatherings? Join me, Carmen Cauthen, on Quiet, No More, as I invite you to explore the rich tapestry of my family's traditions—stories that are filled with laughter, community, and sometimes bittersweet memories. From the tantalizing aroma of turkey and ham during Thanksgiving to the timeless tradition of gathering at my aunt and uncle's house with the Wimberleys, these celebrations were not just about feasting but about weaving a legacy of togetherness. We even had our unique rituals, like exclusive movie nights and a cherished love for homemade cranberry sauce that my children might not have shared.

As we journey through the holiday season, the narrative gently shifts to Christmas and New Year's, where we pay homage to my grandmother with black-eyed peas and collard greens, symbols of our family's prosperity. These moments were carefully preserved, not just in memory but in photographs of us working side by side, washing dishes, and serving meals with fine china. 

It's a trip down memory lane where each shared meal and family gathering helped shape our identity, reinforcing the bonds that define us. Listen in to discover how these traditions serve as a bedrock for continuity, reminding us of the unity and the legacy we strive to keep alive.

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Unseen, unheard.
We've lived like that far toolong.
I'm Carmen Coffin and this isQuiet, no More.
So let's talk about traditions.
Do you have any?

(00:23):
I mean not just around holidays, but around everything.
We have traditions for so manythings that we don't realize
they are traditions.
We've just celebratedThanksgiving here in America, so
we have traditions aroundholidays here in America, so we

(00:48):
have traditions around holidays,and in my family we had
traditions for everything.
So for Thanksgiving, when I wasgrowing up, we always gathered
at my aunt and uncle's house,and it was the whole Wimberley
side of the family.
I don't remember if everybodybrought something, but that
would make sense because I was akid.

(01:09):
But we practiced that traditionuntil I was grown and married,
I actually think Shortly afterthat.
Then the Wimberley family as itbegan to change.
Then the Wimberley family as itbegan to change, as we began to

(01:42):
add people to the family.
We began to the Grady part ofthe Wimberley family, which was
my mom's side of the family.
We began to break off becauseone of her sisters had moved to
town and she invited everybodyto her house for Thanksgiving
because, unfortunately, her latehusband lost his father at
Thanksgiving and so to help himcombat that grief.
She would invite all of theGrady's to her home for

(02:02):
Thanksgiving and some of theirfriends.
But it's always been atraditional type of thing.
We had traditional meals.
We'd have turkey and usuallyturkey and ham.
There'd be some kind of sweetpotatoes, usually a pie.
There would be stuffing usuallya pie.

(02:23):
There would be stuffing.
For my mom, if she was makingstuffing it was Pepperidge Farm
always and she would just cut uponions and celery and add to
that.
Then there was homemade gravywith giblets from the turkey.

(02:49):
You'd cook all the stuff in thebag and that big neck and pull
the meat off and chop up all thegiblets, chop up the heart and
the liver and that'd be part ofyour gravy.
And it wasn't stuffing, becauseI never remember my mother
stuffing the cavity of theturkey.
It was dressing to go on theside Rarely.
Until my mother's sisters movedhere from the north did we have

(03:11):
anything other than jelliedcranberry sauce out of a can
that went in the refrigerator acouple of days early so it would
be chilled.
I wasn't crazy about that, butI did when I got on my own.
I like to make cranberry saucefresh from the cranberries and

(03:33):
oranges and put it in a mold andeat it that way.
Now my children don't like it,so I don't make it anymore, but
that was one of the things thatI love to do.
That was a tradition for me.
We also always had collardgreens and I think we always had
string beans, and then there'dbe some sort of cake and my

(03:59):
grandparents would come and theywould spend the night with us.
They would come and stay.
They might come earlier in,would come and stay, they might
stay, come earlier in the weekand stay.
You know, my mom was aneducator, so she would be
finished with school either onTuesdays at the end of the
school day or midday onWednesday, and then she would

(04:21):
start to cook.
And it was a fun time, a familytime, a time when cousins would
get together, we would playgames.
We would, as long as I canremember, regardless of whether
it was the Wimberleys or theGrady's, on Thanksgiving night

(04:42):
we went to the movies.
There was always a new moviecoming out and after we grew up
we got, you know, probably highschool age.
We would all pile in cars andgo to the movie and then we'd
head home and we'd have somemore time together the next day
eating leftovers.
Turkey sandwiches.
You know you had to have somewhite bread and some turkey and

(05:05):
plenty of mayonnaise so it wouldbe moist.
We didn't think about theturkey necessarily maybe being
dry, but we did like a lot ofmayonnaise on our sandwiches.
That was just Thanksgiving.
We had traditions for Christmas.

(05:26):
We had traditions for NewYear's Day because my mother's
mother's birthday was January1st and she, wasie, was a little
bit spoiled but she was adelightful woman and her

(05:50):
children as many of them ascould would gather for New
Year's Day for her birthdaydinner, until she was not with
us anymore.
And I remember Mama cookingblack eyed peas and there would
be collard greens, because ifyou're from the South,

(06:10):
particularly collard greens arethe green money that you're
going to have in your house andso you have to have that cooked
before you.
You don't cook on New Year'sDay, you cook the day before.
You don't cook on New Year'sDay, you cook the day before, so
it's in your house.
When midnight strikes, therewas the black eyed peas were the

(06:32):
coins that you would have, soyou'd have to have them cooked.
I don't remember mama cookingthem from scratch.
Those.
I remember her cooking out ofthe can we would have.
I want to say maybe, as she gotolder, it would be more like
barbecued ribs and baked chicken.

(06:53):
That would be the meat for thatday and there'd be some kind of
punch.
My mom was the red Kool-Aid ladydefinitely, except in the
summer.
Then she would switch off tolemonade and it was still
probably a Kool-Aid mix.
She didn't make lemonade fromscratch a lot, but my father's

(07:15):
mother made lemonade fromscratch every day and when my
grandfather would leave hisdrugstore and drive home, she
would walk to the drugstore torelieve him to go home for
dinner and there was always asmall pitcher of freshly
squeezed lemonade for him,literally every day.
And we didn't make ourlemonades the same way.

(07:39):
My father's mother would boilthe lemons.
She would wash the lemons andthen she would boil the lemons
and then cut them up and squeezethe juice out of them.
My mom and her family, or hermom, would.
They would wash the lemons, butthey would just cut them in

(08:00):
half and squeeze them.
It's amazing the ways you learnto do things and you have a
tradition about how you do it,even reading.
My dad had a tradition ofreading.
He would read Louis L'Amour,cowboy novels and I never got

(08:21):
into that.
But he also liked to watchstories on TV like Mannix and
Mission Impossible, and that isprobably where my love for shows
like Law and Order, chicagoFire, shows that are dramatic

(08:42):
and you have to figure outwhat's going to happen at the
end because it's not just cutand dry and that helped to lead
to my love of reading policenovels and black ops novels
Doesn't mean I don't likeromances, but I have a very

(09:04):
eclectic type of reading that Ilike to do and for those of you
who know me as a historian, it'sbecause there's just importance
to me of figuring out what myfamily did and what kind of
traditions that they came from,and that's what's led into all
of my desire to know the historyof everything.

(09:25):
Some of the other traditions wehad Fourth of July while we
didn't really celebrate so muchthat it was the time that our
country started, we would watchthe fireworks on TV, but Fourth
of July was a time when daddycould take a break, he could

(09:45):
close the store and he could behome and we could have a cookout
, and so it would be a mix ofwhoever was in town, but
generally it was the Wimberleyside of the family.
I remember daddy had a big oven, a Dutch oven, and he would
grill ribs.

(10:05):
We would always make ice creamfrom scratch.
So mom and I would make thecustard the day before and it
would have to sit in therefrigerator and cool enough for
us to put into the ice creammaker, which for a long time had
a I can't think of what youcall it a handle, and we would

(10:30):
have to push and turn the handleand you would know when the ice
cream was almost done becausethe handle would get harder and
harder to turn.
But you know, sometimes thehandle would just get hard to
turn because your arm was tiredand it wasn't time for the ice
cream to be done.
We were so excited when theyfinally made an electric model.

(10:52):
So all we had to do is makesure that there was ice and
Epsom salts around the ice creammaker.
And I'm sure for some of youyou're thinking what are you
talking about?
We just go to the store and getthe ice cream.
We didn't always do that.
In fact, for the 4th of July wewould make different flavors of
ice cream.
There would be a paddle insidethe ice cream maker and we would

(11:17):
fight over who was going to getthe drippings off the paddle.
Just like when you bake a caketoday and the um, the mixer has
the handles.
You know the things that goinside or attach and you fight
over who's going to get thebatter that was left.

(11:38):
That you know you could scrapeout the bowl with your finger.
Those were traditions for us OnDaddy's birthday.
You knew it was going to be ayellow cake with chocolate icing
, because that was his favoritecake, and so you knew that's
what you were going to have.
And we'd have Neapolitan icecream and if you've never heard

(11:58):
of Neapolitan, it's chocolate,vanilla and strawberry all in
one.
I hated it.
I just wanted the vanilla.
I didn't want the strawberry orthe chocolate.
I'm still not a great bigchocolate ice cream fan, but I
have learned to likestrawberries.
One of the things Mama would dofor Memorial Day or the 4th of

(12:20):
July, when we would have peopleover, was to make toppings.
We would just make a vanillacustard, a French vanilla
custard, which we had to cook onthe stove before we put it in
the refrigerator.
But we would add she would make, she would take strawberries or
blueberries and make toppingslike cook them so that you could

(12:42):
put these fruit toppings on topof your ice cream and your cake
.
And one other huge traditionfor every holiday was there was
more than one dessert, and soshe would ask or she would send
us to ask the guests what kindof dessert would you like?
And our favorite thing was I'lljust have a little bit of

(13:04):
everything.
So we had daddy and one of ouruncles that was always what they
would say and you would makesure that they had a little
sliver of everything on theirplate, usually topped with some
ice cream, and then we would goand deliver the plates to
everybody.
So we learned how to wait to bewaitstaff when we were growing

(13:26):
up, just at family holidaydinners.
We were growing up just atfamily holiday dinners.
One of the other things that welearned was you always make
enough so people can go back forseconds or thirds.
There wasn't as much taking foodhome when we were growing up by

(13:46):
the other people, becauseeverybody brought something, but
the food was always served inthe kitchen at our house, and so
you would go and Mama would putall the food out on the kitchen
table and we would circlearound the table, we would say
grace and then we would take ourplates and rarely it was until,

(14:07):
I would say, she was much olderwe would always use the china,
we would always use the finechina.
We didn't use paper plates andyou know that meant somebody had
to wash all those dishes.
Fortunately, when we moved intothe house in 1969, there was a
dishwasher there, but there werestill things that you couldn't

(14:28):
put in the dishwasher, likecouldn't put the good crystal in
the dishwasher.
All of that had to be washed byhand, and some of my favorite
pictures are pictures of my dadwith an apron around his waist
and my aunt in the kitchenwashing dishes, washing and
drying dishes, because everybodypitched in on all the things

(14:50):
that they did.
So what are some of thetraditions that you have created
or that you have had to comedown?
What are some of the meals thathave become traditions in your
family based on the things thatyou remember eating during the
holidays?
Eating during the holidayswhichever holiday or birthdays

(15:14):
the things that we celebrate,the things that make our lives
so much more than just every dayget up, go to work standard
things.
Those are the things that makeup all of our family memories.
Some of them are good.
All of our family memories.
Some of them are good, some ofthem are bad, some of them are
joyful, some of them are sad,but they are all important in

(15:36):
the tradition of your family andin the tradition of our country
, and so those are things thatwe can't be quiet about anymore.

(15:57):
You've been listening to Quietno More, where I share my
journey.