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Family Traditions Quotes

Browse 9 quotes about Family Traditions.

Family Traditions Quotes

“I loved Vinalia. Every year Passia and I looked forward to the first feast of the three-day festival. Aelia would line up the servants on both sides of the long hallway leading from the front door through the atrium. Together Apicius, Apicata, and Aelia would walk the lines and place a grape on the tongue of each slave and say a blessing to the lady Venus. Then Apicius would have ten jars of his best Falernian wine brought up from the cellar and he would give them to his most loyal servants. I would make sweet curds and honey tarts for the whole household, slaves included, and we would read poetry and listen to music.”

“I ask the ladies what we lose with each generation. They seem to agree: usually language goes first, then memories of relatives and grandparents, then traditions, then longing for home, then a sense of identity. What do we have left? A wedding ritual, a few old photos? For me, what is left is our connection to food. Our food traditions are the last thing we hold on to. They are not just recipes; they are a connection to the nameless ancestors who gave us our DNA. That's why our traditional foods are so important. The stories, the memories, the movements that have been performed for generations - without them, we lose our direction.”

“It was because of the war, Daddy had once confided in them--- everything she loved had been lost when that bomb fell on her family home... and turned her past to rubble. She'd been determined her children would never suffer the same fate. She might not be able to spare them every heartache, but she could damn well make sure they knew where to find their class photo when they wanted it. Their mother's passion for things, for possessions---objects that could be held in one's hands and invested with deeper meaning---had verged on obsessive, her enthusiasm for collecting so great that is was hard not to fall in line. Everything was kept; nothing thrown away; traditions adhered to religiously.”