it's the easter beagle, charlie brown!

Happy Easter! I hope that you had a wonderful and restful day celebrating the most important Christian holiday.
What makes holidays great is that they are rich in tradition. Some traditions last through generations, and some are so infrequent we can hardly call them traditions.
When we moved here 6 years ago, everything changed. Every tradition we had in Massachusetts was gone. We had the memories, but we didn't continue with the traditions. I am rather sentimental, and so last summer when we didn't go where we always go for the Fourth of July, I was absolutely devastated. For 15 years I went there every year. But not last year.
We would always go over to my friend's house in MA before we went trick-or-treating on Halloween. Then we would all wait for our neighbors and we would go together. And every Christmas and Thanksgiving we would see all of our aunts and uncles and grandparents and sometimes cousins.
That summer in 2005 we came here and I spent my first birthday alone. Well, not alone, I still had my mom and dad and my brother and sister (and at the time, guinea pig). But I would always spend the day with my best friend who conveniently lived across the street.
Old traditions die hard, just like old habits. But we have to build up new traditions too. Like our new Halloween tradition is going to a Halloween party at the country club and going to a cul-de-sac party before we parade around asking for candy. And we have loads of new Christmas traditions. And for Easter, we go to the Easter Vigil and light the special candles.
And we can't forget the Peanuts specials that correspond with each holiday - today we just watched the Easter one - a pastime in the north and the south!
Keeping up with traditions is something that genuinely makes me happy - painting eggs, reading the Advent calendar, eating smores, watching fireworks, "the races" in MA (if you know what I mean, you know what I mean. If you don't you'll just live in ignorance.), Dunkin' Donuts on the 4th, Santa brunch - and it's important to remember them.
The things we do only once, we won't remember those. We remember the things that we loved to do so much that we made it a point to do it year after year.