Grandparent’s Day

[HazelAnne]

(Trying to fix poll so second question is answerable by those not participating)

Edited September 11, 2022 by HazelAnne
Trying to fix poll

[HazelAnne]

At the grocery store today I noticed “Grandparent’s Day” flowers. I googled it when I got home and realized it’s a national holiday. We never celebrated it growing up, and have never had the kids do anything for their grandparents, and I’m wondering if I’m being rude by not celebrating this day. We honor the grandparents on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Wondering if we ought to go do something for my kids’ grandparents. 

[Kassia]

My kids only one grandparent left and she's awful.  But even if she were great I don't think we'd celebrate.  Seems like Mother's Day is more than enough and we don't do anything for that either.

Edited September 11, 2022 by Kassia

[SKL]

1) My answer is no.

2) Your poll doesn't allow the 2nd question to be left blank when the answer is no.

It's not that I have anything against the idea, or against my folks.  It wasn't a thing growing up and I honestly just never thought about it when it would have made sense to.  Now it's too late to start that tradition.  😛

My younger sister is much more into that sort of thing, and she has always made her kids do things for Grandparents' Day.  Not sure how my folks feel about that difference.

[Mrs Tiggywinkle]

No. We do flowers for Mother’s Day.  Neither grandfather cares about Father’s Day so we don’t really do anything. If we’re camping we’ll invite both sets of parents over for a cookout. 

[marbel]

I have been vaguely aware of it for some number of years. We have never paid attention to it.  A quick search tells me it started in 1978; at that point I had no grandparents. Even if I did, my parents would not have noticed or, if they had heard of it, paid any attention to it. My sister, who had a one-year-old that year, might have observed it, but if so I never noticed. She has always been more into those sorts of honoring days. FWIW my mother hated getting Mother's Day cards; she thought it was stupid and wasteful. She would not have wanted a GM day card too! 

We observe M and D days, pretty minimally. 

Edited September 11, 2022 by marbel

[stephanier.1765]

I never heard of it growing up or when my children were growing up. It actually was brought to my attention after my grandchildren were born. Once we got pictures their daycare did of them to celebrate the day but that's all it was. Just the handing over of pictures, no card or other type of celebration. That's it though.

[SKL]

Actually I will add that I kinda hate when the schools do grandparents' day.  My kids' elementary school invites the grandparents to come to school for a special program etc.  Well some kids don't have grandparents who will come.  Then you get into the whole "don't they have a grandparently figure who could step in," "well the good grandparents who do show up can adopt your kid for the day" etc.  No thanks.

My folks didn't come because I didn't invite them.  I didn't invite them because it would have been too much to ask, given their health and how far away they live.  I told my kids the reasons, but I know it wasn't easy putting on a show for everyone else's doting grandparents.

[Faith-manor]

I am not a fan of all the hallmark holidays. We give a gift on Mother's Day and when there were grandpas, Father's Day as well. Good enough.

[Grace Hopper]

We do not do grandparents day, it’s a totally made up thing to sell stuff (imo, anyway). We interact with grandparents all year long, including mother’s and Father’s Day (mostly my dh does those as my parents are both deceased), birthdays, traditional holidays, etc.

Annoyingly, one of my SsIL loves all these made up days and showers them - which is fine, but it is done in a way that makes us look like we forgot some big occasion. I don’t believe my ILs actually care much about it, because they never did recognize GP day since it’s so new a thing. 
 

 

[Drama Llama]

We celebrate every holiday, including some that we pretty much made up, and plenty that are cultural appropriation.   And my kids' grandfather and great grandfather are big parts of their lives.  But even we don't celebrate grandparents' day. 

[Grace Hopper]

11 minutes ago, SKL said:

Actually I will add that I kinda hate when the schools do grandparents' day.  My kids' elementary school invites the grandparents to come to school for a special program etc.  Well some kids don't have grandparents who will come.  Then you get into the whole "don't they have a grandparently figure who could step in," "well the good grandparents who do show up can adopt your kid for the day" etc.  No thanks.

My folks didn't come because I didn't invite them.  I didn't invite them because it would have been too much to ask, given their health and how far away they live.  I told my kids the reasons, but I know it wasn't easy putting on a show for everyone else's doting grandparents.

I have always asked for GP’s names to be removed from such lists because in our case all GP day really amounted to was sentimental programming followed by a big fundraising push. There were always plenty of other activities and performances to invite the grandparents to attend. My kids never missed having them there for GP day. 

[marbel]

This thread brought up a discussion in my house. Someone (or more than one?) above mentioned made-up holidays. So... what holidays are not "made up"? 

The only ones we could come up with - based on our Judeo-Christian perspective - are the ones God instituted for Israel: Passover, Feast of Booths, Day of Atonement... and there are others I am not looking up right now. 

Everything else is made up by humans, for various reasons (honoring others, giving thanks, religious purposes).  Making $$ may be a reason though I don't know that there are any holidays for which profit is the initial reason. Of course many holidays are promoted for the purpose of profit, I wouldn't deny that.  

From Wikipedia:  Grandparents' Day or National Grandparents' Day is a secular holiday celebrated in various countries; it is celebrated to show the bond between grandparents and grandchildren. It occurs on various days of the year, either as one holiday or sometimes as a separate Grandmothers' Day and Grandfather's Day.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandparents'_Day) 

(I can't get rid of the bolding in the snip above; it's not mine) 

Thoughts? 

 

Edited September 11, 2022 by marbel

[Anne]

As a grandparent, no.  Just no.  No more hallmark invented holidays!!   For me, grandparents day happens every time I see my grandchildren!  

Anne

[Kassia]

5 minutes ago, Anne said:

As a grandparent, no.  Just no.  No more hallmark invented holidays!!   For me, grandparents day happens every time I see my grandchildren!  

Anne

Aw, that is so sweet!  Your grandchildren are fortunate to have such a loving grandmother!

[Arcadia]

We aren’t aware of it and thankfully neither are my in-laws. We get a wish list from my in-laws for Mother’s day, Father’s day and their birthdays as well as pay for where they want to dine so we don’t need another holiday where we get issued a wish list.  If my in-laws weren’t so demanding of gifts and expensive dine ins, it would be fun to celebrate grandparents day with a potluck meal family gathering. 

My parents don’t celebrate birthdays and definitely not any of the holidays. I just gift them presents when there is something they may like which means some years they get zero gifts and some years they get a few.  My side of the family has done away with obligatory gift giving because they feel that it would be better to give something that you think someone may like (which shows they are in your thoughts) then for you to hunt for a gift because it is required.

[katilac]

2 hours ago, SKL said:

Actually I will add that I kinda hate when the schools do grandparents' day.  

With more acceptance for a wider range of family types these days, there is a trend for schools to move away from Grandparents' Day, Daddy-Daughter Dance, and so on. They still have visitor events, but name it something like Special Person or Special Someone (there are other names, but I can't think of them right now

A lot of schools are just rolling with tradition and not thinking about it, but don't actually have much, if any, objection to changing it if it's brought up to them. 

[Faith-manor]

44 minutes ago, marbel said:

This thread brought up a discussion in my house. Someone (or more than one?) above mentioned made-up holidays. So... what holidays are not "made up"? 

The only ones we could come up with - based on our Judeo-Christian perspective - are the ones God instituted for Israel: Passover, Feast of Booths, Day of Atonement... and there are others I am not looking up right now. 

Everything else is made up by humans, for various reasons (honoring others, giving thanks, religious purposes).  Making $$ may be a reason though I don't know that there are any holidays for which profit is the initial reason. Of course many holidays are promoted for the purpose of profit, I wouldn't deny that.  

From Wikipedia:  Grandparents' Day or National Grandparents' Day is a secular holiday celebrated in various countries; it is celebrated to show the bond between grandparents and grandchildren. It occurs on various days of the year, either as one holiday or sometimes as a separate Grandmothers' Day and Grandfather's Day.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandparents'_Day) 

(I can't get rid of the bolding in the snip above; it's not mine) 

Thoughts? 

 

My personal take as someone without religion is that they are all human made constructs, everything is. But I get what you are saying. As a general rule, religious holidays tend to be rather well thought out about the integrity and reasons for instituting one or new ones aren't added ad hoc. In this country, it seems that every time politicians want to have a warm fuzzy announcement or make a lobbyist happy, they make a new one. It really has gotten ridiculous, and it rather devalues other holidays that tend to have more good reason to observe. I mean, if you get a hallmark calendar, it is INSANE all the national days, and of course, they produce cards and gifts for every one of them. If families already observe Mother's and Father's Day do these same people really need a card and gift for yet another holiday already celebrating their role in the family? We had Valentine's Day, why on earth did we need Sweetest Day? I mean, I like Pi Day and Chocolate Day the same as the next chocolate covered math geek, but I feel like this whole thing has gotten way out of control, and of course this sort of stuff gets used by toxic relatives to shame and guilt already harried parents into even more harriness.

Then of course there is the practical side. We cut down 2.5 million trees each year to produce the 7 billionaire cards produced for all of this. 140,000 tons of paper just for greeting cards. Most of them end up in landfills polluting the earth and not in recycling. Think of all of the fuel used to transport them around the country - and believe me I am PROFOUNDLY against all of the mass mailing, advertising, waste at a time when we as a world know for a fact the earth cannot afford this mismanagement.

It think it would behoove everyone to just take a hard look at it. Maybe if enough of the population stopped participating and the profit motivation was removed, we could stop the madness.

LOL, don't start me on wrapping paper. I made a big batch of Christmas and birthday fabric bags, and we keep circulating them around the family. If I don't have one appropriate to the occasion, like a wedding, I try to use a gift bag that is just a solid color and then put a cloth bow on it so hopefully the happy couple will save the bag and use it in the future.

Rant off. 😁

[Jaybee]

No, we don't celebrate it. It wasn't a thing when my kids were little, at least that I knew of, and we mostly lived far away from our parents. They were lovely grandparents, but we lived too far away to do anything. And now that we have grandchildren, we are also far away from them, and all of their parents are on tight budgets and don't need to add another something to it to honor us. Just FaceTime us, send us pics and videos, and let's visit when we can. Those things delight us. As far as schools having Grandparents' Day--how sad that we would probably never be able to participate! Do schools not realize that many many people don't live close to family anymore?

[Kassia]

50 minutes ago, Arcadia said:

We aren’t aware of it and thankfully neither are my in-laws. We get a wish list from my in-laws for Mother’s day, Father’s day and their birthdays as well as pay for where they want to dine so we don’t need another holiday where we get issued a wish list.  If my in-laws weren’t so demanding of gifts and expensive dine ins, it would be fun to celebrate grandparents day with a potluck meal family gathering. 

My parents don’t celebrate birthdays and definitely not any of the holidays. I just gift them presents when there is something they may like which means some years they get zero gifts and some years they get a few.  My side of the family has done away with obligatory gift giving because they feel that it would be better to give something that you think someone may like (which shows they are in your thoughts) then for you to hunt for a gift because it is required.

A gift wish-list from the grandparents?  Eek - that is ridiculous.  We've experienced similar things from some relatives and I just don't get the thought process behind that.

My immediate family (DH and our kids) are like your parents and your side of the family.  Works out perfectly for all of us.  I don't want gifts given out of obligation.  

[Arcadia]

4 minutes ago, Kassia said:

A gift wish-list from the grandparents?  Eek - that is ridiculous.  We've experienced similar things from some relatives and I just don't get the thought process behind that.

My in-laws would ask for things (e.g. https://us.osim.com/products/usqueez2-smart?variant=42569052422397) and expect their 3 children to split the cost. They would also name which restaurant they want to go for dining. So it does leave a bad taste because it becomes another cost to budget for as well as gift grabbing. 
Things that are needs like MIL’s medical insoles (about $300 per pair), FIL’s medical supplements, we have split the cost amount siblings so the wish lists are all wants.

[HazelAnne]

Thank you for all the replies! I’m so relieved to know that l haven't been neglecting the grandparents all these years! I love celebrating people, but this does just seem like a commercial holiday to me. 

[HazelAnne]

1 hour ago, Faith-manor said:

I mean, I like Pi Day and Chocolate Day the same as the next chocolate covered math geek,

This made me laugh! 
 

We have celebrated Pi Day, but Chocolate Day is new to me. It sounds like a holiday I really ought to be observing!

Edited September 11, 2022 by HazelAnne

[Kassia]

58 minutes ago, Arcadia said:

My in-laws would ask for things (e.g. https://us.osim.com/products/usqueez2-smart?variant=42569052422397) and expect their 3 children to split the cost. They would also name which restaurant they want to go for dining. So it does leave a bad taste because it becomes another cost to budget for as well as gift grabbing. 
Things that are needs like MIL’s medical insoles (about $300 per pair), FIL’s medical supplements, we have split the cost amount siblings so the wish lists are all wants.

Wow, I said we had relatives who did something similar with wish lists but they weren't that pricey!!!  What got me was that DH's aunts would send wish lists to our kids with gifts that were way too expensive for kids to afford.  It seemed weird to me that they would request gifts from kids anyway but then there would be things like jewelry on the lists.  Meanwhile, they would give them cheap gifts (which was fine - we didn't expect or want anything from them but it seemed so backwards that they'd give our kids something like a notebook and pens and then ask for jewelry).  

We always give MIL a Mother's Day gift but it's just an obligation.  She's a terrible mother and grandmother.  

[Arcadia]

3 hours ago, Kassia said:

 What got me was that DH's aunts would send wish lists to our kids with gifts that were way too expensive for kids to afford.  It seemed weird to me that they would request gifts from kids anyway but then there would be things like jewelry on the lists. 

That’s weird. I can understand parents emotional blackmailing their kids for expensive gifts but it is odd for aunts to ask for gifts from nieces and nephews. I would give gifts to my nieces and nephews if I find something they need or like but would not expect anything back from them. My nieces and nephews range from 11 years old to 50 years old.