Many students at West Morris celebrate various holidays with special traditions during this season. Most stick to basics like watching Christmas movies, lighting the candles, putting a star on a tree, etc. However, some students have different traditions that also sound like fun. For example, sitting around a dinner table, wrapping up a gift in Saran wrap and taking turns unwrapping them with oven mitts on. Meanwhile, someone to your right is rolling dice trying to get doubles to take the present from you. The gift is passed around until eventually there is no more wrap left and someone has the gift.
Another WMC student tradition is that their family goes to Five Below and buys everyone a gift. Then they go home and wrap them and put them in a pile. Family members then distribute all the gifts and they have to guess who got them for you. Whoever gets the most right wins. Another strange tradition a West Morris student has is that their dad goes to Texas Roadhouse 3-5 times a week alone throughout November to December.
However, one tradition stood out more than the rest and that belongs to WMC Senior Liam Payne’s Holiday Tradition “Potato Squat.” “Every year we go to my aunt’s house around Christmas for secret Santa and afterwards we do some family games” said Payne. However, the games they play are nothing of the ordinary. “You get 2 buckets in the living room and there’s one bucket per team. Each team has 5 members and in each bucket is a potato. Each team is in a race where each team has to put a potato in between their thighs and has to run around the house one versus one and if you drop the potato you have to restart. Whoever drops the potato into the bucket wins. Each player must go until everyone on the team puts a potato in the bucket.”
Upon further research it appears that Liam’s “Potato Squat” is an extreme version of the 2016 created game “Poop the Potato” where its similar concept could have developed into the family tradition of “Potato Squat”. When we reached out to Payne about the possible similarities he stated “No comment.”
Holiday traditions mean a lot to everyone worldwide. For some it’s just a distraction to get through the potentially stressful holiday season. But for others it’s something to look forward to the whole year, spending time with family and friends and forgetting about all the hardships the year previously had to offer and celebrating each other.
