Traditions

We are rapidly approaching the holiday season. As a matter of fact, I think retailers have probably set a new record in the earliest Christmas displays ever! Remember when we would complain if the displays went up before Thanksgiving? Most stores have them up before Halloween this year!!! To me it takes the magic out of the Christmas season and makes it ordinary- like shopping for garbage bags.
Do you remember the opening song of “Fiddler on the Roof”? It is Tevye belting out “Traditions”. His belief is that traditions keep our lives in balance like the fiddler playing on the roof. I want to add my voice to his. Traditions DO keep our otherwise fluid, ever changing lives in balance. It hurts my heart that so many shared cultural traditions have been abandoned!! In my own disrupted family, I’ve seen the healing that sticking to traditions brings.
I would urge all reading this to get your old traditions out of the attic and shake off the dust. If you are a new family, create your own traditions. Your children will look forward to them every year. Once established you will find that they can act as an anchor during stormy periods, increase anticipation in calm times, and be a sure foundation during shaky moments.
Traditions can be big or small, holiday related or just for every day, apply to the whole family or to an individual, anything you want them to be. The key is the repetition that forms it into habit.
Growing up- Christmas meant my mother and grandmother cooking for what seemed like weeks. They made cookies, candies, and “tukie pie”. This was what we called a meat and potato pie that we ate Christmas and New Year’s eves. It meant midnight mass, new pj’s (to look good in the Christmas pictures, I think) and before dawn trips down the stairs. It meant staying up late to watch the television specials- Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer and Bing Crosby.
Thanksgiving was a long road trip to my Aunt Katie’s. There were lots of food and lots of cousins. We always watched TV football games, the Macy’s parade and the pilgrim story told in a cartoon. It was always the same routine.
Christmas’s for my children have meant helping provide food and presents for others less fortunate, trips to Goodwill’s where they were let loose with a list of family members and ten dollars, helping to bake tons of cookies to deliver to neighbors, card signing (every family member including babies signed outgoing cards)and our Christmas Eve reading of “The Polar Express”, “The Gift of the Magi” and the scripture story of the birth of Jesus. There was usually a betting pool going on when Mom would start to cry.
Thanksgiving meant pies!! Each family member would make their favorite pie. Because there were so many of us, we each made two. It was also part of the tradition to eat pie for breakfast the next day.
One Christmas, my family was disintegrating, my oldest son was gone and I was tempted to let everything slide. It didn’t help that my husband refused to join our Christmas Eve which gave an out to the older kids. Tired of fighting I was going to let it go. My little ones brought me the books and said, “Pleeeease!” So I did.
The next day when we received our Christmas call from our son, we could hear the homesickness in his voice. He explained that the previous night he had shared our tradition with his roommate during the time he thought we would be sitting down to begin. Then with a bit of panic he asked if we had done the reading. Boy was I glad I had! At that moment I realized how right Tevye was. Traditions do keep us balanced like a fiddler on the roof.
That’s the view from my side of the street, what’s yours?