Last year at about this time I gave a short speech/lesson to a gathered group of women. It got such a positive response that I wanted to recreate some of the thoughts here and share them again.The topic was “Creating good traditions” I took a slightly different slant on it.
Traditions are incredibly valuable to families and societies. They bind groups of people together with joint experiences. They also connect people to the past. There are so many sources out there that extoll the wonders of traditions, that I wanted to spend time talking instead about knowing when to get rid of traditions. Sometimes a tradition lives and thrives for years doing all the good things that traditions are supposed to do, but then the people grow and situations shift and what was once a wonderful tradition becomes a burden. When a tradition only adds stress and creates rifts, then it is time for the tradition to go.
Growing up, my family caroled the Twelve Days of Christmas every year. We’d pick a couple of families and for each of the twelve days prior to Christmas we’d take a treat and sing a few songs. With 7 kids and two parents it was a significant choir and we all loved it. It was a Christmas institution. Then I married and didn’t go home for Christmas anymore. I had a new home. Two people seems too few to go caroling. And frankly Howard wasn’t interesting in packing up and going singing every night for the twelve nights before Christmas. He hadn’t grown up with it and loved it the way I had. So I sadly missed the tradition for years. When Kiki was 3 and Link was 18 months I determined that I was going to MAKE our family have that tradition. I expected mild resistance, but was sure that in short order the wonderfulness of the experience would shine through and they’d all be begging for carolling time the way I used to. It didn’t happen that way. Howard refused to go at all. Putting together the give-away items was lots more work than I’d expected. The kids wouldn’t sing and hated having to go out in the freezing cold. (I grew up in California, cold wasn’t a problem) It was a miserable experience and I gave up halfway through, bagged the rest of the give-aways and gave them to the families to open on a daily basis. Then I cried and felt like a key piece of Christmas was gone forever.
I was wrong. I was trying to forcibly create a tradtion, when the best traditions are the ones which grow of themselves. In the years since that miserable Christmas, our family has grown some traditions which are every bit as wonderful as nightly caroling. And they are the traditions which fit our family perfectly. They are traditions that I couldn’t have anticipated because I didn’t realize we’d have a 9 foot tree or a german nativity candle carousel or 4 foot long stockings. I was trying to recreate the Christmases of MY childhood when what I needed to be doing was discovering the joys of Christmas in my children’s childhoods.
The point of all that ramble is this: Traditions need to change and flow. Sometimes it is time to let go of a beloved tradition because it doesn’t build anymore. Sometimes it is even a relief to let the tradition go.
There were so many women who were so relieved to have been given permission to get rid of unwealdy traditions it amazed me. I’ve thought of it often since. I think we burden ourselves with too many things we “should” do. Particularly in a tradition rich season like the holidays.
