Traditions…traditions…

This is surely one you who are newly married or about to get married should discuss.  After all you may be trying to merge two very different family traditions as you seek to forge your new ones.  It is quite a process, mixing memories, preserving some, and creating something new.  One that is like nothing else.

I am not sure always why I kill some traditions and keep others.  I think it comes to what I liked, building a family tradition I would enjoy.  I could not just tribute my family traditions.  I did not like all of them.  It was the family tradition of my father’s family to have the aunt’s over cutting squid and eel to fry, serve in sauce and eat.  I knew squid and eel would not carry on. 

We always had stockings opened first.  That was kept.  It evolved though.  Where the stockings of my youth were filled with small crap that was not worth wrapping that my father and mother bought, these stockings are full of gifts given members of the family.  Sometimes a pin, sometimes a poem- the stockings are deposits for things that made us think of you.

The tree was always delivered by an office employee.  We would decorate it.  My mother took charge.  My father listened to Nat King Cole croon his favorite Christmas songs.  We would wrap and unwrap ornaments.  My dad sat and listened to nothing but Nat King Cole.  He watched on as the tree was lit.  It was grand.

I however, was ready to go plastic tree.  Just too much and besides, played right, I could pass it off as environmentally credible.  I could go “no tree” and make environmentalists happy in saving the tree and fundamentalists happy with doing away with a non-Christian tradition all at the same time.  But my wife has found us a tree farm that is sought so much by the heart’s of the kids, I met refusal, sheer promise of insubordination if I suggested another farm.  The confrontation as to “how could I?” almost had a touch of inquisition from Isaiah.  I recanted and we have a great tree and had a great tree getting experience.  (If not for that trip , I would not have had a grandmother asking me to smell Christmas tree stumps since her grandkids demanded a Balsam Fir and there were none.  I told her which smelled “better.”  My family decorates the tree.)  I used to put on music, now Abby does.  I used to string the lights, now Zay does.  Diane hands out ornaments.  She is the only one who seems to know their stories.  Everyone wants to have the donkey.  I assemble eggnog for others.  Though I despise the stuff myself, making has given it meaning for me.  That has become our tree tradition.

After a Christmas Eve service that can drive Daddy to distraction, we will breathe a sigh. We will light a fire with organic, longer burning, environmentally sustainable reclaimed sawdust logs, and watch Scrooge (1951).  People will head to bed.  Diane and I will wrap presents until near dawn while watching a looping sequence of A Christmas Story on television.  This tradition needs to be destroyed.  We should wrap in March.

Christmas morning we will put our final piece on the advent calendar.  That was an element Diane brought in unilaterally.  We never had an advent calendar.  It is subtle, small, full of meaning in little things.  We had a giant plastic nativity scene in our lawn.  The advent calendar has small icons placed on a board or on a shelf, one for each day of December.  A different verse and devotional thought is read with each one.   It has become part of our Christmas.  Diane and I will drink caffeine beverages and mutually apologize for being crabby  4 a.m. Christmas morning when we couldn’t find the tape.  The kids will tear into presents handed out by Dad (we took that tradition from Doc Marcelle).  There are often tears at a few of the gifts.  Once…well, I did promise not to tell that story.  Diane will cook.  The kids will be occupied with new things.  Relatives will drop in and there will be a family Christmas dinner.  I will watch it happen with my Christmas music on and my thoughts in my head and it will be a complex mix of sacred and human, and I will be blessed with every good and perfect gift that comes from the Father in heaven, mourn the gifts that we sinners miss, and remember those who made Christmas before me.

Merry Christmas, may you have full joy in creating and maintaining traditions.

 

I am Ed Marcelle and I approve this Christmas blog.