The holidays are full of them. Halloween with costumes, and decorations, haunted houses, pumpkin carving, corn mazes, and trick-or-treat. Thanksgiving with family gathering, traditional food items, and traditional bickering over football vs shopping, or football while shopping, or shopping while football. Ain’t technology grand? And then there are Christmas and/or Hannukah. For this you’ll need a score card. Ready with paper and pencil? I don’t care if it’s mechanical…no I don’t care if you prefer pen…just write with something other than blood ok?
Ok, so here we go…starting with religious traditions, there’s the manger scene, Christmas carols, Christmas Mass all coming out of the Christian tradition. There’s the synagog, lighting the manora, Hannukah songs, and traditional children’s games from Judaism. And there’s the lighted and decorated tree, pine boughs, presents, feasting, lights on everything (thank goodness for leds) from the various European native spiritual traditions or what most people have been taught is Paganism. As if that isn’t enough, all of them have variations based on branch of religion, country of origin, regional and congregational specificity. So a Baptist family in Michigan is going to have different traditions than one in Louisiana, and a Catholic family in LA will handle things differently than one in NY. You get my drift.
Then there are all the secular traditions. School plays, Black Friday, company ‘Holiday Parties’, white elephant gifts, shipping presents to the ones you love but not enough to visit, out-buying the Joneses or just out-buying last year’s budget so this year is the best year ever, Christmas cards to everyone to support our Federal Postal System, and arguing over whether Christ needs to be put back in Christmas or whether he was ever there to begin with. Shhhh….don’t get the religious scholars started on when his actual b-day is. They will go on for hours… And then there are the individual preferences. Some people actually enjoy fruit cake. Go figure. Some people just have to accept it and smile. How many times can a fruit cake be regifted? Some family traditions get passed down multiple generations, some get created as families are created…
So traditions have you inherited or been given? And what traditions will you start this year? It’s never too late to create one that will bring you joy for years to come. And yes, the daily reinflating the yard art inflatable Santa in his sleigh that you bought at the store and that isn’t supposed to need the fan going 24 hours a day is a tradition if your weather is cold or your neighbor kids are naughty. Something to think about before buying…