Traditions Old and New

I opined recently on the inanity of the “War on Xmas” (spelling intentional!), so this time around I’ll share something a bit more personal.

We all have our Christmas traditions and favorites. Most of them date back to our childhood, or perhaps when we first married or had kids. And over the years, some traditions evolve or fade away, while others spring up. So as someone who has Christmas memories going back over forty years, I have the whole gamut. As regular readers will know, my wife Joan and I bought and moved into my grandparents’ house at the beginning of 2013. (It’s feeling more and more like our place.) So this year promises a heady mixture of old and new traditions.

When I was a kid, my parents split and my mom and I lived with my great-grandmother. So I had Christmas Day with a pretty extended family at her house. On Christmas Eve, I would go first to my paternal grandparents’ (with another rather extended gathering!) and then to my maternal grandparents’—the ones whose house we now own. So that was a lot of festivity in two days! If there was any holiday tension at the time, I wasn’t aware of it. It was all just festive and happy!

Then when Joan and I married, we added a whole new level of traditions. Over the years we tried different combinations of families, but we ended on Christmas Eve with my family and Christmas Day with hers. That’s been working (mostly) well for a long time.

So now that we live in the house that always hosted the Christmas Eve gatherings, it’s kind of strange—but in a good way. It’s that wonderful mixture of old and new. Some things I don’t think will ever change, like roasting a ham with cloves and sherry to have on Christmas Eve, when gifts are exchanged (my family on the 24th; Joan’s on the 25th), or having a fire in the fireplace. Other things will be new, like our recent tradition of exchanging Christmas mugs and new pj’s before turning in late (after midnight, usually) on Christmas Eve. Or putting up four Christmas trees (we have somewhere to put them now)!

The point of all this? I guess it’s just to encourage everyone to embrace the old traditions while keeping an open mind for new ones to emerge. In time, they might become long-cherished rituals as well. Merry Christmas!