‘Tis the season for traditions. And aren’t they a funny thing? Where did they come from? How and why do we keep them going? And what happens when you try to change them? We’ve had rebellion at our house when we try to change things too much.
Meg Cox, author of “The Book of New Family Traditions,” describes traditions as “any activity you purposefully repeat together as a family that includes heightened attentiveness and something extra that lifts it above the ordinary ruts.”
Traditions, therefore, are not just repeated routines or habits but are done intentionally. (Although it might be nice if washing dishes or folding laundry became a tradition.)
Traditions are a fundamental part of a strong family life and provide a source of shared identity, something that is especially important in “non-traditional” families like ours. Telling and retelling family lore, like the vacation from you-know-where that is now funny, serves as a way to see yourself as part of a bigger whole.
When my husband was in his early 20s, he was at his parents’ home with his brother, who was in his late teens. The two of them were hungry and made a deal to share lunch preparation duties. My brother-in-law agreed to make macaroni and cheese and my husband agreed to make sandwiches.
When the mac and cheese was done, my husband slapped a spoonful between two pieces of bread and said, “Ta da! Sandwiches!”
His brother was not amused. In fact, it was a good 20 years before he could even smile at that story. Meanwhile, our family thinks it’s hilarious.
Khalil Gibran said, “Next to hunger and thirst, our most basic human need is for storytelling.” It’s how we make sense of our world, from macro to micro. When it comes to families, it’s the glue that binds. Stories and traditions go together like, well, macaroni and cheese.
My family Christmas traditions
We have a Christmas Eve family tradition of hiding a maraschino cherry in a bowl of tapioca pudding. The person who finds the cherry gets to open a family gift, usually something like a game or a puzzle to be done together. When I was growing up, my mom hid an almond in the pudding, but I was worried about someone choking on a nut, so I changed it. My brother doesn’t like tapioca, so they do an almond in chocolate pudding — another change. Imagine my surprise, though, when I discovered that the tapioca in my growing-up years was because my grandmother didn’t like rice pudding — the Christmas rice pudding, or risalamande, that is traditional in Denmark, complete with a prize for finding the almond. We might go all the way back to the tradition of rice pudding this year.
One of our favorite traditions is reading books together by the Christmas tree. One of my favorite books is Max Lucado’s “The Crippled Lamb.” The story is about a little lamb named Joshua who couldn’t run as well as the other lambs. He got left behind when all the other lambs were taken by the shepherd to go grazing, but that leaves Joshua in the perfect place for one special night. Let me tell you, it was years — years — before I could make it all the way through that book without crying. You see, I am the mom of a Joshua who can’t run and jump like other people and has been in a wheelchair his whole life.
Last year, we started a new tradition: an online family trivia game. (I won. Not that I’m competitive.) The game included questions like “Who was the first one to break a bone?” and “Who got bitten by a horse in horse therapy?” One question our daughter wrote was, “What was the most common phrase the kids used growing up?” Answer: “Don’t tell mom!” There was some mild arguing over whether “BYU” was an umbrella term for all three BYU campuses (it’s not), and some more laughing when remembering how one daughter shut down an entire Girl’s Camp because she came screaming into camp saying she had seen a bear (it was a moose). Last year, we had about 70 questions. This year, the daughter creating the questions is aiming for double that amount. She’ll create the questions and enter them into an online quiz platform, and we’ll all use our electronic devices to play. Fun and funny.
Food is a big part of creating and maintaining traditions as well. In fact, it was when I tried to change what we ate for Christmas Eve that we encountered our strongest resistance to change. About a decade ago, at the suggestion of one of our sons and his wife, we did a themed Christmas Eve dinner and went all out. We chose Harry Potter and had lots of fun with it, including wands made by another son, magician robes and golden snitches. We served “butterbeer” and “basilisk” (aka a Costco-sized pork loin), English Yorkshire puddings and roasted vegetables. We even had “Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans” (including the gross jelly beans) and gummy frogs. It was amazing, but several of the adult kids asked if we could please just go back to the “normal” Tex-Mex meal. Tradition!
I decided a number of years ago that I did not want to spend my Christmas Day cooking and cleaning, so we eat leftovers and snack food all day. All week, really, between Christmas and New Year’s. I also make more cookies at Christmastime than probably the rest of the year combined, as well as homemade caramels, chocolate Yule logs with meringue mushrooms, and all manner of dips for chips.
As our family grows and spreads across the country, traditions keep us connected. Of course it’s not just about the food or the gifts, but the laughter, the stories, funny white elephant gifts and spirited games of trivia help us remember the love and the shared history that binds us as a family, in all our imperfections.