Tradition!

Tradition! I love tradition. It is amazing to me how carrying on a tradition can evoke feelings and emotions, and how quickly tradition can carry me off to an entirely different place in time. Tradition smacks of time travel, with foods, festivities, and time honored practices linking the present to those times and places and faces where a tradition began. People who know my family often comment on how many traditions we have. Many of those traditions include extended family as well, and I know that, in part, these traditions have helped form the very strong bond we all share.

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My parents started many of the traditions we continue to enjoy as a family today. I almost forget I’m not upstairs in my twin bed in the room I shared with my younger sister in Tennessee, when I wake up Thanksgiving Day and smell my “mom’s” stuffing roasting along with the turkey. My husband prepares the turkey each year, and it’s our tradition to use my mother’s stuffing recipe. Recipes are amazing legacies and my mother left a cookbook full (written in her own hand and recopied for all her daughters and granddaughters). Our roast beef and Yorkshire pudding dinner on Christmas is also a yummy tradition passed down from my mother, a reminder of our English heritage. Traditional foods fill houses with wonderful nostalgic smells, tummies with delicious taste treats, and minds with the images of those who prepared these same meals in years past. That is the beauty of tradition—the connectedness of past to present and future.

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On Thanksgiving Day, my oldest granddaughter, Taylor, was disappointed that one of our traditional dishes was not being served. She looked twice to make sure the strawberry jello salad was not on the buffet before coming to ask me how it could have been omitted. On the one hand I was sorry I hadn’t gotten around to making it this year; on the other hand, I was delighted that at age nine she was already aware of the place of tradition in our family. There will be strawberry jello on the table at Christmas, Grammie has promised and it’s . . . tradition! Beyond food there are already other traditions my older granddaughters enjoy and remember from year to year: decorating gingerbread houses, putting together the wooden reindeer that stand in front of Father Christmas by the grandmother’s clock in the living room, decorating our tree with the family while eating soup and sipping on hot cocoa, Christmas Eve at their great aunt and uncle’s, and the list goes on and on. I love knowing that, most likely, many of these traditions will keep my grandchildren connected to me even once I’m no longer here to enjoy them in future years.

Yesterday I finished decorating the house for Christmas. My oldest daughter was home and helped. Together we freed nutcrackers and tiny carolers from the boxes and tissue paper in which they rest from year to year. Most importantly we unpacked almost 30 nativities I have collected over the years, and put each one in “its” place. As the boxes grew emptier the house grew merrier, every item finding its familiar home on mantle, shelf, table, and hearth. Jean knew as well as I where each decoration should be placed, tradition made the decorating easier.

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Now that the halls have all been decked, I am enjoying having all the familiar signs of the season around me. I am remembering my Christmases from years past. Most importantly, the array of nativity scenes speak of the greatest tradition we share as a family, the tradition that shapes and molds our lives, our Christian tradition. According to Wikipedia, “ Traditions can persist and evolve for thousands of years—the word ‘tradition’ itself derives from the Latin tradere or traderer literally meaning to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping—and new traditions continue to appear today.” I want to pass our faith traditions on to my family. I think traditions provide stability in an unstable world, and isn’t that a wonderful gift to give this Christmas? I want to pass them on, not just for safekeeping, but for keeping those I love safe and secure.

Christmas music is playing quietly as I walk through the house enjoying the morning’s hard work. I am transported back to Christmas Eves of fifty years ago, as I peek into the crèche scenes in each room, seeing the tiny stables filled with porcelain sheep and cows, regal wise men and lowly shepherds, and of course Mary gazing in awe at her beautiful and holy newborn son. Standing by these mangers, I can hear my father’s deep voice once more, reading God’s amazing Christmas story from the book of Luke, and for this moment I am connected by this glorious tradition of love to my parents, children and grandchildren. Praying you have a reflective and beautiful Advent season, and hoping you enjoy some favorite traditions from your family along the way.

P.S. I hope you enjoy the photos of some of my favorite creches. The one I'm holding was made by a friend for me many years ago,the roly polo one was given to us by friends who are missionaries, it's from Guatemala, two are very special nativities brought to us from friends from Israel and made out of olive wood, my mother gave us the stained glass one a piece each year for many Christmases, my sister made the cloth one and gave it to Bob and me shortly after we were married, the wood burned one my Uncle made and the one that is sort of modern looking shapes is a puzzle when placed back in the stable and was made by a friend.

P.S.S. Jean couldn't believe I didn't put a picture of this nativity up, it's our VERY first one we ever had and the first one we put up on the mantle before anything else.