I was listening to a radio show the other day about the “changing traditions” around Thanksgiving. I really love that concept. Granted, I come from the world of High Tech, so I see massive amounts of change all the time. But I never gave much thought to changing traditions before.
Humans love tradition. They also love to idealize the past. And with social media, people often seem to idealize a past they never actually lived through.
On top of that, some people dig intro traditions as if these things are caste in stone and can never be changed – ever! They expend a great deal of anger and frustration because they want this one piece of their tradition to simple freeze in time for all of eternity.
Keep an eye out for examples as you enjoy an endless supply of Christmas movies over the next six weeks. If you catch a really old one, you might see tiny candle holders on Christmas trees. Even when I was a kid, that frightened me. How did these people avoid burning down their house every year?
Of course, in my youth, we had incandescent light bulbs that got too hot to touch and dried the tree out well before its natural time. We also had tinsel, which is really just tiny strips of metal and plastic that can short out a light string and will live in the landfill until the Earth is swallowed by the Sun. Today, tinsel is gone and LED lights brighten the tree. And I’ve never met anyone who wants to put lit candles on a natural wooden tree.
Change happens whether you push against it, welcome it wholeheartedly, or attempt to mold it as comes.
Family traditions are among the dearest to our hearts. But even those change over time. We had lots of great holiday traditions when I was young. These included school plays and performances, and getting together with my extended family for the VFW Christmas party – which featured the same two cartoon films for two decades.
But traditions changed as we all got older, and pretty soon a new generation of kids were crawling on the floor and fighting over . . . well, everything. And instead of being “kids,” my brothers and I were now running the annual poker game, which devolved into hours and hours of telling jokes until our sides hurt from laughing so hard.
When I became a father, we had new (revised) traditions, and some old traditions continued. My family updated the traditions as time went on.
And this will be my first year as a grandpa, and my daughter’s first as a mother. She’ll be updating traditions as her family grows. She’ll hold onto the favorite memories and build new ones that her children will think are “just the way it’s done” around Christmas.
As you might guess, I fall into the category of people who embrace change but attempt to mold it as it comes. The question then becomes, what can we do to make this the best holiday season ever? Let’s make that our tradition.
And if you run into someone who just wants to cling to the past, hand them a spiced apple cider, listen to their fond memories from the past, then stream that old Christmas classic, Die Hard.
Happy Holidays!
🙂
