Tradition!

Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.
Mark Twain

The season of Advent is here.  Radio stations have transitioned to their all-holiday music formats.  Black Friday has come and gone with its frenzied pitch to hurry in and Buy!  Buy!  Buy!  Women’s magazines line supermarket checkout aisles, promising ten easy steps for making this Christmas less stressful and more meaningful.  Thoughtful believers eye the calendar making plans and lists of their own, hoping to orient their families toward the Source of true comfort and joy.  We dig into our boxes and bins of decorations.  We wonder how to redeem the time.

Family traditions don’t fit neatly into boxes and bins.  They can’t always be seen, tasted, and touched, but they are unpacked, dusted off, and put on display just the same.  Some, we continue without stopping to think; relying on muscle memory, going through motions.  Others we pull out and realize they’ve become too old and tired and worn to merit a place in our celebrations this year.  Others we squint our eyes and look at, not quite sure where they came from or even how they worked their way into our collection, but they’ve become too dear and precious to put away.

This is a picture of a lawn decoration from my childhood, one made by my dad.  I think he saw an ad in a magazine, sent away for the graphic and, down in his wood shop in the basement, cut out the plywood backing for it.  Lawn decorations are big deal in western Pennsylvania where I spent a happy childhood and where the general rule regarding Christmas decorations is—if it doesn’t move out of your way, wrap lights around it.

As a child, I loved when Dad set up this reindeer in our yard.  As a teen, I was embarrassed by it.  When my sister and I came home from college and saw Dad’s hand-lettered cardboard sign hanging from it welcoming us home, this simple lawn decoration found a home in my soul.  For many years after my father died, when I took my children home to visit my mom at Christmas she faithfully pulled this simple plywood decoration out of her basement.  It became a tradition taking their pictures next to it, pausing to remember Dad.

A favorite Christmas tradition is one I stole from a friend.  She told me that, at the end of each Christmas day, after winding down from waking up way-too-early, indulging in way-too-much excitement, eating way-too-much sugar, and facing the disappointment of having to wait another whole year before Christmas came again, she would find a final Christmas gift—a book—tucked under her pillow for her to quietly look at and read before falling asleep.  I liked that and started doing it for my children.  Of course, there were years in which my kids would head off to their rooms only to return and say, “Mom!  There’s nothing under my pillow!”  My forgetfulness, too, became part of family tradition and lore.

One day, when my children were young and the gray December sky was pregnant with the approach of the first winter snowstorm, I accidentally started a new tradition.  I said, “A nickel to whoever sees the first snowflake!”  My children strained their eyes, willing the appearance of that first magical Christmas snowflake.  I think I gave them each nickels.  Each following year, I’ve promised a nickel to whoever spotted the first flake.

The first year that my daughter was away at college, she called to let me know I owed her a nickel.  This year, after my daughter texted me to tell me it was snowing, I taped a nickel to an index card and mailed it to her in her new apartment.

My friend Ethel and I have a tradition of getting our pictures taken with Santa each year, a tradition my brother refers to as giving Santa a thrill. Over the years, we’ve shown up wearing flashing lights, jingle bells, reindeer antlers, and elf hats.  Last year, we got Mary Kay makeovers before going to see the jolly old elf.  There’s a whole story behind how that tradition began; maybe I’ll tell it at another time.

Christmas traditions, like many decorations need to be pulled out, dusted off, examined, and some discarded each year.  But many, though silly and quirky and perhaps meaningless to those who don’t understand, are important pieces of family history.  They are touchstones, little Ebenezers we raise, calling us to remember—to remember the sweetness, the sadness, the joy and the loss—the places where God has blessed us and been faithful.  They invite us to tell and retell our stories, the ones that begin with, “Remember when…”

If my words and pictures have made you smile today, won’t you share with me one of your traditions?  Tell me its story?

Joining sweet friends,once again, in the Soli Deo Sisterhood at Finding Heaven