A Time For Tradition

Tradition. I like tradition, and this time of year seems to have more of them than average. I was reminded of this over the weekend as the house began its transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas. As we were heading out for round three of our “Black Friday” shopping, my eleven-year old daughter announced to me that she felt that this was going to be a very good Christmas. “Why” I asked, “what is it that you think you are going to get?” She explained that it wasn’t what she would get, but rather that she just liked the traditions so much.

My wife grew up in a home that appreciated and celebrated traditions. I guess there were traditions in our home as well, but we were never really sentimental about them. It’s funny, but the other day I saw a picture of an old aluminum Christmas tree, and I started to well up. This was the kind of tree that we had probably until I was eight or so. It was only about three feet tall, and had just barely more branches than Charlie Browns tree. Nostalgic, I went on line to see how much these trees go for. The four foot model was $229. Yeah, it wasn’t that great.

Starting in 1969 my mom started a new tradition in our house – Flocked Trees. Now if you like the flocked trees, more power to you, but if you could have seen some of our trees, you might rethink your position. There’s nothing wrong with a white flocked tree. But my mom decided she wanted a different color every year, so after the white one came the red one, then gold, then blue – that’s right, blue. And then my mother did the unthinkable: Bought a beautiful natural green tree, and had it flocked…. GREEN. Now you understand why I’m so sentimental for the aluminum tree. And once you add a color wheel to it, well then you have a thing of beauty.

I got to thinking a lot about tradition this weekend, for this year we have added a new tradition to our home. At the beginning of the year I lost my Aunt Ruth, probably the closest person who was like a parent to me in my youth, other than my own parents of course. I would spend almost every Friday night sleeping over with my Aunt Ruth and my Uncle Clarence, and the time I spent with them are among the happiest times I have from my childhood.

One of the things that Clarence and I would do at this time of year, was make Christmas decorations, and our favorite decorations of all were snowmen that we would make out of Styrofoam balls. We would use sewing pins – the kind with the little colored ball on the head, and colored electrical tape, and we would create the most elaborate little snowmen you could imagine, or at least the most elaborate my little five-year-old could come up with.

Well this year, after Aunt Ruth passed away, we found those snowmen, gingerly wrapped and packed away in the same Washington State Apples box that they were always stored in, and this year, for the first time in nearly 40 years, those snowmen are on display, not at Ruth and Clarence’s house, but at my home. And every year from this one out, those same seven little snowmen are guaranteed a place of honor amongst the other treasures Cindy and I have accumulated in our 22 Christmases together.

Here’s hoping that you and yours can find joy in your traditions this holiday season.