Traditions–Preserving Old Ones, Starting New Ones

I remember seeing Fiddler on the Roof when I was a child.  I can still recall a number of the songs and can hear “Tradition!” ringing in my mind.

Here are a few of our family Christmas traditions:

• We sit in church as a family on Christmas Eve (normal Sunday services find us spread throughout the sanctuary)
• My Dad suggests that we each open just one gift on Christmas Eve – he always suggests, we never do – it’s tradition
• We open all of our gifts one individual at a time from youngest to oldest on Christmas morning

There are community traditions, family traditions, individual traditions.  An example of the last is that I always tell Judy to “order whatever you like” when we go on a dinner date.  Never mind that I know she will order what she wants, it’s just a tradition from our days of counting pennies to let her know that I want her to enjoy the evening and not worry about the cost.

This Christmas we went to our church’s Travelers’ Eve service on December 23.  Although we weren’t traveling, we spent Christmas Eve at a homeless shelter helping serve dinner to about 350 people.  We came home from that experience reminded of just how blessed we are.  Sometimes it’s good to buck tradition, maybe starting a new one.

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