My son Jon and his radio co-host Tim do a podcast sporadically. They need to do them more often, but that’s another story.
Their podcast is called Off the Record with Jon and Tim and they talk about everything and anything- movies, sports, their lives, video games, etc. A few weeks ago, Tim asked Jon about holiday traditions and Jon said we didn’t have any.
It hit me rather hard because as the mom of this household, creating traditions is my job. It once again made me think that I didn’t do a very good job as a mom.
The next time Jon came over to our house I apologized for not giving him the tradition filled holidays that I should have. He reiterated (as he did on the show) that not having set traditions had opened us up to new, exciting things each year. He didn’t feel at all deprived to not have set traditions.
My brain, however, has been churning ever since I listened to the podcast.
I thought back to my childhood. Since my father was so anti-church, Christmas was all about the tree, Santa and the presents and not about the baby Jesus at all. Of course my parents also didn’t believe in telling lies to their kids so we never actually believed in Santa. Not until I married Tim did I realize there actually was a Santa and that Jesus was the reason for the season, not the economy.
I have some good Christmas stories and some horrible ones. Like the year I got a bike and it got run over by a truck the same day. (Up side- I was not on the bike when the truck backed over it.) Or the year I thought I’d give chocolate another try since everyone thinks I am crazy to not like chocolate. One bite and I knew I STILL didn’t like chocolate, but my dad decided that if I started the candy bar I had to finish it, so I ate it begrudgingly while crying under the Christmas tree.
When I was young my mom would always tell us about her traditions growing up in Puerto Rico, but none of those were implemented in our household. So traditions- no, we didn’t have any.
Tim’s family didn’t interject any traditions per se. When we first got married his dad would come over and he and Tim would fix breakfast for us. That continued until Jon was a toddler. Then as tends to happen, I began to cook the breakfast for us all. After breakfast we would have Christmas with his mom and sister’s family before heading to his uncle’s to have yet another Christmas with cousins. It was a long day. When Jon and some cousins’ new babies joined the family, all of that schlepping around ended. The Christmas breakfasts with Tim’s dad eventually ended as well, although I don’t remember when or why.
For 34 years Tim and I have been to see White Christmas at the Alabama Theatre. This year we had tickets for a play on the night the Alabama had White Christmas scheduled- at least for this year, another tradition bites the dust!
On Christmas Eve we would go to my parent’s for dinner. Even after they moved 45 minutes away to the middle of nowhere to a house my father was building alone by hand with no heat, we would bundle up and head to the woods.
The year that Jon was old enough to be in youth choir and we found out that this group sang for one of the Christmas Eve services, I realized the tradition of going to my folks’ house would have to change. Jon loved playing guitar, piano and singing, so I invited them to come to our house and that I would cook for us and then we could go to church together and see Jon perform.
After what I thought was a lovely meal and service my father pulled me aside and told me to never “drag them into a church again.” Christmas Eve dinner tradition ended! That opened the door for our new and so far most lasting tradition, Christmas Eve services, especially the midnight one.
I picked another day during the holiday to invite my parents for dinner. My mom was getting where she no longer cooked or decorated, so it was a natural shift. Until the year that I called them the day of the appointed holiday dinner to check on some menu detail, only to find out they had decided not to come (not sure when they planned to tell me as I was already cooking.) The excuse was that holiday traffic was horrible. That was the end of any holiday dinner with them.
As family members aged and left us, the get togethers took on various forms- restaurant meals before Christmas, Christmas evening cocktail parties, etc. The one thing that never changed was our attendance at Christmas Eve communion. Most years we attended multiple services to hear the youth and then the adults at the late service. Even that has evolved over the last few years and now we go at 11 only.
Four years ago Tim began making a Christmas ornament that we sold on Facebook and all of the money goes to the Christmas Gift of Joy (now called our manger offering. See everything changes and evolves!) These ornaments have become traditions for some of our friends and church family which makes us very happy.
Also about 4 years ago, my friend that works at the church asked me if I could help serve communion at that late service. Due to the late hour and the holiday, they didn’t have enough people to serve. I had served a few times during the year and I agreed, feeling honored and blessed.
I got to serve to my guys and to many friends on a most special night. It was so meaningful to see everyone in the glow of the big tree and every year since I have volunteered to continue my new tradition.
Just this week a friend asked me if I was serving this year and I said yes, I had signed up early and was looking forward to it. She assured me that she would again try to get to me, so I could serve her as had become her new tradition.
Today I got an early morning email telling me that too many people had signed up on the computerized sign up. It was asking if I could be the one to step aside and maybe fill a different role. What could I say? I wasn’t going to displace someone else for my selfish desire. So I agreed to give up my spot and told her that one of my guys would fill the usher spot that was offered to me instead.
Now, I believe that sometimes things like this happen to open up the time for something else that is to come along. In honesty I am super disappointed and the email ruined my morning. I have to go back to my much wiser son’s words when we discussed traditions weeks ago, that it leaves you open for something exciting and new that might happen. I am being optimistic and hopeful for what that something might be.
If nothing new happens, I will console myself that one of the other servers needed to be a part of this service more than I did for a reason I’ll never probably know.
Regardless, as long as I am with my family, my Tim and Jon as well as my church family, continuing the only tradition left to us, then I will be happy. If you have to be left with only one tradition, being in that late night group, taking communion, lighting candles and singing Silent Night in the dark is the one to keep.
Merry Christmas! May something new, unexpected and wonderful happen to each of you!
