Toasting Traditions

I’ve been thinking a lot about traditions lately. How sometimes it seems that traditions only exist for tradition’s sake. That they so often are given vague reverence – a holier than thou reputation – but then delivered halfheartedly. They lose their luster. They become meaningless. Tradition is a funny thing in that way. You make your grandma’s pies every year because it’s important, but the repetition and regularity somehow lessens that importance over time. Families and their members change. New traditions get added to the mix. The rigid lines of traditions strain against the natural fluidity of our lives.

It’s easy for us to blame the roller-coasting madness of the holidays – or just our everyday lives – as the reason traditions fall to the wayside. And some things would probably be better off getting tossed anyway: buying gifts for EVERY member of our extended families, even if we only see them once a year; making hundreds of egg rolls to pass out to neighbors; succumbing to the antique recipe for minced meat pie. But if we can’t take time to enjoy making sugar cookies, or building gingerbread houses, the way we once did with our parents and grandparents, then maybe it’s not really worth doing at all. A tradition is only treasured when we put value in it. Without that, it’s just another thing we have to do. A list to check.

However you spent this winter weekend – the last full one of 2011 – I hope you’ve gathered up enough intention and meaning for it to be worthwhile. Around this time, there seems to be a frantic emphasis on the future, what we’d like to change and start anew. But it’s not often enough that we reflect on what we’re doing right now. None of this, “In the new year, I will”, or “After the holidays, I want to..” sort of thing. What will we do now? What’s important now? You might be surprised to find an answer to these questions just by studying the past, the dusty relics that have carried into the present. The stuff of traditions.

Cheers, guys and dolls.

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