Traditions

I am all about holiday traditions. Even more now that I have children than before. I so look forward to doing special things every year with my family.

All of my life, almost 28 years now, we have had Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas Eve dinner with my Nana and Papa and my cousins (who feel more like siblings). Oh! How I love Nana's house on Thanksgiving! It is full with children and laughter and hugs and kisses. The men sit in the den and talk turkey and deer hunting, rock quarries, and football while the women pile their plates full of food and serve them. As a newlywed, I was determined not to show such submission. But, it didn't take me long to realize that it isn't done out of submission. It is done out of love and respect and thankfulness. So, now, I happily take my husband's dinner to him on a tray and roll my eyes when the younger girls swear they'll never do that. Because, I know they will. Then the women, after serving food to the little ones, eat around the kitchen counter. The chatter that once consisted of pageants, recitals, recipes, and babies has now turned to conversations of college, boyfriends, symphony, and well, still recipes and babies. It is arguably one of my favorite days of the entire year.

When I was a teenager, we would come home from Nana's on Christmas Eve, and I would open one gift from my Mom and Dad. Then, I would go spend the night with Vanda and Shawn and help with Santa for their (at the time) three small children. We did that even up to the year that I was hugely pregnant with my first baby. I watched with swollen feet (oh, who am I kidding? Swollen, everything) as Brian assembled a little toy kitchen for Amberly that, 3 years later, would be the highlight of my own daughter's Christmas morning. I have grown to truly cherish those times of tradition with family.

When Brian and I got married, as I'm sure most couples face, we had to do some major compromising for holidays. He is big on family traditions, too. And, he was no more willing to give any of it up than I was. So, for more than 5 years now, we do the very best we can to accommodate each other. It isn't always the easiest thing, but we make it work.
There are a lot of things that we could do differently and make things easier on ourselves, but we choose not to, because keeping with the traditions we love is more important to us than doing it the easy way. So, we will continue to eat 2 huge Thanksgiving meals, one at lunch and one at dinner, because we adore time spent with both our families. We will continue to go to Nana's with our girls in their jammies on Christmas Eve, and reluctantly but happily leave early to make it to Brian's Memaw's house just in time for Dessert and Dirty Santa. We will continue to drive 2 hours back to our house late on Christmas Eve, because it is important for us that our children wake up Christmas morning in their own beds. We will continue...because it is tradition...FAMILY tradition. And, because we love it and look forward to it all year.

That does not mean, however, that there is no room for new traditions to be established. When people get married, have children, combine families, etc... it is a good thing, no, a wonderful thing, to establish new traditions that will be all their own and build on that relationship and help the family to grow together. But, we should still be respectful of long-held traditions and not make people we love feel torn or conflicted between the old and the new. That is not what the holiday season is about. It should be something to excitedly await, not dread. It should be a time to enjoy, not just survive.

We have a new tradition (since Sarah's first Christmas) of early Christmas Eve morning breakfast at Shoney's in our jammies. We adopted that from Vanda and her family and last year we had the privilege of spending that time with their family. And, thus, a new tradition was born.
This year is going to be a year of lots of new traditions with new family. And, I am looking forward to it. At least, I am now that I know I am not going to be forced to choose between the people that I love.

Let's just remember that any time spent together as a family is a time for Thanksgiving. No matter what day it is.

What are some of your family's old traditions? And, what are some new ones?