Considering Traditions

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States. Canada had its Thanksgiving celebration
the first Monday in October.   Thanksgiving is a day where there is a
"traditional" feast of one whole day's calories.   My grandmother had some
wonderful traditional meals until she and my grandfather left wintry Iowa
for sunny Florida in 1976.

In light of my Grandmother's passing back in May, I have given thought
to the concept of Traditions over the past several months. My
grandmother was keeper of holiday traditions in the family as long as
she was able.  In a sense, I am thankful that she did keep traditions
and I miss them.

Some people hate traditions. The traditions bring back memories of
pain and abuse, and the family control freaks sounding like Tevye in
Fiddler on the Roof shouting “Tradition!”

Some people cherish traditions. The traditions remind them who they
are, where they came from, and where they belong. Traditions ground
them.

Some people grieve the loss of traditions. Their absence makes for a hole in the
middle of their hearts.

Christmas and Advent are traditions in the very sense of the word.
They are not in the Bible. However, they are reasonable traditions
that Church Fathers started in the Fourth Century AD as an alternative
to a pagan celebration.

Traditions are at the heart of holidays that also are very much sticky
subjects that bring about a confusing mess of feelings. Part of
surviving and coping through the holidays is deciding what traditions
can mean in your life.


For a starting point, I will start with the good old Webster
Dictionary. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tradition) .
The definition is
1 a: an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought,
action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom)
b: a belief or story or a body of beliefs or stories relating to the
past that are commonly accepted as historical though not verifiable
2 : the handing down of information, beliefs, and customs by word of
mouth or by example from one generation to another without written
instruction
3 : cultural continuity in social attitudes, customs, and institutions
4: characteristic manner, method, or style <in the best liberal tradition>
In terms of the holidays,

We usually take traditions given down to us and pass them on.  They mean
something to us.

Besides the gathered meaning, traditions bond us together. I have decided that
traditions as part of my family life make our relationships closer and
give us a sense of appropriate closeness or intimacy. We will enjoy
the practices we have engaged in over the past several years.

Where traditions seem to fall short is when they engender the pursuit
of delusional nostalgia of old fashioned holidays. Traditions cannot
take us back to earlier times when we did not have those problems. 
Let's face it, those  earlier times had different problems and were not
problem-free.

However, part of the grief at holidays is that some family traditions
lose value and meaning. Family changes, divorces and deaths either
evaporate the traditions or change the significance from fulfilling to
painful. Memories of the traditions also can be painful because the
traditions embody the family member who was at the heart of the
tradition.   If not for the loss of the family member, there is always
the economic necessity of job transfers and relocations that mean for
families not being able to come to be part of the tradition.

As emotional human beings, we can feel lost without the tradition.  Oh
yes, we can put on our shells of faces, but the pain will still go on
inside for today is going to happen despite the tradition or its
absence.  The pain can lead to engaging in addictive behavior,
over-eating, depression, maybe even thoughts of suicide.
In the end, theologically, the tradition is not Jesus Christ.  The
tradition is not the liberating faith that Jesus Christ came to earth
to bring.   As I seek to live this holiday season, I really seek to
live . . . not be stuck in the black, emotional cloud of expired
traditions.

I do not leave you with any particular advice today, other than
recognize you have a choice. You choose how you will feel today.  You
will choose what you will do, just as I will choose what I will do.