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IT'S TRADITION MAN

This year I have been hearing a lot about how the true meaning of Christmas is lost upon us. To an extent I agree but I believe deep down inside we all still know the true meaning of Christmas and it is important to us. We celebrate not the birth of Christ but his life and what he died for. So while we rush to the malls and light our homes to look like an airport runway we hold onto what’s really important during the Holiday season. Now with that being said I think the fact that Christmas has become about other things is not all such a bad thing. Actually it’s a great thing.

Although I am still young I have also been around now for thirty-one years (not that I want to admit that) and have seen a lot. What I have learned is you never stop learning. In my early twenties I was teaching new things to people in their seventies. We learn from life and each other regardless of age. When you are a child everything is new and exciting. It doesn’t matter what it is. I remember buying my first CD Player. I was super excited about it. I had mowed lawns for months saving every dollar I earned. All I could think about all day and everyday was finally buying it and bringing it home. I remember it cost $99.99. I thought wow less than one-hundred! How naive was I? They price it that way so we think it’s less than one-hundred but what the hell difference does one cent make anyway! I was young what did I know? Today if I was to buy a new DVD player it would cause me no big excitement and I would forget I even bought it. I would just pop the DVD’s in and watch. That’s just it. As an adult we have seen things over and over again to a point it becomes lost on us. Every year seems to be the same. As child and a teen every year was very different. Each year had it’s personality and style. For me 1993 was an incredible year full of joy, heartbreak, tragedy, and growth but completely different than 1992 and 1994. Each of those years are very different in many ways. Now I can’t tell difference from the year 2000 to 2007! They just seem to be one continuous year.

With so much being routine it is the Holidays that brings back the excitement we seek. You see Christmas as well as Thanksgiving are filled with traditions. Things we do every year at these times and pass on to our children who in return pass them on to theirs. We create new traditions as well. For me the traditions in my life have become sacred. I look forward to them and rejoice in them. When the Holiday season begins the during the week of Thanksgiving I can feel it in my bones and in my blood. Just by the way the sun sets it reminds me of past years and the traditions I will be living soon. It feels like a warm tight hug grabbing onto me. The smell of the season in the air and the familiar look of the Christmas season recreates those warm feelings and memories. If by some chance I must pass on a tradition or end it things just don’t feel the same although new traditions are born and create new feelings. With a year that seems pretty routine it’s nice to have a break for a month by doing things out of the norm.

You see things have been very difficult for my family and I. We have suffered a lot of loss and have gone through a tremendous amount of change and pain. Most of these changes not good. Christmas is not what is was. Instead new traditions were born. I look forward to Christmas Day not for the presents or even the food (okay maybe the food) but spending time with my family. We sit back relax , relive Christmas past, and create new memories.

The reason why I am talking about traditions is I have found it is the one thing that I know I can go back to. All of the things I have lost I can never regain. They are gone forever. The pain will always be deep inside somewhere, the loss always felt, but it’s the traditions that take me to something familiar. For all those who have gone through so much loss you probably know what I am talking about. You see what I have experienced is that all of those things from the past that I held onto dearly and that are now gone forever feels like they never actually happened. I feel like it was all part of a elaborate dream. Some of the best days of my life are now far behind me. My life is so different now and completely unrecognizable to the life I once lived. I realize that as we get older we change in a continuing cycle but I liked who I was and my life. I had to change with my new environment and had to let go of who I was in order to live in the life I now have. It is the traditions that bring me back and show me that it was not a dream.

These traditions are familiar. They continue on year after year. They are the things that tie us to family members who are no longer with us. They tie us to a life we once knew and they bring us back to our families. The one thing we can be certain of is that family is forever no matter what and when they are gone we carry on the torch for them especially in our traditions. For me these traditions bring me back to reality.

A few years ago my Aunt died. She was one the last remaining members of my Mother’s family. This year my Uncle, her husband died. Well, my mother was offered an opportunity to go into the house and take anything that had meaning to her that had belonged to her Aunt. One of the things she grabbed was a set of these figures. They were a family of Christmas Carolers. She gave them to me. So this year I set them up on a cabinet and as I looked at them displayed there I realized something. For years and years those figures stood on a table in my Aunt’s home and were part of her Christmas celebration for years and years. When she died in the spring of 2001 those figures remained packed in a shoebox until now. As I write this their they stand upon my cabinet to be part of Christmas and will continue to be displayed for many Christmas’s to come. They allow a part of my Aunt to live on long after she’s gone. To me, besides the true meaning of Christmas, it is these things that are also a part it and I think that’s worth celebrating and cherishing.

Traditions can be easily created and repeated every year. They can be done at no cost. Christmas Eve was once different for me. My family would have a seafood diner on Christmas Eve and exchange one gift. Afterwards we would have hot chocolate while listing to Christmas music under the colorful glow of the Christmas tree lights. We did this every year until my parents divorced and then we became teens. We all seemed to go off in our direction. Today we are all adults and have our own lives. For me, I spend Christmas Eve alone. Now don’t start crying for me it has actually turned into something great. It is something I will do until I have a wife and kids of my own and create or carry on old traditions with them. I have created my own traditions and they are my ties to my past and the life I once had and loved. It’s pretty simple and cost very little. I choose about three DVD’s that I will watch, all Christmas movies, and then watch them throughout the day. Originally I would just watch movies from morning to night at maybe five or six movies. I have been doing this since I was thirteen years old. Of course back then it was VHS tapes as DVD’s did not exist. I’d have some kind of yummy treats and of coarse my favorite, non-alcoholic eggnog. Today, and what I have been doing for a few years now, I will watch a movie in the morning, get take out from some local food joint, watch a second film, and then I go on my Christmas Eve hike. Christmas Eve hike? What’s so great about that you nut job? You see stepping out into the cold and walking alone in a special place gives me a chance to reflect. Last year I went back to where I grew up. Behind my house was water company property that expands over 100,000 acres. There are dirt roads that wind through it and a path that goes up the side of a mountain. It has remained virtually unchanged since I was kid. As I walked through there in the cold and over the snow covered land I felt like I was a kid again. The last time I was actually back there in the winter was when I was fifteen years old and I had my 35mm camera and was snapping photos. Now here I was at age 30 with my SLR Digital camera doing the same thing. It gave me what I had lost and brought me to the reality that the life I had lived was still there and long after I’m gone will still continue on. That brought such peace to me. It was an awesome connection to that teen taking photos with his 35mm in the icy cold snow in 1990.

I believe that traditions are a great part of Christmas and have become part of the meaning of Christmas and I think that’s a good thing. What is so wrong about these traditions being part of the Christmas and Holiday celebration? I know that the true meaning of Christmas is redemption but adding tradition to that is not such a bad thing. No matter what your year is like, no matter how good it is or how bad we can always have something that brings us back to each other, to our past, and gives us inner peace. Creating new traditions works just as well. It can be anything. Going to the food kitchen to help the need, leaving bags of food on someone in need’s doorstep, taking a walk in the cold and reflecting, watching DVD’s, having coffee with an old friend, eating a special dinner with family. For those many who will spend the Holidays alone you can cry about it or you can make the best out of it. You don’t need to have presents or money to enjoy it and make it a special day. For me Christmas is the only time of the year where I get to go back in time and revisit the person I once was and the life I once lived. A time where I can enjoy a month of peace. A time where the daily routine of life can be placed in the closet on a hanger until January 2nd. A time when I reconnect with my family and we revisit the happy memories from the past and create new ones that we will look back on next Christmas. A time to appreciate life itself and be thankful for what you have. For me it clears my head and builds me up for the next year. I don’t make new year resolutions. I set goals and then I work at accomplishing each of them. This past year I accomplished all but two. Taking the time to reflect on Christmas Eve motivated me to accomplish those goals.

I have come to the conclusion that no matter how difficult and painful life can get it is still a very precious and incredible gift we were given. It also very short and time here is limited. It is up to us to do what we can to make the best of it for however long we have here. I wish you and yours a Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a very happy New Year.