I wrote this article in 1992. I'm sharing excerpts from it thinking that some of you may be struggling with these same issues.
It was Christmas Eve. The cars were backed up for miles on the Florida interstate. If it hadn't been for the carols we were singing along with the car radio, we wouldn't have had any outward indication that Christmas was the next day. Spending the holidays with my brother was a first for us, breaking a tradition we had began 20 years before when we were first married. We always spent Christmas at home. Always.
At one time I would have felt guilty about breaking such a long standing tradition. In fact, it seemed like I felt guilty every year as I read articles telling me how vital traditions are for children. I had tried to establish special ones. When we went to a tree farm to cut down our tree one year, I thought we had begun a delightful tradition. But we couldn't continue it more than three or four years because of our schedules.
Other ideas, such as making handmade gifts for friends, or preparing particular Christmas foods fizzled out too. I always felt like my family didn't quite measure up. In my mind, a tradition wasn't meaningful unless it continued practically forever.
But as I sang carols in a traffic jam on the Florida turnpike, I no longer felt guilty. I had gained a proper perspective of traditions. Certainly I realize they are valuable. They give a child a sense of security in a sometimes frightening world. And for adults, traditions give a continuity, a link to the past, a sense of belonging. It brings pleasure to pass a heritage on to our children.
But just as surely as they are valuable, traditions that are maintained too rigidly can be harmful. Why? Because at some point they must surely be broken. For my children, it happened early in their lives. During the year they turned five and seven, their father unexpectedly died. He wasn't with us that Christmas to cut the tree, hang out the lights, or take the annual holiday photos. The three of us were forced to do things differently. It was the most difficult Christmas we will ever experience. I still tear up thinking about it.
Most families won't be faced with such sudden traumatic experiences, but there will be a time of loss. A child will leave home and be unable to get back home for the holidays. Or Grandma will be too frail to have the traditional meal at her house. Teenagers will outgrow practices such as decorating their own small trees or opening the doors of an advent calendar.
Even happy events, such as marriage, can cause upheavals. A young bride wants to carry on her families' tradition of a candlelit dinner on Christmas eve while her husband wants to be with his own family. Compromises must be worked out.
As surely as each year passes, circumstances change. And if we insist that holiday events must always be done a certain way, we set ourselves up for heartache. An elderly widow expressed the agony she experienced when she forced herself to put up a tree after her husband died. Removing the familiar ornaments from their boxes brought back a flood of memories of Christmases past when her family was together. "The tree brought only sorrow," she said. "I will never subject myself to such misery again."
I suspect that much of the depression many people experience during the holidays is related to impossible expectations. We want to experience the excitement we felt as children. We want things to stay the same, but they simply cannot.
The solution is not to drop traditions altogether, but to view them realistically. Rather than thinking of them in terms of lasting a lifetime, we should expect them to change a number of times over the years. The attitude we should convey to our children is: This is the way we do it now, but change is okay. In fact, it's helpful to occasionally try something new.
Being flexible rather than rigid about traditions will free us from feeling guilty when we spend Christmas Eve in a traffic jam on the Florida turnpike. We won't mind when we establish a new tradition, continue it for several years, and then are unable to maintain it. We will realize it is all right to switch to an artificial tree or get to the point when we cannot put one up at all. It is good to make traditions. But is is also good at the proper time to break them.