New traditions may capture that old magic
By Jean Sweeney
Catholic News Service
I remember a young professional woman who spoke in my pastoral counseling office of her fears about visiting her family for Christmas and New Year’s. She was afraid she would somehow regress to the reactive, defensive teen she once felt a need to be. Her parents, no doubt, wondered if they would be “walking on eggs” around their fiercely independent daughter, who disapproved of some of their opinions.
Even though both parties longed for a new relationship, the traditions surrounding the holidays somehow locked them into old patterns.
We all love traditions: where our Christmas tree is purchased, when it goes up, who decorates it, who bakes the cookies, when company joins the family, etc. Traditions give us a sense of security and familiarity. We know where we are.
At the sound of the very first Christmas carol (much too early in the season), families get their expectations going as they remember the cozy routines traditions. One couple whose children have been adults for some time now still set out a snack for Santa each Christmas Eve.
Christmas is not a season when we want to experience change. There is a longing in us for the expected and remembered atmosphere, and for the feelings of past years.
This longing can get us in a lot of trouble.
Patty is a peer of mine who works a 40-hour week, has teenage children and a busy husband. But the kind of Christmas her own nonworking mother produced when Patty was growing up is what she still wishes she could have.
And produced, it was, in her childhood home. There were gingerbread houses to make and a table for homemade ornaments where the children and their neighborhood friends sat and talked and created. All during Advent the house slowly got decorated as the family made beautiful things for each room.
Patty’s memories include all this creativity along with music in the background, cookie smells from the kitchen, friends and aunts stopping by. She even remembers the end-of-day Advent wreath prayer.
There is such a sadness in her, she says. Her own boys don’t like crafts the way she and her sisters did. She has neither the time nor the inclination to cook, and it seems that Advent lasts only a week before she is inundated with Christmas.
Patty says she feels like a failure most Christmases for not producing the atmosphere that she remembers so well.
Many changes happen within a family over the course of a year. There are deaths, divorces, marriages, growing up, new animals, new babies. To cling to old ways that no longer fit you will just cause suffering.
Be ready for something new. Take a risk by trying something new.
It is important to ask: “What do we really want this Christmas? What works for the family this year?”
If it is a need for leisure time together and times of fun or perhaps performing some work of service together, make a plan. You may not be reproducing a past year’s holiday, but you may be forging a new tradition — or just trying a one-time event.
One family I know packed up and went to a state park for a week of outdoor time and no presents. Another family reads a Christmas play, assigning parts to all, on Christmas Eve. Still other families have helped out at a family shelter on Christmas morning and attended an ecumenical Christmas Eve concert.
These were new events, not longtime traditions, and they gave a new spark to the season of new birth.
Sweeney is a pastoral counselor in Arlington, Va. E-mail her at jeansween@erols.com.
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law