Christmas: Tradition

Christmas: Tradition

Traaaadition! Tradition!
Doo doo doo doo doo
TRADITION!

The song being in and of itself a tradition in the Treviño-Bradshaw household (imagine my father doing “The Fat Guy Dance” that Topol is so polite to show us in the barn with his rendition of If I Were a Rich Man)

But old Broadway references aside, tradition makes us a part of something larger. We do things without complete logic behind it, year after year just like our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents have done. When you follow a tradition, you become a piece in a puzzle that is infinitely larger than you. It can span decades or only the next few years. We do things not because we have to, but because we feel that we are supposed to, and we fall into a long sometimes tedious path of what has been done in the past.

Christmas is filled with tradition. From sitting around in the kitchen with a giant pile of masa in front of us as we make tamales, to stringing cranberries to decorate the tree, the annual ceremony rumbles on. And even though we sometimes might feel caught up in it like a giant wheel unable to claw your way free, there is always a moment that you step back and assess the havoc around you and smile. Every year you can count on the fight over stuffing, every year you can count on the ornaments to be a little bit heavier placed on Dave's side of the tree, every year there is a fight amongst the adults on who has to wear the Santa hat, a distinction that long ago was fought you got to wear it among the same people.

You might grimace at the old stockings, still hung but never filled. You might roll your eyes at the eating of the sweets behind eat door of the Christmas calender as the days pass. But then you slip into it, oftentimes against your grumpy attitude, and like an old robe, it brings comfort and joy. There is an undying sense of security that you when the whole world changes and acts differently from year to year, at least in December, you can find solace in the fruitcake or the tamales or the family singing carols and sitting around the living room. Tradition is a solid thing to hold onto when everything changes. Its one of the reasons that we enjoy Christmas. Year after year when the world is turning dark and cold, we light it up and sing and eat and be merry.

Ah, tradition. Tradition!