From One Generation to The Next

According to Wikipedia, traditions are beliefs or customs shared by one generation to the next.  It derives from the Latin word, traditio, which means, “to hand down.”  Traditions are great.  They give us a sense of things that came before us.  They give us a sense of things that will come when we are gone.

Holidays and traditions are like peanut butter and jelly, they are a natural fit. 

In my family, the main Christmas tradition has always revolved around Christmas Eve.  For as far back as I can remember Mom, Dad, Theresa, Tina and I would gather at Nana’s house for a Lithuanian feast.  Other relatives, like Aunt Nell and Uncle Al, Nana’s sister and brother, would be there as well.

On Christmas Eve, just after the setting of the sun, we would push through Nana’s front door and stomp the snow off our boots.  In the dining room, we could see the table set with Nana’s best china and goblets. As we peeled the scarves away from our chins, the scents of perogies, bleenies, and kielbasa would warm our noses and call us toward the kitchen.  There we would find Nana conducting an orchestra of pots and pans on the stovetop. 

As the years passed, I grew taller and Nana grew older.  One day Dad proposed a new idea.  Why don’t we move Christmas Eve from Nana’s house to ours?  

What? Move Christmas Eve? Change the tradition? No.  No way. Traditions are traditions.  They don't change.

But it’s a lot of work, Dad explained.  And Nana was getting too old for all of the cleaning and cooking.  It was time, he said, to change.

The following year our Christmas Eve meal moved out of Nana’s and into Mom and Dad’s home.  And several years later, after Nana had passed away and Mom and Dad had sold their place, the tradition changed again. Theresa became the new holiday host. A few years later, Ken and I moved to Illinois.  The days of eating the enormous Christmas Eve feast of my youth would end for me.   

My own children have never experienced the Christmas Eve meal that I grew up with.  We’ve been living in Illinois and the rest of the clan still lives in Pennsylvania.  It’s just too difficult to make the fourteen hour drive in the middle of the winter. 

So, we make our own traditions. We spend a quiet Sunday afternoon trimming our Christmas tree together.  We decorate cookies with pink and purple icing.  We visit with Santa.  We open gifts from our relatives on Christmas Eve and gifts from Santa on Christmas morning. 

Yet even though things have changed, there are parts of the old traditions that continue.  We still share a family meal.  We still spend Christmas Eve together.  We still have a home full of love and happiness.  

I suppose, in the end, the most important part of any tradition isn’t the things you do.  It isn’t the place you gather.  It’s sharing a feeling from one generation to the next.