Have you ever heard the story of the woman who always cooked her roast by cutting off the two ends before she put the roast in the pan? She would cut the two ends and then put it all in the pan for Sunday roast. One week her husband asked her why she did that. She said she didn't know, but her mother had always done it that way, so she called her mother to see why she'd done it that way.
Her mother said she didn't know, but her mother had always cooked roast that way, so that's what she'd done. Fortunately, her mother was still living, so they called Grandmama and asked her why they needed to cut the ends of the roast before cooking it.
Grandmama laughed and laughed, and then explained that her only roasting pan had always been too small to cook the roast without cutting off the ends and stuffing them in the sides of the pan. Her daughter and grand-daughter didn't need to cut the ends off- their pans were larger.
Traditions have many origins, and I suspect that most of them are as mundane as the roasting pan story. Others probably are a combination of mundane underlying causes and simple family preferences.
IN our family one of those is the Christmas Tree. We always buy a real Christmas tree, not a fake one. We do this because my family always had a real tree. The Headmaster's family were into the phony aluminum thing with the rotating colored lights. I'm glad I didn't know that until after we were married, because it shocked me so much that I'm not sure I would have even dated him if I'd known.
We also never buy our Christmas tree before the 15th of the month. My children enjoy this tradition. They've told us they like the fact that we wait so much longer than most of their friends to put up our tree. They say it makes it more special, and they are not sick to death of the sight of the tree by New Year's. But it was only a couple years ago that I discovered they thought these were the reasons we wait until the 15th to buy a tree. No, these are not the reasons. They are only the benefits.
The reason we have always waited until the 15th to put up a tree is because for the first dozen years or so of our marriage we had to wait until the 15th of the month payday in order to afford the tree. Military families used to get paid on the last day of the month and the 15th (Incidentally making the Friday before payday the traditional holiday known as 'Hot Check Day')
We tried very hard not to write hot checks and we tried equally hard not to get into debt. So we paid the rent with the end of the month check and then had to wait until the 15th of the month to be able to buy our tree. I'm not complaining, mind you. I think the forced delayed gratification was very, very good for us. We could afford to buy our tree in November now if we liked, and certainly have been able to afford to pay the rent or make the house payment and buy a tree out of the same paycheck for many years now, but we don't. We like waiting until the 15th to buy our tree.
I like traditions, and our family keeps many of them. Most of their origins are buried with the ancestors who passed them down to us. I wonder how many of the ones we consider most precious are actually sanctified by years of family lore and repetition lovingly wrapped around the seed of a one time necessity?
We wait awhile too! This week I've been wishing our house looked a little more "christmasy", whatever that means--and it's only December 11th, I keep reminding myself. Like my little offspring said, it's not Cwistms, still Advent; and our tradition is also to bring the tree out about the last week before Christmas, and to keep it up until Jan. 6th.
ReplyDeleteBut I think it's definitely time for the nativity scene.
"I wonder how many of the ones we consider most precious are actually sanctified by years of family lore and repetition lovingly wrapped around the seed of a one time necessity?"
ReplyDeleteIn some ways it doesn’t really matter what prompted the family traditions. Linda and Richard Eyre say in "3 Steps to a Strong Family" that one of the most important things parents can do is to create family traditions. Family traditions strengthen family ties. They provide opportunities to create memories and share love. The Eyres suggest in the book that parents consciously think about creating more family traditions.
Five years our family took a train ride to Sacramento. We did it so the girls had an experience of riding a train, which few people do these days. We had so much fun the first time that we did it again, and it has became a family tradition. We normally will stay for one night, at one of the hotels close by, and then return home the next day. Old day Sacramento has a ton of fun things to see and do. The girls love seeing the scenery along the way. Maybe some day we’ll stop, but for now it is a tradition that helps bring our family closer together.
*perks up ears* Sacramento, you say? Why, I grew up there, and live just south of there now!
ReplyDeleteYou're right about Old Sac— which, for some reason, all of the tourist info insists upon calling "Old Town." I have never once heard it called that by a native.
Incidentally, if you started these treks five years ago, your children should be at a good age to teach them about the history of flooding in Sacramento and the solution, which was raising the city. There are a couple of sunken patios in Old Sac and a meadow that are at the original ground level, and be sure to let them know that the dirt to raise the city was brought in by hand and by horse-drawn cart. Then you can point to downtown Victorians with the main entry on the second floor and talk about how front porches were used as boat docks in flood times, and how instead of having the servants' quarters in the attic, Sacramento elites had the servants in the basement, so that their quarters (and cheaper belongings) were the ones at risk in a flood.
Sadly, the "underground" of the original city level is mostly gone, and the last bits are rapidly being lost to development. No Seattle-style tours to keep them in the public eye.