Traditions Reconditioned

The author of a blog I follow recently asked readers to share their favourite Christmas tradition. This is a blog that I comment on quite regularly and I was looking forward to sharing my Christmas traditions. So I sat down and started to write, and realized that I really didn’t have one “Christmas Tradition”. As a child I fondly remember Christmas morning with my family when it was just my mother, father and brother for Christmas. As soon as we were old enough to figure out that we didn’t have to stay in bed until morning my brother and I would sneak out of our bedrooms and steal to the living room where the Christmas tree was. We would first check to see if Santa had come, and then seeing the plump stockings we would race to them and thrust our hands inside to retrieve the flashlight that was always included within. Santa was always faultlessly fair to both of us right down to the number of chocolate balls we received.

The stockings are the only constant for me. They are my favourite part of Christmas and I love searching out that perfect little thing to put in the stockings that are laid out each Christmas Eve.

There were some other traditions we begrudgingly followed. My father had been sent to Finland for work when I was in grade school. He came back with a couple of traditional Laplander hats worn by the children in Finland. As we went off to Christmas dinner at friends’ each year, my mother would pull out the hats and hand them to us so we could wear them into the house. My brother and I would complain incessantly about these hats


(they were actually quite cute) but we would put them on for the 15 or so steps to the front door and tear them off as soon as our hosts had seen us wearing them. I look back and wonder why on earth we put up such a fuss.

The early days were the most consistent but things began to change when we went away to school. After an intense school term all we seemed to want to do was to sleep, and instead of waking up early on Christmas morning, our parents would have to come and rouse us from sleep in order to get the day on its way. This continued until our early 30’s when we started settling down.

A devastating house fire when I was 25 resulted in the creation of a temporary new tradition for my family. Because we lost everything – including the Christmas decorations – we began to buy each other ornaments for the host Christmas tree each year. With just my family this meant 12 new ornaments each Christmas. When my brother and I both got married, the ornament count went up to 30 for a couple of Christmas seasons. We had to cease that as there was soon going to be no room for all the decorations either on the tree or in storage. The trees in our family are beautiful these days, adorned with eclectic mixes of fish and boats and trains and kitchen related decorations.

The married-pre-kids days were probably the most relaxed of all Christmas mornings that I remember. We would get up and brew a pot of coffee, pouring ourselves a cup with a healthy dose of Bailey’s Irish Cream, before making our way to the tree where we spent time laughing and leisurely opening gifts that had been carefully chosen for each recipient.

Once children entered our lives the Christmas morning routine went back to hectic activity. Children waking early to open gifts and a house full of discarded paper and boxes and new toys to try.

Since I’ve been divorced things have changed once more. For a few short Christmases we would buy ourselves a gift worth around $25 and wrap it in newspaper and place it under the tree for the annual exchange. Everyone would choose a gift they didn’t purchase, open it and try to figure out who had purchased the gift for themselves. (My brother was especially good at throwing people off his scent.) Then for some reason this short-lived hilarious activity was terminated and now we don’t even exchange gifts anymore. I have to admit that I miss the family get-togethers that just don’t seem to happen as much or as often anymore. I guess, as with everything, the only thing constant anymore seems to be change.