What Is a New Old Fashioned Way
I broke tradition and listened to some Christmas songs that I came across when station surfing in the auto the week before Thanksgiving.
Normally, I decline to do anything Christmas-y before Thanksgiving has concluded, only with the two huge snowstorms we'd already had, it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas, anyway.
I sang along withFrosty the Snowman,Santa Claus is Comin' to town, and thenRockin' Around the Christmas Tree on my way to pick upwardly my son.
What the heck does Brenda Lee actually hateful past"new old-fashioned manner"? I had always wondered. It sounds like an oxymoron to me, I scoffed inwardly.
The weekend afterwards Thanksgiving, standing at the kitchen counter circled by hopeful dogs, I was picking autonomously a rotisserie chicken and mulling over a comment from an older relative as I put soup ingredients into my crockpot.
She had lamented that no one honors traditions anymore. "Look at all these people! Working women don't cook today…" Our family had gone out to swallow in a eating house for our Thanksgiving meal.
Well,au contraire monfrère, because in that location I was, a working adult female, cooking; Cooking something traditional in a crockpot – on a Sunday afternoon while I could hear the football game in the next room. Information technology doesn't get more stereotypically traditional than that. The merely thing missing was an frock.
It got me thinking about traditions.
First of all, what is tradition? Merriam Webster says information technology's an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, activity, or behavior.
My kids count on sure traditions twelvemonth later year. For example, at Thanksgiving, we accept a Gratitude Tree where we hang leaves upon which we write blessings nosotros've counted. Nosotros usually eat turkey dinner and pie, regardless of where nosotros are. At Christmas, anybody has favorite ornaments to hang on the tree, including the hand-painted ones from my grandmother that have been handed down through the generations. We make fudge and peppermint bark to give as gifts.
I do, indeed, honor traditions.
However, our family traditions are different than they were five, ten and fifty-fifty 20 or more years ago.
As a child, I went over the river and through the woods to our grandparents' firm the night earlier Thanksgiving. When my blood brother and I got to high school we were too busy with spirit week for that.
Information technology seems that the passing down of the vacation torch occurs directly in relationship to the grandchildren growing up. For example, in my senior year of high school, my mother inherited the role of the family dame and hosted the Thanksgiving meal after the high school football game. On Christmas morning, she made united states of america all homemade monkey bread that we ate while opening gifts.
10 years ago, when my mother passed away of a sudden and unexpectedly, I was left holding the torch. My kids were far from the grown-upward, which is why information technology was particularly important for me to acquit it and carry on.
Here are some things I realized about the importance of traditions.
- Traditions give us a sense of security and continuity.
- Traditions are a way to pass on family values.
- Traditions vary from family unit to family and that is okay.
- Traditions evolve as families evolve: we blend families. We invite friends. We become parents and realize why it might non be a skillful idea to serve our kid's monkey bread and Christmas processed for breakfast, and suddenly our grandparents' tradition of putting fruit and nuts in the stockings makes sense.
My kids used to make gingerbread houses at Christmastime, merely we haven't done that since my oldest's xvith Christmas. I however accept an unused gingerbread house kit sitting on a tiptop shelf that I look at wistfully from time to time. That is okay.
All of a sudden, Brenda Lee's song made perfect sense to me. Our "quondam-fashioned means" change when they no longer work for u.s., such as when we tin can't bear to look at that empty chair at the dining room table.
Since traditions are nonetheless important, nosotros must create – and honor – new customs. Life goes on and so must we. That is why my "new old-fashioned way" is going out to eat at Thanksgiving every year. And that is okay!
Sorry I ever doubted you, Brenda Lee. I go it now! I idea as I put the hat on my crockpot. Then, since I wasn't wearing an apron, I wiped my hands on i of the Christmas-towels I'd pulled out of storage the solar day after Thanksgiving.
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