the keeping of traditions

My parents used to tell us that the animals talked on Christmas Eve. Thus my brother and I would lie awake that night straining our ears to hear bits of conversation between the Dobermans and Corgis and the horses and barn cats, most likely (we assumed) discussing the merits of eating hay and how much they hated the mutts down the street. Yet no matter how hard we tried, we always ended up asleep before we caught a peep of anything and well before Santa tiptoed in to leave a gift in our rooms – another tradition of my family’s.

Scott, on the other hand, comes from the practice of pajama presents on Christmas Eve, allowing the whole family to show up under the tree the next morning in matching flannel. And their tree itself is a long history of Christmases past, with ornaments spanning the whole of their life together.

This is our first Christmas as a full family, and it’s proving to be a bit of give and take, mixing and matching the traditions of our pasts while blending in some new ones of our own. We’re going to pass along the animals talking (I wonder what pugs say when given the opportunity), and our Santa will drop off pjs to tide us over till the next morning. But we have an artificial white Christmas tree displayed in our living room (a far cry from the firs of our pasts) and – in addition to our viewing of The Bishop’s Wife and our nightly advent readings – we’re adding a listening of Six to Eight Black Men to our holiday program (after the baby has gone to bed, of course). We hope someday Clay will look back with fond nostalgia regarding his family’s traditions and argue with his own wife about which ones to keep.

-Eleanor

Note From Scott: I hope Clay picks up the tradition of sleeping in on Christmas morning.