Let me just say it upfront: I love tradition! And let me repeat that: I really love tradition!!
Traditions are, in fact, meaningful repetitions. No doubt, you can think of numerous traditions that you have embraced and enjoyed throughout your own life journey.
Being the “baby” in our family, I was so excited when I was deemed old enough for our whole family to go to Midnight Mass. It started a tradition that would continue for years with home cooked breakfast to follow at 1:30am each Christmas morning. The tradition survived the sudden death of my father the summer prior to my freshman year. It soon evolved into my mom cooking breakfast for a house-full of my high school friends at the same wee-hour of the morn each and every Christmas. Yes, my mom was a saint.
When my son, Ryan, entered the 5th grade we decided it was time to dust-off this by-gone tradition … and bring it back! Thankfully, by then, Midnight Mass was more commonly celebrated at 10:30pm making it more manageable for my young son. We fell in love with this experience together – a tradition that my wife and younger daughters shared little interest in. Over two decades, it would become a meaningful tradition for the two of us – with a guest joining us, every now and then, throughout the years.
The weather added unique dimensions to the tradition as well – with everything from rare “tropical” Chicago breezes, that caught our complaints of being so un-Christmas-like, to the years we drove through falling snow with Christmas carols playing on the radio.
Breakfast was, of course, part of the tradition.
We bagged the home-cooked model and went to Denny’s … the only place that was open. We always checked for options until Denny’s, itself, had become too much a part of the tradition to consider alternatives. Mass was precisely the same every year, but Denny’s was always different. While we walked into Denny’s precisely at midnight, every year, the experience inside always had a new twist. One year, the entire wait-staff walked-out between taking our order and delivering it. Another year, the only cook on duty walked-out. While it slowed down the service, it always added to the uniqueness of that year’s story.
Years into our Christmas tradition, we decided we were going to each chip-in and leave a Christmas card for our waitress, filled with $100 cash, in addition to our tip on the bill. With our card sealed and ready, we finished our breakfast, stood up, threw on our winter jackets, placed the envelope on the table and then quickly departed to remain anonymous. As we drove away, we saw the waitress just outside the front doors of Denny’s waving her arms in a joyous expression of gratitude. It was immediately evident to both of us who had received the real gift that night.
On a November night, a couple years later, I thought I should give Ryan a gracious way out of our tradition thinking, at 29-years-old, that he was hanging-on to it for my sake. His emphatic response, coming without hesitation, surprised me: No Dad, that is what we do on Christmas Eve – we go to “Midnight” Mass and then we go to Denny’s.” Knowing that all traditions should have a season, I was comforted with the thought of maybe one more year. The following summer, Ryan got engaged and our conversation turned to the sweetness of tradition:
And the respect you pay them – by eventually letting them go.
It was then fun to explore what new traditions might await. Traditions bring great meaning and great value to our lives, until we cling to them and confuse them as if they represented some form of Truth. They can help us experience the sweet kiss of Truth yet are never Truth in and of themselves. When we let traditions parade around as Truth in our lives, they pull us into distractive falsehoods eventually pulling us away from Truth. And in doing so, the sweetness sours.
It is much like when our wants, needs, opinions and beliefs – the things that we value — try to masquerade around as our core values. While deeply important, they are poor substitutes for our core. They can easily become the seeds of division – a characteristic that our core does not know.
This year has been a very difficult year on almost every front. It has challenged the essence of most every traditional norm and will continue to do so this Holiday Season and for some time beyond. There is no question that traditions bring great joy and serve a meaningful purpose in our lives.
That is, until they become an attachment sweeter than Truth.
The Truth is that sometimes traditions eventually invite us to a place of sacrifice, emptying, and endings. It is in the richness of this decay that space is made for new traditions to give birth. It may, in fact, be the greatest blessing of 2020. Traditions, sometimes over great expanses of time, come and go. It is in the transition that real Truth is most readily revealed and new traditions can begin. These new traditions, too, will have their ending as future generations grasp to hold-on to what they believe has always been and always would be.
It is in unwrapping our arms from around old traditions that we have our heart and soul most available to embrace a richer Truth. The question becomes: Am I more invested in protecting a revered tradition or seeking a deeper level of this Truth?
As always, I would love for your to share your thoughts and insights below!
John, thank you for sharing your story and exploring the topic of traditions. This year has been such a challenge for me, missing holidays at home and celebrating with the larger community. You really helped put words around my thoughts and feelings.
Wishing you all the best
Sue
Sue … thanks for sitting on “the porch” with us and sharing your thoughts. Indeed this is a difficult year … one that I hope will teach us so much. At the same time, I think it is important to be honest about our experience with it all. I trust we will look back on this time in years to come and see it differently than we do in the midst of it all. I hope you are doing well and staying well. Wishing you all the best too!
First off I will also say I love tradition and very much like you I will always remember going to midnight mass and coming home to have the most wonderful breakfast ever. We were always allots invite our friends and their families. This continued through the years until our family was so scattered throughout The country. Then when I made my latest move we fell heir to a new tradition. Mass was in the late afternoon and we gathered at a friend’s house for Christmas Eve dinner. Whatever family we had around was included. This has been our new tradition until this year of course.
I’m not sure I’m ready to face the truth of developing something new. My core values will always be present but I do long for the past and all the traditions we do loved.
Loretta … thank you for sharing. Loved reading the evolution of your various traditions. This is a new year indeed … one that will surely create the space for new traditions to begin — that will likely be valued for years to come!
John, so true. Traditions change and evolve – as they should! This year, my daughter who is living in another state and was unable to return home for Thanksgiving due to COVID, reminded me how they would “starve” until Thanksgiving dinner was ready – usually by the early afternoon. This year she was invited to her boyfriend’s family for a Thanksgiving lunch where they stayed all day. 🙂 New traditions – TRUTH!!
Pauline … thank you for sharing. So very true how the absence of one tradition gives way to the presence of another!
Our study group of Rohr’s The Universal Christ delved into “Truth” and “tradition” in terms of worship and liturgy. I love the perspective you perhaps unintentionally brought to a conundrum faced by many churches as they emerge from the changes in worship patterns Covid 19 seemingly forced, when in fact longer term cultural and demographic changes are the real underlying causes. Do we one day return to “tradition” when in fact we are being offered the chance to seek Truth anew? Truth in this instance most likely lies at the individual level: What right for many of my friends – a return to rigidly repeated orders of worship, church years and sacraments – won’t be right for many of my other friends. All are housed together, which presents the institutional challenge and offers the institutional opportunity of the future.
Steve … you speak so truthfully, and gracefully, into our present day reality. Some want to move-on and some want to hang-on … and the need to make room for both. Evolution moves slowly and thank goodness God is patient when it comes to these things (and others!!). Thanks so much for sharing!
Our family really loves traditions, too. Our daughter’s fiancé shared with us at Thanksgiving a recent conversation he and our daughter had. He was suggesting to her that next year they might offer to host Thanksgiving. Our daughter’s response was “We don’t have the right to host Thanksgiving. It is something earned. And historically, someone has to die before you have the right to earn it in my family.” Oh my, how tightly some hold on to traditions.
It’s been uncomfortable coming to terms with the truth that it just can’t be the same this year given COVID-19. I love the way you put it…”It is in the richness of this decay that space is made for new traditions to give birth.”
Lynne … haha, now that is a golden quote if I’ve ever heard one: “It is something earned … and historically, someone has to die before you have the right to earn it!” Thanks for sharing and reminding us how tightly we sometimes hold. 🙂
Hey, Lil’ “Baby of the family” LOL … I was never into the Midnight Mass tradition, as you were. My tradition on Christmas Eve was to watch “A Christmas Carol” with Alastair Sim. Always, I would have to leave in the middle of the movie to go to Midnight Mass. Thankfully, the TV station would show it again on Christmas Day. That remains a tradition for me to this day. I always watch at least one version of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” on Christmas Eve and/or Christmas Day. But I do take your point seriously. Traditions are but reflections of the serious, but often intangible Truths, essential to True Living. And it’s in the absence of even our most cherished traditions – that emptiness – that those essential Truths are often most directly experienced. “Not This, Not That” is an Eastern reference to God, and paradoxically, “all of the above” is too. This Christmas will be enshrined in “protecting others”, I hope. Maybe we will frame our “Merry Christmas” masks for posterity. Merry Christmas, Lil’ Brother – to Cindy and the “Kids” as well.
Well, look at you. The memory is still working!! What I remember is our plotting out all the current “creaks” in the hallway floor to avoid them when we snuck into the Living Room in the wee early hours of Christmas Morning. Haha … I think that was YOUR idea … that’s my story and I’m sticking with it! Thanks for sharing your insights, reflections and a tradition I hope you return to this year … watching A Christmas Carol. And yes, may this Christmas be the gift of considering others! Merry Christmas!
I loved reading about your tradition with Ryan, Midnight Mass and Denny’s. He is such a great young man. Merry Christmas to all the Blumberg’s.
Thank you for sitting on “the porch” with us! I hope you and all your family are doing well and staying well. Merry Christmas to all of you too!