Cherish old traditions and create new ones
Home » Magazine » Good, issue 4 » Cherish old traditions and create new onesChristmas traditions are a thread that joins the past and the present, reminding us we are part of a collective venture. Honour them, while you nudge them to fit better with the world you’d like to live in
Photo: Nationaal Archief via Flickr
Some Christmas traditions are hard to miss. Gigantic plastic Santas, shops strung with tinsel, street decorations and parades, and the eerie public silence of the day itself, when even the malls are closed. If there is a collective mind, surely it exists on Christmas day, when the world as we know it pauses and even the most cynical are obliged to accept that something special is going on.
As well as our shared rituals, most families have their own Christmas traditions. Auntie Sue’s little trays of salted nuts and Macintoshes toffees, wrapped boxes of chocolates under the tree for unexpected extras, large meals held at a different person’s house each year.
Magazines sometimes suggest doing away with tradition, for a new-look Christmas better aligned to modern values. Have Christmas at the beach this year, they propose, or agree to only give presents to the children. This advice sounds sensible—until you realise it involves upsetting your grandmother who hates eating outside, or informing your cousin, who has no children but always buys expensive gifts for yours, that she will be receiving nothing from you this year. So how do you create new Christmas traditions without alienating your family along the way?
The trick is to look for opportunities to make changes that don’t violate treasured expectations or require everyone else to change as well. If you find piles of plastic, imported presents depressing, make a resolution to only buy other people food, New Zealand crafts made from natural materials or tickets to the theatre, movies or zoo. Your generous cousin might love the opportunity to attend a local wine-tasting with you. If you want to eat organic food, make sure your own contribution is organic. If others in your family like the twist you’ve added, perhaps they’ll follow along next year.
