It's Tradition

Anyone in my family will tell you I'm a stickler for traditions.  I am a firm believer in them and feel certain traditions are non-negotiable.  For example, there always needs to be at least one Cadbury Egg and one Peanut Butter Egg in my Easter basket.  I could care less what else, if anything, is in the basket, but those two items MUST be there.  My mom forgot one year and it wasn't pretty.  There also needs to be a sausage roll for Christmas breakfast.  One year I had to spend Christmas without my family (it was awful) and I made my mom make a sausage roll and give it to me in advance so I could keep the tradition alive.  Of course I could make one myself, but that's not the tradition, it MUST be made by my mom.  She knows this and for the most part accepts it.  I think she figures it's easier to just make one than argue with me.

Traditions are so important to me because they are what make up all the happy memories of my childhood.  There are some traditions that we no longer do and I miss them.  We use to have these big Christmas Eve parties and they were fantastic!  All the family would come and friends too.  My mom would make a sherbert punch and there would be REAL cheese and crackers.  We would sing Christmas Carols for these old song books and later my mom would pull out a birthday cake and we would all sing Happy Birthday to Jesus.  I don't remember when we stopped having those parties, but they were a blast.

Now that we have a baby I can't wait to start, and in some cases, continue traditions with him.  The first one will be the giving of the Christmas ornament and tree trimming.  Now I know this is nothing new and most people do it.  My parents did it for us and Jim and I have been doing it for each other since we met.  When I was a kid my mom would make a soup or stew, we would get to use the Christmas dishes for the first time of the season and we would get our ornaments.  After we decorated the tree we would sing "O Christmas Tree."  Jim and I have modified the tradition a bit.  Instead of soup Jim makes a tri-tip roast and we listen to Christmas music instead of singing. 

Our whole tree is filled with some pretty awesome ornaments.  All of them selected for a specific reason.  This year I got Jim a catfish ornament.  I choose it because it looked exactly like our orange cat, Rusty, and because he used to go fishing with his Dad and Uncle to catch catfish when he was a kid.  Jim got me one that celebrates our new parenthood.  I used the blank heart to fill in Baby J's birth stats.  Together we got Baby J the little penguin ornament.  People had already gotten us a few Baby's first Christmas ornaments so we wanted to find something different.  We picked out the little penguin because it reminded me of Happy Feet.  It just seemed fitting.

Of course there will be many more traditions that we do with Baby J as he gets older and understands what is going on.  I hope he will be a stickler too and demand that tradition be followed when others try to slack.  I also hope it gives him many happy memories of his childhood.