Traditionally Speaking

Tradition means a handing down of ideas, beliefs or practices. Its a pattern or customary method or manner. And of course this time of year is full of family traditions starting on Thanksgiving and continuing until the holiday season spits you out into the new year.

The funny thing about traditions isn't how much they stay the same, but how they change over time.

Friends and family have a tradition of mapping out their plan of consumer attack for Black Friday. Some people camp out in front of stores two or three days beforehand to ensure their place in line for the best deals. But ask someone 15 years ago if they would stake-out Walmart for 72 hours and skip the family Thanksgiving dinner and you'd have been laughed at.

When I was young, immediate and extended family would gather at my grand parents' house for a pot luck meal. Those tastes and smells became ingrained in me to the degree that every Thanksgiving and Christmas my taste buds yearn for certain foods like Pavlov's dogs reaction to the ringing bell.

For Christmas, we'd repeat and gather again at my grand parents' house to open gifts and enjoy dinner.

But my traditions are in transition. Family members pass away. Parents get older. Children become adults. Relationships begin, evolve and some end. Time passes which inevitably means change.

Last week I celebrated Thanksgiving with my wife's family. It was a blend of new and old. For my wife's family Thanksgiving represented their 10th anniversary in the United States. They've adopted many traditions in the United States after arriving here from Colombia. For my sister-in-law's new husband from Mexico, it was his first time to celebrate the uniquely American holiday. For me, its special to watch this first generation family in the United States start their own traditions with blended cultures.

The tastes and smells are a little different. Don't get me wrong. There's still Turkey. But there is also pandabono and empanadas. There's a Spanish telanovela playing on the television. And table talk is in Spanish instead of English.

I suspect one of the reasons this time of year is stressful for people is because traditions change more than staying the same during a given year. And yet, we struggle to keep them the same.

For instance, its difficult in some cases, and down right impossible in others, for newlyweds to make both families happy during their first holiday season together. Do they visit with one family during Thanksgiving and the other during Christmas, then switch for the next year? Do they try to cram both into the same day? And if so, what if both families traditionally had a big dinner meal and now one needs to start doing a big lunch instead?

You know what I mean.

So, I find the notion of tradition to be somewhat of a funny thing for the first time in my life. My opinion about tradition has, as you may have guessed by now, changed.