tradi-tioooon...TRADITION!

I was scrambling.  We had JUST finished Halloween, but there we were, two days into November and I hadn't put up my chart of construction paper thankfulness slips.  So swiftly November 2nd was drawing to a close, I grabbed pens, threw two strips of paper at each child, suppressed the temptation to yell, but still, frazzled and frantic told them: "QUICK!  Write two things you're thankful for!  We're behind."  I grabbed Bethany's (as she's too young to be able to write her own) and asked her what she was thankful for.  Unable to coax out anything more meaningful than "pink," I quickly scribbled on her paper, wrote Lottie's and then wrote two of my own.  Great start to the season of perpetual gratitude.

I reminded Mark that he was behind on his thankfulness cards and needed to get crackin'.  In less eloquent terms, he informed me that he wasn't married to the idea that our thankfulness be so perfunctory that each day needed to have its card if we were, that day, busy as bees!  

BLASPHEMY! What was this heresy ringing in my offended ears?  I paid his remark the heed any such utterance deserved and was half-tempted to write his cards for him.  But then, as his comment settled into my mind through the night, I began to wonder...was I making too much of the tradition?  

You know how it goes, you're raised in a family and taught traditions are to be cherished.  And they certainly can be fun, and can be the source of great memories.  But too, they can also degenerate into rituals that are forcing participants to just go along with whatever the demand of the Tradition Nazi.  The Tradition Nazi is an artful task-master who, even in the face of better reason and logic, has to give no other answer to his forced followers than: It's TRADITION!  And so there you go, lining up dutifully, following along, until external circumstances make the tradition more difficult for you to uphold, and soon, you're either resentfully marching in lockstep to keep the Tradition Nazi off your back, or else you're boldly disavowing the tradition, to glares and hisses of the TN Soldiers.  Though soon, the Tradition Nazi may find himself all by his lonesome, holding fast to the rules of the original tradition.

And that was becoming me.  I had begun to view the TRADITION of writing out our thankfulness, to be more important than the actual practice that it was originally trying to teach my children: to stoke in themselves hearts of gratitude.  Traditions are usually built around something that was good...trying to get everyone together, to encourage friendship, hospitality, worship, fellowship, whatever it might be.  And that is good.  But too, traditions are made to be broken.  We are people who cannot stave off the dynamic lives we live...nothing is stagnant...time marches on without assent to the Tradition Nazi.  Things change and so traditions are broken and in the truest sense of the word, are no longer traditions.  But what can remain steady are the intangibles behind the tradition.  The spirit of the tradition can hold strong.  Just because fatigued and recently hospital-released Great Aunt Margie can't be at the lighting of the fourth advent candle, does not mean that fellowship and worship has died.  So continue on, letting your traditions morph, and become what may...that's what I'm clinging to this Christmas season, as my Tradition Nazi spirit succumbs to its own over-stimulated and sleep-deprived state and allows The Best Christmas Pageant Ever to be read to my children by an iPad app!