Some traditions are beautiful.
Some traditions are just things nobody had the nerve to stop doing.
There is a difference.
Every family has one.
A food everybody pretends to like.
A gathering nobody wants to attend.
A game that takes three hours and ends with somebody irritated.
A holiday thing that requires seventeen supplies, two trips to the store, and one woman saying “it’s fine” through clenched teeth.
But it’s tradition.
So we continue.
Apparently somebody had fun doing it in 1994 and now we are legally bound forever.
I love traditions when people actually love them.
I love the recipe that tastes like somebody who isn’t here anymore.
I love the same stupid ornament coming out every year.
I love hearing the story everybody already knows.
That stuff matters.
But sometimes the person working hardest to keep the tradition alive is also the person enjoying it the least.
That’s where I get suspicious.
If Mom has to shop for it, cook it, remind everybody, clean it up, take the pictures, find the missing piece, and listen to everybody complain while doing it, maybe this cherished family tradition has become an unpaid seasonal job.
And if everybody loves it so much?
Fantastic.
Somebody else can be in charge this year.
Watch how quickly the sacredness level drops.
Suddenly it’s, “Well, maybe we don’t have to do the whole thing.”
Oh really.
Interesting development.
Maybe traditions are supposed to change when families do.
Maybe some get smaller.
Maybe some disappear.
Maybe a completely dumb new thing accidentally becomes the one everybody loves.
I don’t think that ruins anything.
I think that’s probably how traditions started in the first place.
Somebody did something once.
Everybody liked it.
They did it again.
Nobody filled out paperwork.