Phthursday Musings: On Tradition

I was maybe 12. Not old enough to actually have money, but old enough to spend it.

This was around when I started giving Christmas presents to people. Not something a parent bought and slapped my broke-arse name on. Oh, maybe the parent gave me the money, and sent me off in the craft store or the Ben Franklin or the Prange Way to go buy things. None of this is material. The point is that I was in possession of actual cash, and I had a shopping list, dag nab it.

As an aside: Prange Way at Machesney Park Mall is where for a long time you get those little boxes of Lemonheads and Alexander the Grapes and the unfortunately named Cherry Clans for 10 cents each. Oh, believe you me, much candy was purchased.

Anyway.

It’s not like I spent a lot of money. Actually, I have no idea what I bought for anyone for most of those years. The exception is my grandmother. One year, I bought her a snow globe. Not a fancy snow globe. A small one, with a bell inside.

As a matter of fact, it’s this very snow globe:

It’s still got water and whatever the snow-like stuff is. Yeah, there’s not enough water to get it to shake right, and yeah, the bell is unmoored from the bottom, and yeah, the water has somehow turned slightly yellow. None of this is important. What’s important is, this thing still somehow exists, at least 30 years after I bought it, for what must have been on the order of $2.99, quite possibly at the craft store at Colonial Village. This thing is of such a particular vintage that the sticker on the bottom says Made in Hong Kong.

I’m not sure if I followed up the very next year or not, but I did eventually turn it into a tradition of sorts: giving my grandmother a really cheap snow globe every year. And, you better believe, she dutifully put those things out every year. There are six more plastic snow globes in a box in the other room. And, there are three much nicer snow globes actually on display, two of which I gave her at some point in time.

Now, I could say, gosh, there should be 25 or so snow globes around… clearly I missed several years. But the thing about tradition is that there’s a level of force at which you’ve totally missed the point. (Though maybe there’s a level of force beyond that, at which you’re not missing the point anymore?)

I think these smaller traditions - intentional ones, ones which might not be perpetual, might even fade away, but which might nevertheless have a durability - I think these get at the essence of the holidays, and indeed, at the essence of the human experience.

In my mind there’s a “holidays as a kid” concept which is no doubt a pastiche of several years but which feels to me like it happened dozens of times. And, of course, it didn’t. At the very best I’d say I remember from age 4 forward, and what I might call the “classic” version of what I remember, the last year of that was probably when I was 10. The years following do blend in, of course - I mean, I went to the same place (my grandmother’s house) at Christmas time for 36 consecutive years!

It’s funny to think about my boy being 8 and actually being toward the latter part of what I’m calling the “classic” kid years.

I think we have traditions, and also trappings, but not necessarily a lot of these types of smaller intentional traditions like the snow globes. I don’t think it’s a deficit necessarily at this point - the snow globe thing, again, only started around when I was 12 - but y’all have read enough META-SPIEL at this point to understand that I don’t just think intentionally but I actually mull over intentionality itself.

One tradition I started which happens to occur at the holidays is Journalism Wednesday. Alas, at this point, it’s mostly just me donating money a day later than a lot of the places are actually asking for it! The first couple of years I actually had other people participating. But it’s just a thing I do now and I imagine one year I’ll just stop, or at least stop trying to pretend it’s anything more than me sending $25 around here or there.

I would thoroughly enjoy having other kinds of small traditions to engage in. I don’t want to contrive something just for the sake of having something else to do but… isn’t what I’m talking about something that a lot of people are missing out on these days?

The holidays themselves, there just used to be a lot of small things that happened, and they don’t anymore. I’m not that big into shopping, but I fondly remember holiday shopping… strangers at the mall seemed jollier, Orange Juliuses seemed eggier, no matter what all else was going on, it was the time of year we were all eager to get to and happy to be at. Was it because we were kids and it meant gifts and it’s all that simple? No, I just don’t think it can be reduced to that.

A lot of what we like to think of as tradition can spill into the realm of obligation. When that happens the intentionality is lost, and really, the intentionality is what makes something special. There used to be a large Christmas Eve night gathering of my extended family - this being my grandmother’s family. And one year she just didn’t go. And eventually we didn’t go either. Yeah, it was a tradition, but it wasn’t an intentional one, it was one which was an obligation, and not even a conscious one.

It’s not that all obligations are bad. Sometimes you go through the motions because, well, you just need to be moving.

I think though that as humans we must feel freer to live more intentional lives. And when we think about the holiday season we should approach it with intentionality, and should think about directing that intentionality into little traditions, maybe just little inside jokes between a grandchild and a grandparent, or between cousins, or between old childhood friends… something that gives us reason to look forward, even if the something is absurdly small, even if the joke isn’t that funny. Because it’s not about snow globes, it’s about human connections. And, as is preached in some cultures, those connections endure even when some humans are gone. Which, of course, means that they are not completely gone. And by living this way, by establishing throughlines from generation to generation, even if we don’t fully grasp it, our existences mean that they, all of them, are never completely gone.

With all this in mind, I would like to establish some kind of new small intentional tradition. I don’t know what, but why should having no damn idea stop me from plowing forward?

Who wants to start a tradition? Holiday or otherwise? It doesn’t even have to be with me! Let’s see what you all can come up with. You’re all so quiet all the time. Stop being quiet! Stop making sense! What are your craziest ideas?