Day Thirty - Traditions

I love holiday traditions. I love my family's the best. Simple. But the same. Every year.

This year we're going to celebrate Christmas a day early, since my brother has to work on Christmas day. (Darn police and their need to constantly be protecting us.) So tonight (the 23rd) the kids were so excited, getting them to bed was practically impossible. But once they did, the old ways began. The coffee was passed around (as all of us were exhausted by the 6 children throughout the course of the day), and the left over snacks brought out. We played Pictionary and spades. We talked politics and pop culture. We didn't go to bed until midnight, and even then it was lingering. 

And every year I seem to be reminded of how important the little traditions are. How included they make everyone feel. Each member of the tradition is important. Mike and I need each other to beat my brother and my mother at Spades. One without the other just leads to trouble. Melissa always begins the dough for the morning donuts, and forces snacks on us to clean out the fridge. We talk politics and catch up, and joke about our Christmas gifts and what we didn't get each other. We belong, we enjoy, and we all know our parts. 

I also realize that someday, new traditions will have to be started, and old ones changed. Thus is the nature of growth and change. Things cannot be as they always were. Someday I will add someone new to our family, and be added into another. And then our traditions will have to grow and change to accommodate the new, and change to accommodate the loss. But then the old traditions will slowly fade from memory until, according to us, it's always been this way. 

And perhaps, as a resident of the Rabbit Hole, when the opportunity arises, I will take the opportunity to create a few traditions for the better. Perhaps in the family I help create we'll read the bible every Christmas Eve, or make it the night the kids learn to donate gifts to charity. I want to restart the tradition we had when my grandparents were alive; we went looking at Christmas lights every Christmas Eve (that was when Santa came, we missed him every year!). Or take the time to remember the gifts that have really stuck with us through the years.

That being said, no matter what happens or changes or grows, I will always, always love the times I get to play spades and talk politics and snack on meat and cheese and crackers with my brother and mother and Uncle Mike and sister in law. 

What Christmas traditions do you cherish the most? Are there any you would add if you could?