Can anyone say that they do not have any type of tradition for any occasion?

I think it is safe to say that everybody partakes in tradition. Whether it is for a specific holiday or just a personal occasion, we all have a specific way we celebrate something. Some of us may not even know it.

But do we all understand the importance of our traditions? Why is it such a big deal? From traditions passed down from hundreds of generations, such as opening gifts on Christmas morning, to personal traditions such as how this particular family chooses to go about opening these gifts.

What is the importance or the reasoning behind this?

Traditions can always be fun, whether it be a tradition you have gone by for as long as you can remember, or thinking up a new tradition to try to stick to. What is great about them is any event or situation can have a tradition applied to it.

I can always remember the traditions at my home. After Thanksgiving, my mom begins talking about how she is starting to feel “Christmassy” and begins decorating the house.

We put up lights and then while I am at school one day, my mom works on the tree. When I get home, I am greeted by a house filled with different holiday charms such as lights, snowmen, nativity scenes, but of course, the beautiful Christmas tree covered with lights and it bows, that my mom worked on for quite some time to make look just the right way.

Movies I have to watch every year include the claymation “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, “Frosty the Snowman”, both the cartoon and Jim Carrey versions of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”, “A Christmas Story”, and most importantly in order to break the monogamy of innocence, “Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights.”

Then there is Christmas morning. It is always get up and do whatever morning chores will need to be done around the dairy. As soon as those are done, we settle around the house and relax.

My mom wants it to either be “A Christmas Story” on TBS playing on the TV, or Christmas music playing on the radio.

My dad seems to not be able to resist attempting to change the channel because “This movie sucks” or turn off the Christmas music because he “wants to listen to some country”. His attempts are shot down when my brothers and I tell him to knock it off and leave mom’s tradition alone.

I did some thinking and realized how important every little detail to these things matter. Seeing my mom’s Christmas tree when I get home and watching all of those movies are a big part of who I am, because every year it reminds me of the year before.

I look back and realize how much fun I have had watching those movies with my family and friends, or the excitement of seeing my gifts under the tree and trying to guess what they are.

As I have grown older, the more childlike traditions usually fade out, but the ones that I hold on to are important to me because they are important to my mother. Seeing to it that all her plans and traditions go as she wants it is a way to show her appreciation for everything she does. (And in a way, my dad trying to slightly alter the Christmas morning routine has sort of become a tradition in itself)

It is safe to say that some people may get tired of their family’s traditions, but even if they do not mean that much to you personally, they may mean a lot to those around you.

By coming to this conclusion I have been able to better embrace the idea of traditions, and even come up with my own. Every summer when some close friends of mine throw a big taco party up in Shaver, I am always the first guest to volunteer to help them set up, and I am always the last guest to leave.

Every New Years Eve, I have as many friends over as possible and we system-link our Xbox 360s and play Halo to ring in the New Year. To me, and maybe to my friends that have become a part of these traditions, the celebrations just would not be the same without these traditions.

So in the future if I have my own family (God forbid), I guess I will be a very tradition oriented dad, thinking of a routine for every event and celebration. For starters, celebrating Shark Week on the Discovery Channel is a must!

My traditions may not always stick and my future kids (once again, God forbid) will more than likely grow out of them.

But what I have learned is traditions make us who we are. So I can only hope that they would make their own traditions after following mine and learn exactly what I have learned.

So I hope that this holiday season, we all embrace those old traditions our parents and loved ones raised us celebrating. Doing something new is always fun, but it does not have to always be “out with the old, in with the new”. Sometimes the old is just too important to change.

Traditions are too important to forget.