The value of tradition

I was thinking about family traditions a few days back.

We can think that we don’t really have a lot of traditions in our families …. until we get married. Then we start comparing how things were done when we were growing up.

Suddenly you find that there’s more than one way to do things. Hopefully you also realise that there’s nothing intrinsically right or wrong with doing things differently, we have simply built up different traditions. It’s at that point that you need to decide which traditions each partner will bring to the family and which new traditions will be created.

Origins of traditions

Traditions can be based on culture, faith, location, community and many other factors either within or outside of our control.

I was speaking to a friend the other night who said that it was tradition in her husband’s family to exchange gifts on Christmas Eve. In her family, gifts were exchanged on Christmas Morning. There’s nothing right or wrong with either way of doing things but a decision had to be made as to which tradition would be followed in their brand new family.

Deciding which traditions to follow

When we’re deciding on which traditions to keep and which to discard we need to learn not to be a slave to tradition but to let traditions serve us. Traditions are healthy and helpful as long as they don’t become so set in stone that we start serving them instead of it being the other way around.

The most wonderful thing is creating your own family traditions. They can be a mixture of traditions from elsewhere or they can be something completely new and unique to you and those closest to you. They help define your family identity.

It’s a tradition in our family for me to spend a few minutes with James before he goes to sleep. We talk, we read, we pray together. I never had that kind of relationship with my dad when I was that age. With that in mind we created our nightly tradition to ensure that my relationship with James continues to grow. The tradition isn’t the important thing, the relationship is. The tradition simply helps us achieve the goal.

Recognising our traditions

There are lots of traditions, big and small, that make up our days. Most of them we don’t even notice. I suppose we think more about traditions around Christmas time because there are some more ‘formal’ traditions that we keep. We may also have some more formal tradtions for other special occasions like how we celebrate family birthdays or anniversaries.

What traditions do you follow?

What Christmas traditions do you follow in your family? Are there traditions that have been passed down from the previous generation? Have you created new traditions within your immediate family?

How about every day traditions? How did you decide which traditions to hang on to and which to let go? Has there ever been friction in your family over traditions? Are you letting traditions serve you or are you serving traditions?

I’d love to get your opinion. Please feel free to leave me some comments below or post some traditions on your own blog and let me know.

Posted by Rodney Olsen

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