The holidays are some of the best times and opportunities we have to continue our family traditions. Many of us can recall how our families illustrious Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, or birthdays every year. There are some extra extra traditions we may remember. Maybe every Christmas we got together with our grandparents or we went out of town to visit friends or family members. Maybe we participated in the local Thanksgiving parade every year or there was a certain dish we especially enjoyed that was prepared specifically for Thanksgiving day.
Traditions can hold very extra meaning and memories for us. I remember first studying about their point to our emotional condition and well-being back in my first semester of grad school. Traditions contribute to our extensive sense of connectedness, family, continuity, and identity. They give us something that is socially, emotionally, and spiritually meaningful to carry on. As I reflected upon this recently, I concept about my own family traditions. One that came to mind was the New Year's blessing. Every New Year's Eve, as far back as I can recall, my mom would make a former Macedonian dish (cora, aka burek). Before baking it, she would hide a wrapped coin inside of it. When our family gathered colse to to enjoy this yummy dish, we would cut it into pieces like a pie. The big round pan would then be spun 3 times. The piece directly in front of each person would be the one designated to him or her. The remaining pieces would be designated to other important citizen or work in our lives. We would then enjoy the burek with homemade yogurt and ultimately the coin would be found. The fortunate person would then be named as the recipient of the arrival year's extra extra blessings of abundant prosperity. I all the time look send to this fun tradition. We still continue the tradition every year with our children. They also enjoy it and look send to this tradition. It's especially fun seeing who will get the extra blessing.
I am thankful for family traditions and I especially like those that continue on to the next generation. We don't keep all of them, but we do remember the meaning they had and how they enriched our lives. This year we will continue with our New Year's blessing tradition as well as singing and playing Christmas carols, gathering together, and having a extraordinary feast of fun and family time!
May you enjoy some of your family traditions this year and remember to give many thanks for them.
Have a very Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!!
May your New Year be filled with many blessings, new beginnings, good health, prosperity, peace, true joy and God's unending love!
P.S. Let us remember our troops and all those who will not be spending the holidays with their families and keep them in our thoughts and prayers. May God bless them and keep them safe. May He be gracious to them and give them peace.
P.S.S. I absolutely love the first-rate musical: Fiddler on the Roof. In it, Tevye (Topol), a poor milkman with 5 daughters, talks about tradition. He says, "Without traditions our lives would be shaky as a fiddler on the roof." If you haven't heard the fun song-- Tradition--from the movie, you might want to check it out You Tube.
Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, it means that the dead are living. ~Harold Macmillan
Tradition naturally means that we need to end what began well and continue what is worth chronic ~ Jose Bergamin
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes -- our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around. ~Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Copyright © 2010 Krystal Kuehn, New Day Counseling. All possession Reserved.
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