As a kid growing up in western Connecticut, there was no holiday “tradition” I more joyfully ridiculed than the WPIX (Channel 11) “Yule Log”. For those of you who have never had the pleasure, this was a NYC station that aired continuously on a loop a shot of a yule log burning in a fireplace with Christmas carols playing as further ambient setting. A Google search tells me that this was such a big hit that it ran Christmas Eve and morning from 1966 until 1989— meaning an entire generation of us got to enjoy this stroke of programming genius, whether mockingly or not!
As the holiday season approaches this year, I have found myself unusually wistful about the “old days” and “old ways”, now fallen by the wayside, including that ubiquitous log. I told my son about it one day, knowing that he would laugh uproariously at the absurdity of it, which gratifyingly he did. Then he asked, “Who on earth would watch such a thing???”
He is a child who is, like I did, growing up in a wooded New England suburb, where nearly every house has a wood burning fireplace and a stereo system (in my day) or streaming music (his). I explained to him that WPIX served the city, where most kids did not have a fireplace and the yule log might have been as important a part of their holiday tradition as building a fire is for ours. Those same kids, now adults, might be raising a family in a city somewhere and wistfully remembering the yule log, just as I did.
Traditions are funny things; even something as cheesy as the yule log can become so entrenched and ingrained in our psyches that they almost become the soul of the family, the community, the nation. Like the President pardoning the turkey on Thanksgiving, like the ball dropping in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, a tradition are not just “how things are done”, they are in part who we actually are. That is why “breaking with tradition” can be an incredibly painful thing to do, even though it usually is the result of healthy growth.
For the most part, a tradition is a cozy thing, a warm blanket of nostalgia that ties the past to the present in comforting ways. Traditions tell a story we believe is worth sharing, worth keeping alive. Traditions help us maintain the illusion of sameness, while the world around us spins ever faster with change.
But some traditions, as wonderful as they are, are meant to be outgrown, like Santa Claus; not discarded, necessarily, but incorporated into our psyches in a more mature way. Some traditions become hopelessly anachronistic and devolve into little more than charming ritual. Other traditions, like celebrating Columbus Day, with time and new information become entirely inappropriate.
In order for our traditions to soulfully represent us, they must be capable of changing as we do. This can be a bitter pill to swallow for most of us; when life gets rocky or uncertain, we look to our traditions to ground us as a bedrock beneath our feet. But without change, there is no growth…without growth, stagnation and eventually entropy.
The holidays remind us of our traditions, the ones that anchor us and the ones we are learning to leave behind. We are, as a nation going through some incredibly painful growing pains. As we challenge traditions such as same-sex marriage by allowing our hearts and minds to open to a more inclusive society. At the same time, we are struggling to maintain our manifest traditions of religious freedom, freedom of speech and a culture once affectionately termed “The Great American Melting Pot”.
As we struggle with discerning which traditions serve us well, which need to be incorporated in a mature way and which we need to discard altogether, now might be a good time to start some new traditions. Traditions that take into account not simply our own small worldview, but the importance of inclusion, acceptance and compassion in accomplishing what many of us believe is the real “reason for the season”: Peace on Earth and goodwill toward all men. If we could all agree on this one “tradition” being a year-round cooperative, all of our problems as a country would sort themselves out pretty quickly, don’t you think?
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A version of this previously published on OTV Magazine and is republished on Medium.
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