Five years later, my mother is engaged to be married, and I am once again being pulled into a new reality. I will spend this coming Christmas with Mom, her fiancé, and his family, and I assume some new rituals will be established on which I will one day look back, fondly. I share this piece with you again as a reminder of the loving power of tradition--both in its creation and in its remembrance.

Trimming the Christmas tree with love-worn ornaments...sitting on Santa's lap with crumpled list in hand...pouring libations from the Kwanzaa unity cup...sharing a sweet potato pie after the midnight worship service....Most of us remember at least one ritual that has defined the holiday experience for us. Some are recalled with wistfulness, others with impatience.

I fondly remember climbing into the family car as a child and setting out in search of Puff the Magic Dragon.

No, this was no ganja-induced trip to the land of Honah Lee led by hippie parents; it was an annual drive through our neighborhood to gawk at the colorful Christmas lights, electric menorahs, life-size creches, and baroque tableaux that our neighbors set up every holiday season. Each home would try to outdo the others, some with breathtaking elegance and others with hair-raising tackiness.

And at the end of each drive was the piece de resistance: a small manor set behind an outsize lawn that was crammed with every kind of holiday display imaginable. Life-size gnomes and elves frolicked with plastic snowmen and lantern-holding lawn jockeys. Santa and his reindeer were frozen in an everlasting, never advancing trot across the shingled roof. And leading the chaotic parade--front and center--was a goofily grinning cardboard dragon that looked like a cross between the Loch Ness monster and, well, Puff.

Whatever tensions attended our own frenzied holiday preparations were released--for the moment--as Dad, Mom, Sis, and I applauded Puff's earnest, gaudy pageant. Since then--through the march of years, the sale of the family home, and the death of our father--this beloved ritual has devolved into the occasional, impromptu cruise through whichever gaily lit neighborhood is at hand when the whim hits us.

It's not the same experience as before, but our ability to be awestruck by simple, colored lights hasn't really faded; nor has the feeling of togetherness that the ritual inspires among the remaining family members.

Leslie, a writer based in Brooklyn, New York, enjoys a similar holiday ritual: long, relaxing car rides with her parents. "When I visit them, we plan our activities around our rides. I think it originated when I was small and couldn't go to sleep," she explains. "My parents would take me on long rides until I dozed off.

"And we still do our car adventures," she continues. "We usually go at night and play jazz CDs or the radio. We drive through the city, affluent suburbs, and the country. We look at the decorations, the people standing on a street corner, or the way the snow banks in a cornfield. It's our way of quietly being together, and it's always the most peaceful time of our visit."

Just as precious as these rituals is our ability to hold on to them, to believe in their power to bind us to one another. But holding on isn't easy. In the same way that we outgrow our belief in Santa Claus, we also tend to outgrow family holiday observances. As one close friend of mine observed recently, "We become too cool to practice them."

Years ago I became "too cool" to trim the Christmas tree, a favorite rite of my mother's. Each year she'd haul out dusty boxes of ornaments from the basement and call out with her signature singsong voice of excitement, "It's time to trim the Christmas tree."

For a few years I had gotten into it--choosing my favorite ornaments, strategically draping the gold tinsel, unraveling the blinking lights, and gazing at the colored kaleidoscope that was cast on the ceiling once the switch was flipped--but by the time my teen years rolled around, the task had become tedious, and my mother's announcement was usually met with a jaded groan. ("Do I have to?")

Two decades have passed since then, and yet I stifled the same reaction just the other day, while on the phone with Mom. She suggested that we christen her new home in Philadelphia with a tree-trimming party and asked me what I thought. I reflexively thought, "Oh, no," but then thought better of it.

Truth is, it's a decent idea. And I'm no longer too cool for anything--not even watching the fourth airing in a row of the incredibly sappy and white-bread flick It's a Wonderful Life. So I'll be there, at Mom's place, with silk-wrapped, red ball ornaments in hand. We'll be joined by family and friends--a loving circle that will grow, then dwindle, as the years pass. But for now we'll immerse ourselves in the ritual once again.

What could be cooler than that?

--Sheryl E. Huggins is NiaOnline's editor-in-chief

What's your favorite holiday ritual? Share your experience in the comments section below. And please accept our warmest wishes for a holiday season full of love and peace.



Published on: 12/20/2006







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