In the musical Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye, a father besieged by daughters
in love with unsuitable suitors, rallies his defenses with a clarion
call for tradition. In a world pummeled by change, and a universe
challenged by chaos, tradition can be a powerful force, a taproot
to keep us grounded.
Traditions don’t have to be grand to be important. They simply
have to be recurring. Some are so trivial, they could almost be called
a habit; some of such import, we would rather lie or die than break
faith.
It seems to be the small ones that we hold to our hearts and keep
in our memory. One sister always brings home made cranberry salad.
Dad carves, or hacks, the turkey. The youngest child opens the first
present. Mom always makes pecan pie.
Any alteration is significant, an unspoken signals of passage. One
year Dad passes the knife to his teen son. Last year’s youngest
child helps the new baby pull at a ribbon. The favorite aunt bows
to age and brings salad that is store bought. There is the first terrible
Christmas when Mom isn’t there to make a pie.
Traditions bring us comfort and strength. For centuries, Jewish mothers
have prepared the evening meal and lit the candles that welcome the
Sabbath. Hindu mothers bake sweets and light the oil lamps for the
Festival of Lights. Poor mothers do without so their children might
have some small treasure under the tree. Wealthy mothers hang stockings
that are full. Protestant or Catholic, every mother of a son at war
or a daughter far away, says a prayer for their safekeeping on Christmas
Eve.
Traditions are the matrix that binds us to our homes, our families,
our country, our people. Melancholy holidays are born of the ache
of incomplete, lost, or abandoned traditions. Even those sad times
blend into a timeless tradition that connects us with those who came
before us and those who will come after.
Through the millennia, women have borne holidays of loss and loneliness,
from death, or war, from divorce or misunderstandings. In joy or in
despair, they have still fussed and fretted to prepare generous feasts
for dozens of relations, or painstakingly salvaged enough leftovers
to make one more meal for a hungry child. They have made millions
of cakes and cookies and overcooked or undercooked every conceivable
meat or fowl. They have brought their families together whenever it
was possible, struggled to get to them when it wasn’t, and given
them the best of what they could afford or manage. Over a hearth,
a wood burning stove or a Jenn-Air, women have created the most enduring
of traditions.
This month, mothers, daughters, grandmothers and granddaughters will
replay the loving drama of preparing the holiday meal. The surrounding
sights, comments, tastes and aromas will be immersed in a wave of
memory, each with a chance to become its own tiny, cherished tradition.
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