shifting gears

there was no letter for santa this year.

no letter and no cookies and milk waiting by the fireplace.

the stockings were hung by the chimney and the tree decorated but many ornaments were left in the boxes and i am pretty sure my teenager only hung one of her family ornaments this year.  for the first time in 24 years, mason did not sleep in our home on Christmas Eve but went back to his apartment and returned in the morning.  instead of waiting in the hallway for permission to come down for presents, the children gathered in the kitchen when they heard mason arrive.  they each had a cup of hot cider while I finished the "egg dish" preperation, sliced the pineapple and cooked sausage. what a lovely few minutes with my grown and growing children!

after some prodding they agreed to return to the stairwell for a picture before walking calmly into our family room for stockings and gifts.  the mad dash to see what santa had left was replaced by a calm saunter and some gentle ribbing.

while the shift from these long-held traditions has happened easily like a well-oiled gear moving into place, others traditions have not slid out of practice with such grace.  for a while now many of these rituals have been moving into the category of "something that we used to do", some because of my own lack of energy and others because our children are growing up.  as lucas put it regarding the annual letter to santa, "it feels a little forced, mom".  

growing up these rituals meant so much to me and when things began to shift away from them, due to my own siblings aging out of the tradition and my parents divorce, i felt crushed.

how could Christmas happen without all the tradition? 

steeping my own little family in these same rituals has been fun but, I admit, exhausting.  there have been years I have loathed the approaching holiday season because it meant so much added work to keep the traditions alive.  a friend and i, discussing the rituals we had created for our families and she said, "i wished i'd done it differently".  me too! 

i wish i had not steeped the season in so many "we have to do's" and incorporated more spontaneous what-if's.  I wish I had been more in the moment with my kids instead of trying to create moments for them.  

the gears got oiled for change in the last few years out of sheer necessity for me and so this year, as the expressions of "forced" came across my children's faces, i let many things go and settled into whatever might occur in the new and different way of "having Christmas".  I could see, off in the hazy future, a Christmas when it is just hugh and i as the children are away or creating their own, hopefully un-forced traditions somewhere else.  the hazy shot didn't actually make me feel sad...it sort of elated me.  not because they would be gone but because they felt the confidence and love to go.  

and then what would Christmas be like?  well, who knows!  but it will be fun to find out and maybe do something completely different and un-traditional...quite a shft!

many traditions still exist and are required by my children:  new pj's on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning egg dish with pineapple.  One in particular, the making of my great-grand mothers Christmas plum pudding (aka "the brain"), is one they verbally confirmed they don't care about.  I do it for myself and to honor my father and his family but it seems appropriate that this year it also took a serious hit.

mixed with militaristic precision on Christmas Eve with ingredients like suet (beet fat), currants and nutmeg, and then wrapped in a flour sack cloth overnight in the fridge, it is boiled in its cloth wrapper all day Christmas Day.   unwrapped, it looks like a giant brain on a plate.  it is doused in warm brandy and, with every light switched off in the house, a match is taken to it and it is flamed!  Beautiful!  served with a butter sauce, it is an acquired taste and one that my children have never acquired.

this year, no matter how long I boiled it, it just would not set up.  Finally and because it was now or never, it was released from its package to the plate.  I could only laugh at this sorry excuse of grandma's pudding but I have to admit my pride took a hit.  There were consoling phone calls from my siblings and father who had made their own perfect puddings but in the end, ours was flamed with only Lucas and Hugh and i in attendance as the guests had moved on as had mason and isabel. 

Ah tradition...i could actually feel the gears change this year and I liked the funny new pace it created.