Sanctuaries of Christmas - Day 2: TRADITION & REMEMBRANCE

My deepest joys of Christmas come from memories held of idyllic pasts. I remember family traditions, rituals, special foods, stories we read and movies we watched. In my older childhood, we began to take annual family ski trips over the Christmas break during which we'd spend the frigid wintry nights in a northern Wisconsin cabin, playing games, doing puzzles, and listening to Andy Williams crooning carols on the record player. Our vacation days were spent on the snowy slopes.

I know now as an adult, I was privileged. My family traditions were rich. I also know that some of my most difficult Christmases were the ones that didn't or couldn't measure up to those idyllic memories. What I didn't understand was there was nothing wrong with changes...but I still yearned for the sanctuary of my memory and meaningful traditions.

One of the primary sanctuaries of Christmas is that of tradition and remembrance. Christmas is history, deeply rooted and blended from a number of diverse roots. Deep within Jewish tradition comes the stories of the young shepherd boy of Bethlehem chosen to be king, the prophets foretelling the coming of a servant messiah. Later, both the Luke and Matthew gospel traditions, recording the birth of Jesus are very intentionally connected to these roots of history. As Christian tradition continues to unfold and spread throughout the world, other cultural tradition and rituals become kneaded into mix of what Christmas comes to mean for each of us.

 There is part of us that yearns for roots. We yearn for ritual and meaning that transcend our own lives. Christmas offers us an annual focal point in our lives and with our families and communities , but yet connects us to something much bigger and older...a centuries-old story, stories that cross cultural and political boundaries.

When we enter the sanctuary of Christmas, we enter a space shared by countless others over the generations and boundaries of time and geography. We sing old songs, we eat special food and practice customs that may be traditional to an ethnic heritage greatly distant from our present lives, yet still a part of our identity. Each individual family has a hand in adding its own embellishments and adaptations on those traditions and remembrances for their own children.

No matter how unintentional or haphazard our childhood was, most of us who celebrate this holiday have some sense of sanctuary of tradition and memory. We need that grounding. We need that sanctuary of deep traditions and deep remembrances.