Groomsmen and bridesmaids strode down the aisle, ascended the stairs and took their positions in cascade formation as they awaited the bride’s entrance.

Something about the bridal party wasn’t right; something was…odd. The bride’s brother stood amongst the bridesmaids and the groom’s sister amongst the groomsmen.

Hmm. A bridesman and a groomsmaid. This was interesting.

I wondered why.

Then I thought, “Why not?”

Why not, indeed?

Tradition has a voice in so many of our celebrations, rituals and habits. It dictates how we do what we do; it becomes so commonplace that only when it changes does it capture one’s notice enough to ponder that tradition’s origin.

One of my daughters learned the following story in her social studies class. It convinced me that as we celebrate traditions, we should teach how those traditions began:

A woman was making Thanksgiving dinner while her daughter watched. She cut the turkey in half and threw half of it out, then cooked the other half.

Her daughter asked, “Why do you do that?”

“That’s the way my mom always did it,” her mother shrugged.

But the question made the woman wonder, so she called her mom and asked, “Mom, when we make the turkey on Thanksgiving, why do we cook half of it and throw the other half out?”

“Well, that’s the way my mom always did it,” she answered.

That didn’t tell her anything. Determined to learn the significance of the half-turkey tradition, the woman phoned her grandmother to ask about it…

“Grandma, why do you only cook half of the turkey on Thanksgiving?”

I never had a pan large enough for the whole turkey,” she replied, “so I cut it in half, threw half of it out and cooked what would fit in my largest pan.”

Generations ago, spoken word was the predominant transmission of history and family tradition — and unlike our fast-paced “telephone game” culture where facts are distorted with each new set of ears, the accounts were astoundingly accurate. People held fast to the integrity of the details, listened well and retold it as it was told to them. Too often in modern culture we do not know, nor do we wonder, how or why certain traditions have place in our lives. We have been trained in our “results now, information now” society that abridged versions are better than the full; we do not realize how we suffer for that culturally.

Would understanding a tradition necessarily change its remembrance? Perhaps not. Traditions should, however, be allowed to evolve and change with the generations.

That wedding…..the bride’s brother as one of her attendants and the groom’s sister as one of his…..that is so — beautiful! I appreciate it in a way that I cannot aptly express. Whoever had that idea should get a “coolness” award.

One of our family’s warm-fuzzy traditions is having Chicago-style roast beef/Italian sausage/green pepper sandwiches with homemade potato salad on Christmas Day. One Christmas we didn’t have a turkey to cook so we made a favorite from my husband’s upbringing. We enjoyed it so much that we decided to make it a Christmas Day family tradition in our home. It is a casual, jovial, low-stress tradition.

Another tradition we have in our home is the nightly bedtime routine — which we stopped for awhile and have very recently started again. Because the family bedtime prayer thing is sometimes complicated by personality differences and attitude issues, we follow bedtime prayers with the following exercise: each of us tells one other person in the circle something we appreciate about him or her; we each have to participate, and each person gets “appreciated.” (Now, when we first started this back in 1999, we each  “appreciated” every other person in the circle, which took forever and became habitual and insincere, so we changed it so each of us appreciated a different person in the circle each night). This tradition originated from what I saw was a need for family unity within evening chaos.

It would be so much easier to just say the prayer myself, kiss the kids and tell them goodnight. That ritual would suit my evenings just fine, but it wouldn’t fill that need I have as a mom and that our kids have to feel loved and accepted before falling asleep.

Attitudes may still flare after all is said and done on some nights, but I believe this tradition will bring significant “warm fuzzy” memories later in trying times of our kids’ lives. Whether they continue it with their own families or “personalize” it later is inconsequential; our purpose is to make an indelible “feel good” print that brings comfort in times of need.

Tradition is amazingly unifying. I encourage learning about your family’s traditions. Doing so may make them even more significant, or may prompt the creation of new ones. Whether new traditions or “tweaked” old ones, they give uniqueness to a family’s character. This, above all, is where tradition should enjoy its place.

© Alexa Lopez 2008