A New Tradition is Born

My step-mom knew how to make Christmas special. It started when the bible appeared.  At some point in mid-December a surface in the living room would be covered with white cotton batting and on it went the bible, open to the Christmas story with a wide red satin ribbon marking the place.  One year holly or pine branches were added, another year a poinsettia plant and a few years later, little china houses from a Dickensian Christmas village would surround the bible.   I loved seeing the arrangement, once on top of the TV, once on the HiFi, later on a side table.  I loved it partly because it was pretty, partly because it said that Christmas was around the corner, but mostly because it was comforting. It was something I could count on that endured.

Families need celebrations, and all the traditions and feasts that go with them.  It’s a time to come together, to laugh, to play, to feast and to renew the connections that join us.  Traditions tell a family that this is the way our tribe does it, I belong to this tribe.  Traditions are something we can count on as the world around us shifts and changes and leaves us feeling lost.

But families change. Children grow, leave home, and create families of their own. They merge with other tribes.

That’s a long prologue to explain that I am forging a new tradition for my family. Christmas is no longer the time when we come together.  One child doesn’t celebrate Christmas; the other has other family obligations around the holidays. I was determined to create a new tradition that could be ours, acknowledging the culture of my husband which happens to include food that we all love. 

On October 30^th this year, we will come together to decorate sugar skulls, play silly games, drink, eat, laugh and celebrate the wonderful people that make this family so great.  

Many North American families know what is done to prepare for Christmas from the visit to the mall Santa to the decorating of the tree.  But I want to chronicle my preparations for dia de los muertos.  I am sure there are many other things that a real Mexican family would add but this is the gringa version. 

Rather than one long blog, this will be broken up, so stay tuned.  I shall try to include as many pictures as possible.