Traditions

Noted pianist Hayden Grey plays her original
composition, Christmas Boogie, for a
dog and a naked baby.



During their days of colonial hegemony, the British were famous for their attempts to convert every far-flung colony into a small piece of home. 

I recall a movie scene set in 1930s India.  It was a New Year's Eve party.  The men and women were dressed in formal wear, as though at a party in London.  At the stroke of midnight, the band struck up Auld Lang Syne, and the guests concluded by singing a rousing chorus of God Save the King.

In America, we're less rigid in our observances.  Even so, at least for those of us not strongly attached to alternative religious traditions, our common observance of Christmas -- including Santa, reindeer, and shopping overload -- plays a similarly homogenizing function -- not throughout any external colonial possessions, but within our own, otherwise heterogeneous and far-flung home territory.

Which is to say, I spent three days in far distant, exotic Los Angeles county, and gosh -- it was just like celebrating Christmas up here in God's own country, the Northwest Corner.

I was visiting my niece and her partner in Glendale, joined by my brother and his wife.  But the star of the Christmas celebration, of course, was the newest member of the family -- my great niece, Hayden, so recently born but already a highly personable two-year-old.  Just as when my brother and I were children, just as when my niece herself and her cousins were young, almost everything revolved around Hayden.

It all felt comfortingly familiar.  The tree.  The stockings hung by the chimney with care.  The mounds of beautifully wrapped presents, which revealed themselves when opened to be offerings to Hayden of virtually every age-appropriate gift to be found in any toy catalogue.  The rest of us unconsciously played, in our small bumbling way, the part of Magi offering our gifts to a Child.

Also familiar were the Christmas morning breakfast traditions invented by my own mother.  The turkey dinner.  The televised football games.  The mandatory viewing of A Christmas Story.  (We somehow missed, this year, both Dickens' Christmas Carol and the more modern but still usually obligatory tale of Seuss's Grinch.)

Best yet, the weather was the kind of weather that to me spells "Christmas":  Not snowy rides in one-horse open sleighs, and certainly not balmy, beside-the-pool, Los Angeles sunshine.  No, the skies were cloudy and the rain was intermittent.  Just like home!  Just like the Christmases of my childhood!

And best of all -- the jokes, the games, Hayden's wide-eyed excitement.  The sense of being surrounded by family members, of being part of a family that maintains its continuity, generation after generation.   A family whose members come and, unfortunately, eventually go -- but a family whose warmth and traditions continue year after year.  It was a great visit and a great Christmas.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!