As we close out 2023, I wanted to pause and reflect on the holiday season. Our family holidays begin with Thanksgiving, continue with Christmas, and end with New Year’s Day. While the Christmas season is one of our favorite times of year, we have a number of wonderful holiday traditions in our family throughout the holiday season. First, for the last 20 plus years, we have celebrated Thanksgiving with my wife’s side of the family. She comes from a large family, so every year we alternate who hosts Thanksgiving. It’s a great time to gather together, and it’s always a lot of fun. For the past several years, our family has celebrated Christmas Eve with Mass and a dinner at a local restaurant. Prior to our move to Chicago, we always dropped off Christmas cookies for the PICU staff at the children’s hospital where I work. We end Christmas Eve by letting our children open only one present u dear our Christmas tree, and it’s always the same gift - a new pair of PJ’s for Christmas morning (incidentally, this particular tradition is one I carried with me from my own childhood). We open Christmas presents on Christmas morning, followed by a large brunch meal at home. We tend not to do much on New Year’s Eve - early on I used to be on call in the PICU that night, but later we’ve typically been on vacation. And of course, we watch a lot of college football on New Year’s Day.
My point here is not to share all of our family’s holiday transitions. Rather, I want to emphasize the fact that over the years, we’ve often changed our traditions. For example, we didn’t always go out for dinner on Christmas Eve - that tradition started once our kids reached high school. I also used to read the holiday classic, “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” to our kids every Christmas Eve before they went to bed, but that ended a few years ago, once all of our kids reached adulthood. For the last several years, we’ve held a “white elephant” gift exchange on Thanksgiving, but I think everyone is ready for that tradition to fall by the wayside.
As I wrote in a post a few years ago called “Traditions”, “Traditions are important - they help form who we are, both as individuals and as groups. They are a unique part of our culture that collectively bridge the gap between the past and the present, as well as the present and the future.”
Traditions can and do change. And that’s okay. It’s great to be able to celebrate and remember the past, but there comes a time when traditions should change or be replaced with new ones. I am sure our kids will always remember listening to “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” on Christmas Eve. And there’s a part of me that will miss it. But we have new traditions instead, and they are just as important to what it is that makes us a family.
The same is true for organizations. Traditions are a wonderful way to cherish the past. They keep an organization connected to its past. But just like with family traditions, there comes a time when an organization’s traditions needs to change too. It doesn’t mean that those in the organization no longer respect the past or even forget it. It’s just a normal evolution of the organization’s culture that makes it the organization that it is today.
Remember that as you are honoring some of your holiday traditions this New Year’s Eve night. See you in 2024,
No comments:
Post a Comment