Christmas is a time for traditions both old and new

(Editor’s Note: This column was written before Christmas.)

What happens when 20+ year holiday traditions are skipped for one year?

Do they get reinstituted the following year? Are they forgotten?

My family has had a few holiday traditions over the years that are set in stone.

For example, on Christmas morning, my sister and I are not allowed in the living room until my mom or dad has turned on the video camera. Every Christmas gets videoed! It doesn’t matter if we open two gifts or 20 gifts, every Christmas morning gets videoed.

As my sister and I have gotten older, some of our traditions have changed but even in our twenties, our videoed Christmas tradition stays the same.

Those traditions are so established in our family that even when mom and I were 3,752 miles away in Scotland, our Christmas was still videoed.

On the morning of Dec. 25, 2018, mom and I awoke for Christmas about five hours before my dad and sister because of the time difference.

We were staying in a hotel in Inverness, Scotland, and we obviously didn’t have a living room or Christmas tree waiting with presents or our stockings.

Mom and I had talked the night before about how weird Christmas was going to be not being with dad or my sister. While she tried to hide it as best she could, I knew that mom was upset that for the first time in 20+ years our Christmas would not boast many of the traditions that make Christmas, well Christmas, in our household.

When mom got into the shower, I scurried around the room pulling out the little presents I had bought for her during my time in Scotland since I had already been there for several months before she arrived.

By the time she got out of the shower, I was able to make some ‘stockings’ using boot socks and placed the gifts on the bed. While I didn’t start recording until after we were both seated on the bed and ready to open presents, we followed that one holiday tradition and recorded ourselves opening our presents and our reactions to them.

About five hours later, I received a video message from my sister.

She and my dad had done the same thing. They had recorded opening their Christmas presents from each other despite mom and I not being there.

We were able to eventually Facetime and celebrate Christmas together, but for the first time, our tradition of waking up and recording Christmas morning was different.

It wasn’t bad, in fact, it made it more meaningful because of the sentimentality attached to those videos.

This year, my family has decided to change several more of our Christmas traditions.

Instead of buying each person several presents, we have pooled the money that we would have spent and are using it to take a much-needed vacation.

Each person is buying one board game or family style game, and we have each purchased a stocking stuffer type gift for the other three members of the family. Those gifts have a price limit of $20.

We will take the games on vacation with us to enjoy while we are at the hotel.

This year, we are taking the emphasis off the presents we receive and putting it more on the people that we get to share the holiday with.

As our Christmas traditions change, I have personally found that there is really only one Christmas tradition that is a must for my family – we have to be together.

While most people celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25, that is simply a date. As Barbossa, from the Pirates of the Caribbean would say, “The [date] is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.”

Christmas is celebrated when we all come back together. Even the year we were in Scotland, our mini Christmases on Dec. 25 didn’t deter us from having our traditional Christmas in our living room with our traditional Christmas dinner when mom and I arrived home in January.

For many, the past several years have brought drastic changes, and many of the traditions we have held close, are no longer possible.

I hope this year that you get the opportunity to celebrate Christmas with as many of your traditions and family members as you can. If you fall into the category where this Christmas won’t be ‘traditional’ at all, just know that you have someone praying for you, and I hope you get to start some new traditions. Merry Christmas!