Pulling out the boxes of holiday decorations this year, it felt different. At the bottom sat a fifteen-year-old nativity set no one wanted to put out, and a handmade menorah just as old.
I was born into the LDS faith, and in my twenties Jewish mystics invited me to learn the deeper truths in their tradition. For years I raised my babies lighting the menorah and singing Christmas carols in the same winter season.
Now everything feels different. So my four kids and I sat down and asked what winter actually means to us, and we chose:
- a fresh-cut evergreen, always
- the solstice spiral walk, and a fire where we burn down the old sunflower stalks from the garden
- secret Santa, each of us quietly planning a gift for our person
- our oldest tradition of all, a seventeen-year-old scavenger hunt through town for our “polar holiday light express,” with cocoa and the bell and the shocked faces every single year
We are evolving out of the traditions that stopped meaning anything, and uncovering the ones that do.
