Holiday traditions at midlife: preserving the fire
Composer Gustav Mahler said, “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
We may not feel as though we’re worshipping ashes. But when we’re facing upheavals and challenges to our cherished family holiday traditions, we may be tempted to build a little shrine around the past in order to keep those ashes from flying away on the winds of change.
At midlife and beyond, holidays highlight the transitions we’re experiencing in our families. We will see empty chairs at holiday tables through death, divorce, or estrangement. And we may need to pull some new chairs up to that table for the friends, spouses, and kids of our adult children. We may no longer travel over the river or through the woods to grandmother’s house for the yearly gathering, because grandmother may have moved to the Sun Belt to a retirement community to play pickleball–or had to move into assisted living after her stroke.
The good times of holidays past can cast a long shadow on our present, especially if the present is more about empty chairs than new ones at the table. How can we preserve the fire? This month, we asked our Sage Forum team how they’ve navigated the changes that have come to their family traditions. Hopefully, their lived experience will offer you comfort and encouragement as you seek to preserve the fire in your home this season.
With gratitude to God for the beautiful ashes–and for the warming fire,
Michelle Van Loon
*Living into new traditions in December
The past few years have been challenging, particularly for those who live alone or have adult children who could not spend Christmas with extended family due to the COVID lockdowns. In 2020, my husband and I harkened back to our family traditions with a little less fervor because it was just the two of us decorating and baking. Christmas did happen—that is a certainty. As members of the worship team, we were blessed to be present to record the Christmas Eve service in person and enjoy the white candles dispelling the darkness, the red poinsettias around the altar, and the same comforting carols and hymns, including my favorite, “O Holy Night.”
Even without travel restrictions, our children have established their own families and traditions—and so must those of us in our third chapters of life. For example, to meet the needs of our congregation’s short-term shut-ins, we mostly over-40 women have taken an informal practice and created a new tradition: gathering at church for lunch, sharing fellowship and the meals we have brought or made on-site, and packaging the “bounty” for storage in our freezer for future distribution. So, when our children and grandchildren come for Christmas this year, we’ll include them in this new tradition—adding our abundance to the freezer—and the old: time together reflecting upon the transcendent, the eternal, our bounteous greater-than-all-of-us Creator and the gift of His Son. ––Carole Duff
*The tradition (and recipe) now in my care
Like a welcomed guest the rich aroma of baking Christmas cake settled into every room of our home. Only slowly did the fragrance dissipate leaving the cake to sit proudly in our kitchen beckoning us to a premature taste. As the weather chills and the hours of darkness overwhelm the meagerness of light, this cake is our first preparation for Christmas.
Yet, as I baked, I thought less about what was coming and more about what had passed. I thought of centuries of Christmas baking using once expensive spices and lovingly dried fruit, and I wondered whether this year, with high living costs, perhaps many will have to sacrifice this and other precious traditions just to save money for basic food and heating bills.
Once or twice, I had to fight back tears as the emotions of distant nostalgia and the plight of others mixed evocatively with my own story. You see, my Mum always made our Christmas cake. She would make two, one for her and Dad, and one for us.
Two years ago, in the midst of Covid restrictions, my Mum gave us the last cake she ever made. She passed it to us on Christmas Day in a sanitized exchange of gifts at a motorway service station half-way between their house and ours: get the presents out of the car, sanitize them, place them on the tarmac and move away so the recipients can collect them. It was a cold exchange, void of hugs and cherished traditions. That last cake wasn’t the best, Mum was already slipping into dementia, but it did embody her intrinsic kindness, her if-I-have-it-I’ll-give-it-to-you way of being.
Last December Mum was taken into hospital and on the day before Christmas Eve she was transferred into a care home where, well looked after, she’s spent the last year. Most days my Dad takes her for a drive in the countryside she loves. One day last Spring I cleared her baking cupboard, throwing away many ingredients that had gone out of date a year or two before: the end of an era.
I now live with the deep sadness of what was but mingling with that sadness is the gratitude of what has been, what my Mum gave, the many, many cakes she made. And now it’s my turn to follow her example, to continue her legacy, and…to bake cakes. ––Rachel Campbell
*From exchanging gifts to spending time together
When gift giving became a gift card exchange (because thoughtful gift ideas for twenty-somethings were confounding), my extended family decided to gift ourselves with time together for Christmas. One year we rented a place along the shores of Lake Michigan, another was spent at my sister’s home near Boston, and we also had several years of fun in Chicagoland where most of us live.
Those weekends were a blast. Lots of laughter, good food, games, and time for intergenerational conversations that would never have happened during a typical holiday dinner. Now that our kids are all over the map and grandchildren have entered the scene, those opportunities have passed, but they are wonderful memories.
Christmas is the celebration of a tremendous gift, Jesus, God incarnate. He is a relational God, and I believe he smiled when we invested in our relationships. ––Judy Allen
*Learning to appreciate the quiet
In our child-rearing years, the house was filled with people and laughter during the holidays. Family from both sides came and spent days at our home. While I sometimes found that overwhelming, I always tried to appreciate the gift of family celebration. Then my kids grew up. My daughter moved to China and my son to Missouri, and they rarely came home for Christmas. Other family members also stopped visiting during the holidays--citing a hate for Chicago winters! Since my husband is a pastor, we can't travel at Christmas, so it has often been just the two of us in a quiet house on Christmas Eve. Where it used to take hours to open all the Christmas gifts, it only took a couple of minutes for my husband and I to exchange the few gifts we bought for each other. So, our new tradition has been to watch A Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve after the church service. Now we have something to look forward to--laughing and crying through this great Christmas classic. ––Sharla Fritz
*A gathering of friends at our holiday table
As our nest emptied, I felt a bit whiplashed at the holidays because every holiday contained a different collection of people and often a different location.
After many years of trying awkwardly to adjust to holiday variations, I realized that I needed to honor my ache for people at my table. My husband agreed so we instituted a Friendsgiving at our house. That first year seven of us gathered around our table and talked of the year we had had (particularly hard for a few of us). We cried together, and we spoke aloud our gratitude in the midst of it all. It became about so much more than the food or filling my table; it became about connecting deeply during a time of year that often threw all of us off-balance. We all needed that.
We still do.
This year we moved across the country but maintained our Friendsgiving tradition. One member of the original group flew out, and we folded in new friends in our new location. We sat at our table with open hearts as we gave each other glimpses of our journeys. What a gift!
We've decided that Friendsgiving will be an annual event wherever we live and even in the years when we have the joy of hosting a family holiday meal (as we did this year). We need to gather around our table, look our friends (new and old) in the eyes and say, "We see you. We hear you. Let's do this challenging life together." ––Afton Rorvik
*A completely different setting for our holiday gathering
Though our youngest son still officially shares our address, all three of our boys have moved on. This means my husband and I have freedom to structure Christmas day however we want. A few years ago, we were asked if we wanted to do a short service for the local prison where we volunteer. Sharing Christmas with these men who are not able to be with their own families has been deeply meaningful and prevented us from descending into self-pity because our boys typically choose to go elsewhere. I’m hoping we’ll be able to continue this for years to come. ––Dorothy Littell Greco
**Here are a few additional holiday resources that may help you navigate change during this season:
When the season seems blue for you, maybe a Blue Christmas service is just what you need.
Holiday traditions are always under construction.
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What we’re reading, watching, and listening to right now
In Malestrom: How Jesus Dismantles Patriarchy and Redefines Manhood, Carolyn Custis James applies her deep love and understanding of Scripture to challenge the prevalent (and distorted) popular view of Christian manhood. She nourishes the soul by illustrating how the Bible repeatedly, consistently and gloriously reveals what it means for men to grow in the likeness of the Son of Man. (RC)
Enchanted is our favorite family movie of all time so we watched Disenchanted with some trepidation. Would we like it? Or would it spoil the original for us? Well, it was good (Amy Adams was great!) but nowhere near as good as the original. Once again, we enjoyed references to the classic fairy stories, but we were left disappointed that there weren’t more tie-ins between the two movies. Disney Plus (RC)
Yep, I watch Hallmark Christmas movies. I laughed and laughed and laughed while watching Three Wise Men and a Baby. I also appreciated how the honest themes of dysfunctional families and forgiveness kept popping up in the midst of the hilarity. (AR)
The Awakening of Miss Prim by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera, Sonia Soto (translator) is set in a small town in France, where she discovers that her academic education doesn’t prepare her for the lessons she’s learning about friendship, love, beauty, and life. (JA)
I’m loving the podcast Made of Stronger Stuff with Kimberly Wilson. Fascinating information about how we can understand our bodies better and move toward greater health. (DG)
Season 5 of the award-winning series The Crown recently released on Netflix. It follows the British royal family from the end of the Empire to modern days, offering a thoughtful, fictionalized dramatized version of a complicated and all too human family that is both familiar and of another time and place. (SF, MV)
What are you watching, reading, or listening to?
Some of our contributors met up at a recent writer’s retreat. From left: Afton Rorvik, Judy Allen, Sharla Fritz, Dorothy Greco
This month’s suggested spiritual practice: listen
Beautiful Advent hymns and Christmas carols are all around us right now. Why not take some time to search Ye Olde You Tube to find an unusual version of one of your old favorites? For example, the 18th century hymn Jesus Christ the Apple Tree may be familiar to some listeners via a traditional choral version like this one. Bob Bennett’s acoustic version offers a modern take on this lovely song. Sometimes a fresh interpretation of a familiar piece of music can awaken our souls and lead us to a place of worship.
Coming next month: We’ll be talking about health at midlife and beyond. What questions do you have on the subject? What challenges are you facing in this area?
May this season preserve the fire in your faith: “I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.” (Ps. 143:5)
Merry Christmas from the entire Sage Forum team.