Santa came to my daughter's house this year. He was very good, left stockings and everything. I guess it's very exciting planning Christmas for the first time in a new house and that's the joy Ruth had this year. We all had a good time, all being Lou and I, Ruth and her boyfriend. The dinner was a joint affair, turkey to be precise. Breakfast consisted of sausage sandwiches very ably supplied by Matt, that's his tradition, the stockings were ours.
It's strange how family traditions develop at Christmas. How when two or more families come together they make an amalgam of one another's ways of doing things. As a kid, all my presents, not that there were so many of them (cue violins), were all in a pillow case at the bottom of my bed on Christmas morning. I remember at the time feeling confused that Father Christmas could bring them, but that in fact they were from an assortment of family and friends. I left that tradition behind and began the small stocking of little niceties at the bottom of the bed, the main presents being under the tree. I suggested this year, that as the "children" are now well over twenty that we could maybe let this tradition go until it became relevant again if children came along. This suggestion was greeted with horror. At least now I get to have a stocking as well.
And so the whole of Christmas is made up in each household by a mixing and melding of each others traditions and yet the final outcome in remarkably similar, so there must be a global tradition in each country which is broadly subscribed to my most people. I wonder, where did that come from? Did it grow from the continual mix and match between families, or was it written in the country's culture at the deeper level and, if so, by whom?
Honestly! Just because some of us can creatively re-use song titles. Esch!
Posted by: AndyC | December 29, 2004 at 01:42