Traditions are like Folk Songs
I’ve been pondering what makes a tradition a tradition. What makes me, year after year, make time, energy and space for certain rituals. Which things make the cut and which ones fall by the wayside as things get busy? Christmas has always been a time for tradition for my family. Growing up, we had several things that were just non-negotiable: pecan crescent cookies, a real Christmas tree, stockings opened before breakfast on Christmas morning, among others. These elements had to be there or it just wouldn’t feel like Christmas! Now, looking back on it, our family traditions were a combination of things inherited from generations past and things that my parents invented as reflections of their own values.
Now that I have my own family, and that I live far from my immediate family, I, too, have followed the same process. You can hear about some of our own traditions in my song Precious Little Baby Boy here. “What to take and what to leave behind?” (from my recent song Snap Clap.) When I look at what we’ve taken, there are two common themes: meaning and malleability. In fact, every tradition that we’ve preserved has to check both boxes!
For us, meaning is what connects us to something. It may be our history and childhood (a real tree), as aspect of our human experience (solstice candlelight), a place (my mother is Danish so we love connecting with my ancestry through Danish food and customs) or the earth by cooking, baking and relishing in nature’s bounty, even in the leanness of winter time. As we navigate different years, we test the flexibility of our own traditions. Sometimes we celebrate with extended family away from home so we need to have traditions that are portable. As life seems to continue to change and grow, traditions need to fit in slightly new incarnations every year. Usually on this day each year, winter solstice, we have candlelight all day but I wanted to get an email sent out and a new single released so we did candlelight until after breakfast. Such is this year’s incarnation!
This reminds me so much of a folk song. Where the strongest ones, the ones that have survived the test of time and continue to do so are the ones that are meaningful and can be adapted. They are robust. In an age of recordings, of specificity, of a semblance of knowing every detail, it is so refreshing to me that one song can have so many different versions of itself. And yet, its kernel is preserved. Its heart, its personality still shines through. May we continue to find restraint among the excess, find quiet among the bustle and orient ourselves toward love, hope and peace in our music and traditions.
