It seems the older I get, the bigger problem I have with traditions. First it started whenever I was about 17 and had finally gotten tired of going from my mom's to my dad's to my stepdad's family gatherings on holidays. Then I started dating Aaron. So we added his family gatherings into the mix. By the time I was 21 and getting married, we had 5 to 6 gatherings each holiday to celebrate.(Not much of a celebration if you ask me.) Then I started to look at the bigger picture. Why do we do things the way we do? For instance, it drives us nuts in our church. The way we choose to have someone read the announcements at the start of every service. No, its not necessary. We print 100 bulletins every Sunday for that purpose. We can even save a few trees and put them on the screens to scroll before and after service. But its a tradition that was started a long time ago. (And in all honesty, I'm singing "TRADITION!!" from Fiddler on the Roof in my head..) My family has this "tradition" (or habit) of waiting until the last minute to decide whose house we are going to for the upcoming holiday. Aaron's family has this tradition of a Cousin's gift exchange on Christmas Eve. Every year on December 23rd, we get together with some of our best friends and do what call Christmas Eve-Eve. We eat, shop and spend all night together and go out for breakfast on Christmas Eve. (This tradition has changed this year because they just had a baby!)Some traditions of ours make sense, others however...do not. So what is the deciding factor on what traditions to keep and which ones to ditch? How do you determine this as you get older? We have discussed our favorite traditions as kids and ones we would like to start with our own kids. We've also discussed which traditions can go. Even though we would like certain traditions to become favorite memories, its still hard to let some of them go. Like the Cousin's Gift Exchange at Mema's house on Christmas Eve. This year, because 4 of the cousins won't be here on Christmas Eve, we are moving it to another day. Aaron didn't like that, because its not the tradition. But at some point, all the "cousins" aren't going to be kids anymore that want to do the exchange. Stepping out of our childhood traditions and starting some new ones is going to be hard, but necessary. We had quite the discussion last night about this. Ranging from things we thought were ridiculous traditions to have to ones that we hope we can start with our own children one day.
Now that I've said all this about traditions, here's the hard part: Just because its tradition does not mean its the best way for things to be done nor is it an excuse. Just because a doing a large meal worked for one person to raise money, does not mean that's the only way to do it. Stepping outside of the box to be creative is how you get better results. "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity."-Albert Einstein. So traditions may be good for some things, but overall most people use traditions as an excuse for lack of creativity. If you want better results in raising money, in attendance, in happier gatherings...step outside of the box. Break traditions. Get creative.
