Traditions, creation and continuation of
Okay, I can see that with What A Year It's Been people want something that is What It Has Ever Been, and that this gets tagged to the Solsticial Rites as they are celebrated in a historically culturally Christian country even if they are largely secularised -
Except I was thinking, are they unchanging over, lo, these many years, and not just in the sense of additions and losses to the assembled kinship group, are they even taking place in the same location, on the same day, etc etc.
I am probably particularly thinking here of a period of well over a decade in my own family when although there was, usually, some kind of family gathering, where it took place and who was there and if it actually took place on Christmas Day was subject to variation.
Firstly there was my mother's illness, and operation quite close to Christmas and not feeling like the usual gathering.
And in the years after her death, there was my brother's increasing ill-health precluding travel, so there was having family gathering at theirs, and then several times at Guys because he was in hospital, and then later at the nursing home -
And then it all got more onto a more routine basis at Ye Olde Family Homestead when my sister's family moved down there.
And that did develop its own rituals, including the one in which yr hedjog spent half a day cooking in a strange kitchen, and wondering whether anyone really liked the Speshul Boxing Day Meal or whether it had become like Jay Rayner and the turkey curry: 'But tradition is important and your awful turkey curry is one of them'. ('She's not making aubergine dip again, is she?')
Not that there aren't rituals around the season that have developed purely when there is just the two of us, and we are very put out that Waitrose was all sold out of shell-nuts, chiz.
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