Christmas Traditions Are Worth Preserving

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

December 8, 1956

   CHRISTMAS is a time of memory and tradition as much as a time of giving, receiving and feasting.  Who cannot look nostalgically back at Christmases past which, though thin in material things, will always be remembered?  Some of those I best recall were during the depression, when there wasn't much sense in Santa bothering to make the trip.

   For Christmas to be good, traditions must be kept.  Even those that bring temporary agony assume a rosy hue in retrospect and become part of the Christmas lore.

   I AM ALWAYS reluctant to plunge into the marts of trade and get my shopping done.  Neither am I wild about buying the tree.  But the tougher the job at the time the longer it lives in the mind.

   Traditionally I delay my buying until a week before Christmas.  It would seem a violation of my holiday code to do otherwise.  In keeping with tradition, I do not know what my wife wants, although, according to her, she has dropped innumerable hints.

   So I grope through forests of negligee, feeling like a peeping Tom, through mountains of crockery and silverware and luggage, through mazes of blankets and jewelry and electrical labor-savers.  Such tours can be rewarding.  Sometimes you see something that brings awakening.  By George, she did say something about a steam iron, or a musical jewel box or a candelabra--and there one is!

   But usually confusion mounts as the tour progresses and I shoot from the hip, wishing profoundly the while that she would settle for a gift certificate or a check, buy what she wanted herself and relieve me of a task too big.  But she is right in insisting that the gift be bought by me.  The experience stores up Yuletide memories.

   TO MAKE purchase of the tree something that will stick with you forever, never buy one on a pleasant day.  Wait until the temperature is around zero.  If a stiff wind is blowing, so much the better.

   Do not settle beforehand the question of whether your choice should be a spruce, balsam or pine.  Talk this over at the lot while trying to keep your hat on and your nose dry.  "Wasn't it a spruce we had four years ago that shed all its needles while we were  putting on the tinsel?"  No, you say, stamping your feet to stir up the blood at the risk of snapping off a toe, you think it was a balsam.

   "How about going to that lot we passed yesterday, like I wanted to do in the first place?"

   Sure.  Go to a half dozen lots.  You haven't suffered near enough yet.  Then return to the lot you went to originally to get the tree you saw first--which, in the meantime, has been  sold..

   The tree we had that I remember best looked  like something salvaged from an avalanche,  but I can see it still, after 12 years,  because I lugged it home from a lot eight blocks away, freezing hands, feet and nose while so doing.  Such torture keeps Christmas forever green.

   ONE OF  the most cherished traditions concerns Christmas cards.   What would the  holidays be  without them?  The thing to do is to hit upon a clever idea during midsummer,  one around which you  can build a meaningful card, and go to work on it in early fall like everyone else.  A couple of weeks before Christmas have the cards addressed and ready to mail.  You then avoid the last-minute scramble that profanes the spirit of the season.

    For us this would run completely counter to tradition.  Two weeks before Christmas the only idea we   have is that it's high time we got going. Then, after the cards are at hand, we cannot find last year's list, on

which we had  painstakingly noted changes of address and which we were going to card-index.
   When the document finally is resurrected from a jungle of cancelled checks and income tax data, the  deadline is breathing down our necks.  We are compelled to stay up two or three successive nights, fighting fatigue and temper while penning gladsome personal messages to beef up the printed and rather impersonal "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year."

   THE MAGIC of Christmas Eve holds us unfailingly in thrall.  There's a blaze in the fireplace.  The tree is lighted and the stockings hung.  The Christmas story is read and carols sung.  Then our son goes off to bed, the lucky lad.

   Bed for his parents is in some vague future.  Gifts my wife has secreted away are hauled out from closets and from under beds, gifts crying to be wrapped and tagged and arranged under the tree.  There are the stockings to fill, perhaps a sled or bike or wagon to get from the basement.

   Then, when the work is done, there must be time to sit a while by the fire and glow to the charm of the occasion, talk of other Christmases and surrender to the unfailing enchantment.

   You know then that Christmas, though fatiguing, is awfully good.

    

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.