Growing up, my family had well-defined rules and regulations surrounding the
periods during which certain holidays could be celebrated and in what ways. It
wasn't as bad as it sounds---in fact, it marked the year in a pleasing
way---but my situation is different now, and it feels appropriate to make
changes to these traditions to suit my preferences and the preferences of those
in my immediate family.
The most obvious and deliberate of these changes is when to put up the
Christmas tree. In my family, it was held with high importance that no
Christmas holiday-ing shall be enjoyed until *after* Thanksgiving has
concluded. This means no carols, no tree, not even a tiny prickle of garland
until the time had come. Officially, the Christmas season didn't begin until
Santa Claus appears in the Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, but
practically this meant that the day after Thanksgiving was Day One.
I appreciated the separation between Thanksgiving and Christmas, since it's
seemed to me for some time that Thanksgiving gets sort of skipped over.
Thanksgiving is perhaps the purest holiday left, in my estimation, and it's
important---to me, anyway---that it be observed well.
Still, a different argument has been put to me recently. While Thanksgiving is
important and shouldn't be ignored, Christmas can still be ongoing in the
background while Thanksgiving occurs. In other words, the two aren't mutually
exclusive or incompatible. Therefore, it ought to be perfectly acceptable to
put up the tree and enjoy it beforehand. This argument moved me, and so we've
gone ahead and moved our canonical tree-putting-up period to right around
Veterans Day. (Any earlier would be risking putting it up around Halloween,
which would simply be obscene.)
So that's that. Tradition: changed. It's all arbitrary anyway, but it does make
me feel a little more connected to the long line of people who've come before
me and done this strange thing of bringing a tree (or in my case, a plastic
facsimile) into the home when it gets cold. Perhaps the humanity of traditions
is in the tweaking.
Plus, our cat quite likes to sit under it, and I have nothing against that.
