What's Your Story
This time of year with the gathering of family and friends and the adherence to tradition and belief, I am reminded of the nativity story.
As a kid, I was fascinated with its lore and style and the emotions it conjured….the inn was too full, the pregnant young couple, the stable, the animals, the swaddled babe, the arrival of the Kings from faraway lands. I drank it all in. As time wore on and I became an adult and a parent, the story continued to resonate with me. The collection of hand me down and the creation of my own handmade nativity sets became my way to honor that story.
No good story is without irony, however, and for this one, it is that I grew up in a non-practicing, mixed-faith home: Jewish and Catholic. Neither parent practiced their religion in their adult life, so as a child, I had knowledge about and exposure to both, but adherence to neither. It’s part of “who I am” or my “story.”
Everybody has a story. Some are fairytale-like, or tragic, or controversial, or conflicted, and most are complicated and compelling. Our stories are made up of more than just our life experiences but also our beliefs, our style, our family traditions, and that which makes us authentically who we are.
So my story, at that time, was conflicted and a bit garbled and confused. All my friends seemed to know their story and it wasn’t part of their pursuit to understand who they were and what they were supposed to believe or put on display for all to see. Most of my friends were practicing Catholics and in the never-ending quest of adolescents to fit in, it was easy for me to embrace my Italian Catholic side. I could openly talk about the well-known Christian holidays and how we participated…our seven-course fish southern Italian Christmas Eve Dinner, midnight Mass at the local Catholic Church, Santa and presents. But over time I began to fully understand that wasn’t my whole story, and I was doing myself a disservice by only embracing a portion of who I was.
Today, I remain a work in progress: still learning to embrace all that I am and to incorporate it all into my life in a way that fits authentically. I married into a family of an entirely different faith and culture, and I embrace those as part of my story as well. Like everyone, my story is unique to me. I am learning to give myself permission to live it in my way, unabashedly.
Years ago, near Christmas time, a school friend of my daughter’s came over. Her mother was dismayed to see a Hanukkah Menorah on display with the Christmas tree in the background. To me, there is no conflict or hypocrisy or anything sacrilegious about embracing more than one way. We are paying homage to both and having a foot in both (or several!) worlds is a blessing.
Fast forward many years: my daughter came home from school with hurt feelings about being called an ‘overachiever.” In talking to her, I recognized that this kind of labeling is also part of our story. I told her “Decide who you want to be and then be it, without apology.’ Part of your story is living authentically, embracing who you are, what your “story” is, and not apologizing for it. And of course, most of us have room for improvement or positive change in our stories. That too is part of the quest.
So, at this time of year with tradition and belief surrounding us, with the promise of a new year welcoming us, what better time to stop and reflect upon the question: “What is your story?”
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Tradition
Tradition and ritual are important elements of the human experience. They help define who we are by giving us unique qualities in our families and lives. They tell us where we came from, which in return helps us know where we are going. And, they help to breed resilience in our children, by giving them stability and predictability.
As a kid, family stories and traditions were spouted ad nausea by my elders. We’d pretend to hate hearing them, groan when the same story was told for the umpteenth time, and roll our eyes heavenward! Now as an adult, I see the pattern repeating. My siblings and I gather with our children and the same stories come up again and again. We take delight and our children’s eyes head heavenward!
This time of year, in particular, is one ripe with tradition. Every family has its own; some families have similar ones, some totally unique. Over the course of the years, for a number of reasons, taking on the role of upholding our family’s Christmas tradition has become my responsibility—one I take on willingly, seriously, and with pride. For me that includes making the traditional Italian Christmas cookies that my Nonna made; sending out greeting cards with a family newsletter and recent photos; decorating the house with a variety of hand-me-down and hand made nativity sets; planning and shopping for and preparing the annual Christmas Eve southern Italian traditional seven-course fish dinner; staying up late on Christmas Eve cleaning the kitchen after said feast, prepping for Christmas morning cinnamon buns, and filling the stockings to the brim; and of course, Christmas morning, getting up before everyone else, taking “before” photos, preparing breakfast and brewing coffee.
That morning, in the early quiet hours before everyone wakes up—whether it’s my extended family of 15+ or my small family of three—I cherish the time to sit and reflect upon these traditions, the value of revisiting them yearly, the importance they play in helping us remember our “story” and the memories that flow as a result.
This year with some changes in our routine, with a very small family gathering, and a trip planned on Christmas day, I had not fully decorated the house the way I normally do. None of my more than 10 nativity sets were yet on display. I mentioned this to my daughter and asked her if she wanted me to put up at least one of them. I was somewhat surprised when this 15 year old, in the midst of high school final exam stress, whole-heartedly not only wanted me to put up one but also asked that I put them all up. She loves tradition. She loves the memories we have built through years of repeating stories and ritual.
I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven speaking about those who make you who you are: “children understand…their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.”
Kids need memories. Parents are the makers of memories. Make some wonderful memories this holiday season! Peace.
