We all have these great holiday traditions, especially around Thanksgiving and Christmas time. Or at least most of us do. For my family in particular we watch a specific grouping of movies every year. At Thanksgiving we watch the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and The Mayflower Voyagers, along with Miracle on 34th Street. And at Christmas we have a whole longer strong of them; A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Christmas Story, White Christmas, Holliday Inn, the stop motions classics of Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Rudolf, A Year Without a Santa Claus, and more. As well as having our movie list, we and our cousins also go over to visit our grandparents for dinner on these holidays. We take turns playing Santa and passing out gifts, and we chat long into the evening.
But as the years have passed and as I've gotten older, I've noticed something. To quote Lucy van Pelt from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, "Isn't it peculiar how some traditions just slowly fade away?"
Ever since I started my University journey nearly four years ago, everything has been changing. We put up the Christmas tree and decorate it later so that I (and now one of my sisters who has just started her first year) can be home for it, and due to the little amount of time that we have at home all together, our list of movies has shortened. Since first year we haven't done Thanksgiving dinner with my grandparents because we have my fiancé and his parents over instead (which is not bad! It's just different). And really, we haven't had all the cousins, aunts, and uncles over in a long time, simply due to the fact that two out the three cousins are now married and have kids of their own. It's slowly becoming harder and harder to get the whole family together as the years go on. I now finally understand why people have "family reunions" every five years or so. I always thought that we did that every year since everyone always came over for Christmas.
And now this summer I'm getting married. My dad even came up to me this Thanksgiving break and reminded me that this was the last et of holidays that I would be a Fielding (my last name).
With this comes the making of my own family traditions, or a merging of mine and my fiancé's. And with this also comes the knowledge that I will now be one of the members of the family that lives father away, that won't make it as often to spend holidays as I always have. I won't be partaking in the movie watching, the playing of Santa, and the placing of ornaments on our advent calendar. However, there should also be joy in that, right? I now get to begin some new family traditions with my future husband. Sure it's sad that I won't be sharing all of the same traditions with all the same people I usually do, but change happens. And change can be good.
