Traditions. Those things that we do in our families that can evoke wonderful, fond memories from our childhood. Being born on St. Patrick's Day, my birthday always began with my father singing "Rings on my fingers and bells on my toes, elephants to ride on, my pretty Irish rose, come to my birthday on next St. Patrick's Day, Mrs. Rumbo Jumbo, Jude O'Beau Shea, O'Shea!" I am a big proponent of family traditions, even when the traditions you grew up with in your childhood need to be adjusted to accomodate a new spouse and his traditions, i.e. opening gifts on Christmas Eve after midnight mass vs. opening gifts at the crack of dawn on Christmas Day. And then as your children grow up and are in college, going back to opening gifts on Christmas Eve because the collegiate crew are night owls and prefer nocturnal activities to sunrise ones. That then evolves into married children and their new spouses and their traditions. And so it is that we arrive at Thanksgiving and the dawn of a new tradition - roast chicken instead of turkey. Now this may be because my daughter-in-law's grandmother lives on a 100 acre turkey farm in WV (or maybe it's 200 or 300, I'm not really sure; all I know is, it's a lot of land!) and my dil grew up watching cute little turkettes mature into big fat gobblers, and the thought of eating them was too traumatic. Or that my suburban grown son lost his taste for turkey after viewing the turkey houses at grandma's farm. But the result is there will be no turkey on their table this Thanksgiving. At first, I felt like our traditions were flying the coop. But when I stopped and thought about it, who really cares what's on the table for Thanksgiving, It's what's around the table that counts! Enter in a new era in traditions. It's all good.
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