It’s a tradition at my parents’ house that hors d’oeuvres are served for dinner on Christmas Eve. Pigs in a blanket are always at the top of the menu, among a bunch of other classics. A mini sausage wrapped in Pillsbury crescent dough doesn’t sound like much, but if you’re from the Midwest, you know how something this simple can mean so much to you. We’ve been eating finger foods for Christmas Eve as long as I can remember. I’m 27 now, and I still put down 15+ every year.
Traditions and rituals are all around us. My mom’s hors d’oeuvres on a Christmas Eve night, choosing to only smoke cigs at that one specific dive bar, or starting new traditions like a yearly pilgrimage to my wife and I’s favorite little village in Guatemala. They’re embedded in our life, yet the word tradition seems to have left the day-to-day vocabulary. It’s getting less cool to do the same things over and over again. We’ve already done that. Let’s do something else. Individuality is a tradition killer.
Before we go further, we should probably define a tradition. Simply put, it’s the establishment of meaningful, repeatable activities built on shared beliefs and understanding. And to dumb it down even more, it’s really just doing something with people you love at the same place and time again and again.
I work in the wedding industry as a photographer. My job is more or less observing people’s rituals and traditions every weekend. Weddings are actually one of the few traditions that everyone across the board seems to agree on, but that’s a conversation for a different time. What’s fascinating about my job isn’t the what; it’s the who. You’ve got pastors and teachers, truck drivers and white collar professionals, kids and old folks, all sharing the same room. All people vastly different from each other, yet sharing a room for the same reason. People who normally wouldn’t cross paths in their day-to-day, yet all throwing it back on the dance floor together.
A lot of people get caught up with the “what” of traditions and forget the communal part. My mom’s pigs in a blanket are pretty basic. And yeah, they could use some dipping sauce beyond ketchup and ranch, but there would be an uproar amongst my siblings if they didn’t show. I don’t smoke, like at all, but I’ll always rip a Camel Crush with my old roommates if we’re at Dino’s. I don’t make the rules. It just happens to be the agreement we made. We could continue to travel somewhere new every year, yet we seem to always end up back in the little village we lived in 2023. It’s a new tradition we’re building, one I hope to pass on to my future kids.
And the coolest thing about traditions? They only last if everyone is on the same page. They demand camaraderie.
So maybe it’s not really about the pigs in a blanket or the cigarettes or the village in Guatemala. Maybe it’s about choosing, over and over again, to show up for the people, the places, and the memories we’re building. Traditions don’t have to be flashy or profound. They just have to matter to the people involved. And if we’re lucky, the traditions we create will stick around long enough to become part of someone else’s story too.
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