November 23, 2022
Sometimes it seems as if there
is so much change and upheaval in these contemporary times, so much turmoil and
anxiety, that we might fear we’ll be swallowed whole by everything happening all
around us.
While it’s true there is much
in our environment that we cannot, as single individuals alone do anything
about, there is one area in which we have complete and near total control. And
that is in the traditions we forge, and the way we use those traditions to cope
with the metaphorical storms that buffet us.
This year, I’ve noticed a joy in
the planning for the holiday season, a joy that had been missing in the last
two years. It’s so palpable I can almost taste it. This is true especially for my
American friends. I have noticed as I watch some of your nightly news casts that
when asked, people will report a worry about inflation and prices and making
ends meet. But at the same time, people don’t seem to be allowing those harsh
realities to interfere overmuch with their holiday traditions. Yes, the cost of
airfare seems to be through the roof compared to a couple of years ago. And yet
reports say that flights are at pre-pandemic highs.
People are this very day, as I
write these words, flying or driving “home” for the American Thanksgiving holiday,
tomorrow. As one man interviewed said, “I’m going to sleep in my childhood bed
and eat at my childhood table, and I can’t wait.”
Tradition. Just thinking that
word brings to mind the first song in that wonderful Broadway musical, Fiddler
on the Roof. Tradition is a powerful word for a powerful concept. But it’s not,
in these days of a truly wider world thanks to social media, simply a matter of
a tight enclave of several families that may share a common neighborhood and a
common faith. Though of course, our faith will have, I believe, the largest
part in determining the traditions we hold.
As change comes and we feel
threatened, we often cling more tightly to the ideal of the traditions we hold.
Which means that we alone, each of us, and each family of us, has the freedom
to decide what is and is not traditional. We can tend to cling to the memory of
the observances of traditions past to get us through our tough times as they
happen. This we’ve done, many of us for the last couple of years. This year
feels different.
Now our lives are no longer so
tightly controlled by the threat of Covid. Now we know there are vaccines and
masks, and best practices to keep us as safe as possible from this now endemic
threat.
And now we feel the draw of our
traditions. Now we feel we can respond to that draw, to go home, to gather
together, and to give thanks. We understand that finally, as promised, we can
meet again.
Not many of us would truly
want to go back to the past to live full-time. Not many would truly want to
return to the days of yore. We may yearn for a less complicated lifestyle
especially in the middle of chaos, but that can be achieved without sacrificing
modern life. Yes, there is that draw, that sense of “everything used to be so
much more…. in the past” and here you may finish that sentence with your own
word.
But that is nostalgia taking,
and nostalgia is a uniquely human emotion. It is one designed I believe to give
us a few moments of psychological respite as we are otherwise busy coping with
life’s inevitable, and transitory storms.
Some people have seized on
that emotion and have tried to use it to do their best to pull us back to those
“good old days”, to convince us that the answer to our anxiety is to regress,
to take away our right to be who we are, and to usurp our freedoms, replacing
them with a pseudo-parental set of boundaries they will then try to convince us
are for “our own good”.
But we do know better, and we
do want better. And we will celebrate our traditions. At this time of year with
turkey and stuffing, and “all the fixins’.” We will gather, and remember, and
celebrate…and we will look to the future ahead.
That future will be as good,
and as worthy as any that ever was—because it will be one of our own choosing.
David and I wish all of you,
our American friends, a very happy Thanksgiving!
Love,
Morgan
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