Family rituals

This time of the yer it seems there just are not enough hour in the day or enough days in the month to do all that we want to do, or all that we "should" do.
The tribes will be gathering soon and, like the wind in our part of the country, some will blow in unannounced. We will welcome the newest babe, the matriarchs and patriarchs, and those in between, with the familiar rituals that our family has called "our way." And if we don't, the cry will go up,"But we've always done it that way!"
Rituals do lend to the uniqueness of a family and they help define their connectedness. Holidays provide opportunities for members of the family to participate in those rituals in ways that reaffirm their commitments.
Mothers often measure the passage of time with holiday memory markers. 1955? "Oh that was the year our oldest learned to walk. We had to put the tree in the playpen to keep him away from it."
"Remember how hard the winter of 1979 was? That was the year the kids told us we were going to be grandparents. The snowman they built during their Thanksgiving visit was still standing in the yard when the baby was born in the spring."
"Our next door neighbors, now close friends, moved here the year the kids painted the sugar cookies with undiluted food coloring. The carolers who stopped at our house for cocoa and cookies trooped next door to sing with multi-colored teeth."
Baby's first Christmas. The cradle-shaped ornament dated 1961, triggers memories of a little blond boy, all dressed up in a french-blue Eton suit, peacefully sleeping through midnight Mass.
The loss of a family member sometimes necessitates restructuring of familiar rituals. While our son was bedridden, the last year of his young life, he painted some stained glass Christmas ornaments. He thought he was my favorite child (they all thought that)and when he died I thought so too. A numbness surrounded our hearts and Christmas came that year with uncontrolled tears like the carelessly hung tinsel on the unwanted tree. Christmas afternoon we removed the wreath from the front door and our family drove to the barren cemetery to put it on the grave.
We have kept that ritual. The wreath, a symbol of the circle of life, has provided our family with a way to define a connectedness that cannot be broken by death.
Over the last two decades I have tucked one of those stained glass ornaments in the Christmas boxes so that all the siblings and their children, and soon the great-grandchildren will have one.
Sure holidays are a lot of work, but the memory markers, and the memory makers are what defines the particulars of the group of people called family.