Tale envelopes heart-warming tale of tradition
When is the last time your family started a Christmas or New Year's tradition?
A tradition - by definition - is a ritual that is handed down through time.
But when and how do traditions start? For example, I can see why some families decide to open presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas.
Last year the Keyeslings were up at 3 a.m. going through their stockings and making enough noise to roust their overworked parents.
Christmas was a long day last year and visions of presents being opened on Christmas Eve are dancing in my mind right now.
I asked around: The Christmas Angel drops off presents at one friends home and the kids open the CA's presents on Christmas Eve. Without fail, the presents are pajamas for the night before Christmas.
Other families open several gifts on Christmas Eve and save the Santa gifts for Christmas.
Making cookies with Grandma Nancy is a tradition for the kids. That's going to take place Saturday.
I have a friend in Bonners Ferry who opens up the front and back doors of their home exactly at midnight on New Year's Eve to chase out the old year and welcome the new year into their house.
I asked her why she does it and she said her parents did it their whole lives as did their parents.
Tradition.
We adopted that tradition a few years back and I like it and the kids love it.
The main reason the kids are fans is if we are home opening doors at midnight, it means we are together as a family.
Do you have any traditions you want to share, drop me a line at the Bee or e-mail me at dkeyes@bonnercountydailybee.com.
This is a story from an e-mail sent to me this week. I thought it was appropriate since we were discussing traditions.
It will be in two parts with the second part running tomorrow.
It's just a small white envelope stuck among the branches of our Christmas tree.
No name, no identification, no inscription. It has peeked through the branches of our tree for the past 10 years or so.
It all began because my husband Mike hated Christmas - oh, not the true meaning of Christmas, but the commercial aspects of it - the overspending, etc.
Knowing he felt this way, I decided one year to bypass the usual shirts, sweaters, ties, and so forth. I reached for something special just for Mike.
The inspiration came in an unusual way. Our son Kevin, who was 12 that year, was wrestling at the junior level at the school he attended.
Shortly before Christmas, there was a non-league match against a team sponsored by an inner-city church.
These youngsters, dressed in sneakers so ragged that shoestrings seemed to be the only thing holding them together, presented a sharp contrast to our boys in their spiffy blue and gold uniforms and sparkling new wrestling shoes.
As the match began, I was alarmed to see that the other team was wrestling without headgear, a kind of light helmet designed to protect a wrestler's ears. It was a luxury the ragtag team obviously could not afford.
Well, we ended up walloping them. We took every weight class.
And as each of their boys got up from the mat, they swaggered around in their tatters with false bravado, a kind of street pride that couldn't acknowledge defeat.
Mike, seated beside me, shook his head sadly. "I wish just one of them could have won," he said.
"They have a lot of potential, but losing like this could take the heart right out of them." Mike loved kids - all kids - and he knew them, having coached 20 little league football, baseball, and lacrosse.
That's when the idea for his present came …
Continued tomorrow …
n David Keyes is publisher of the Daily Bee.