Ancestry Magazine

It’s funny how the kind words and wisdom of a total stranger can stay with you for decades. Sometimes they resurface, unexpectedly bringing light and warmth out of nowhere.

Trying hard not to repeat the frenzy that tends to mar holidays, I’ve made up my mind to set aside at least one hour a day to savor the memories of people and seasons that have touched and brightened my life. Since the end of the day usually spins out of control with work and family activities, I’m getting up an hour earlier in the morning. It’s still dark and peaceful, and I can think and write without interruption.

In the early hours of a day not long ago, I was thinking of some of our holiday family traditions, where they started, and how they have evolved. Suddenly, I remembered the year when I thought traditions would end and life would never be the same.

I was a senior in high school, taking a bus out of my home in El Paso. It was Christmas Eve, and I was feeling a deep sadness I hadn’t known before. The aunt who had raised me—the woman I’d called Mom since I’d learned to speak—had died just three months before. True enough, I still had a loving family and several of us would be together the next day with my brother’s family in a small New Mexico town. But I reasoned that the wonderful holiday rituals that Mom had sparked in the past would now be over.

From the window of the bus, I watched and wallowed in self-pity as the streetlights of my hometown gave way to the dark desert night. Apparently sensing my sadness, the elderly gentleman sitting next to me gently began to engage me in a conversation that I at first tried to avoid. Why I decided to tell him my sto ry, I don’t fully remember now. But unconsciously, I think I’ve kept and learned from his response for all these years.

He said he was from India where Christmas was not observed, and we talked about holiday lights and customs in this country and in his. He told me of his extensive travels and how he had come to understand the importance of family traditions in the parts of the world he had visited. He believed that every family tradition is in itself a gift of light that helps to guide one age to the next. This stranger’s suggestion that it was now time for me and for all of my generation to pick up the torch and carry on with family traditions somehow took a strong hold in my mind.

My first Christmas away from home turned out to be a happy one. My brother’s little ones were a wonderful source of joy for each of us. I was comforted to see old family holiday traditions shining through, and we even added some new traditions that year.

Like most families, ours cherishes its old ways, and we continually add bright new traditions as the years go on. Our ten grandchildren now relish traditions from my Irish, English, French, and German ancestors as well as those of my husband whose people were from Hungary and Poland.

Additionally, for the sake of preserving the many facets of their diverse heritage, we have adopted important traditions from our sons-in-laws’ families. And it doesn’t stop there. For twenty years, a dear family friend who was a Catholic priest spent Christmases with us. He passed away earlier this year, but we won’t soon forget his goodness and the traditions he brought to our table.

Although I never saw the nameless stranger from India again, his kindness and wisdom live on. Though the individuals whose traditions we preserve may no longer be with us, their gifts of light have been left with us. With those gifts, we have enormous power to brighten the world.