Episode 23: Traditions (12/17/2020)

Hey y’all. Welcome to Fast Facts for Gen Z. I’m your host, Callie, and I don’t know anything about anything. Join me on my exploration of the world, and I’ll tell you everything you ever, and never, wanted to know, through the eyes of Generation Z.

Today’s episode: traditions, the role they play in our lives, and what they might look like after a year of change. This is probably going to be kind of short. I’ve been pretty busy this week.

I’ve had this idea floating around in my head since before Thanksgiving, but it took until now to shake around and fall out as a fully-fledged podcast. Thanksgiving is the start of the holiday season for a lot of people, and in my family, we have a tradition that goes back as far as I can remember.

My dad’s family is pretty big, big enough so that having Thanksgiving dinner at one person’s house is unreasonable for space and borderline cruel for whoever is cooking. I hear they tried for a while, before I was old enough to remember, but as my great aunts and uncles got older, it was a better idea to change it. So now, we all meet in the event space of a church that, presumably, somebody goes to, and we have a potluck-style Thanksgiving lunch. We do the same thing on Christmas Eve. My dad is going to scoff when I say this, but it’s nice. He thinks it’s stressful, and for good reason. Lots of people, lots of family drama, lots of anxiety. But for me, it’s always been nice and low stress, perhaps because he’s tried to keep my exposure to the family drama to a minimum. That’s a tradition I really enjoy, and a tradition that didn’t happen this year.

I want to quickly mention that at no point in time did I think that we should continue the tradition this year. At no point did I think, “You know, COVID isn’t so bad, and we can’t just skip a year.” No. It was a tradition that I adore, and a tradition I was completely willing to break in the name of health and safety. We won’t do it on Christmas Eve either. It was fine. Everyone was fine. Not the end of the world.

Which brings me to my next point. Traditions are such an integral human thing. We love routine and ceremony. We don’t particularly like change. If you had told me last year that none of my holiday traditions would happen this year, I would’ve been shocked. I would’ve been really upset. I would’ve thought, “Why? What happened?” A pandemic, past Callie… a pandemic happened. The point is, such a major break in all my traditions was unthinkable. Until it wasn’t. See, as much as people struggle with change, eventually, we come around.

I remember the first time this year that I thought about traditions and what they would look like was on April 2nd. Not April 1st, on what would have been April Fool’s Day. April 2nd, when I realized that everybody had collectively decided that April Fool’s Day was cancelled. Just not going to happen. I think that April 1st, two weeks into quarantine, was a stressful enough time without pranks or jokes. It was a small thing, of course. I don’t know many people who have really long-running April Fool’s Day traditions, though some families might have an epic prank war, I don’t know. But it was the small beginning of a larger shift in what we understood to be normal. And now, my Thanksgiving tradition was different and Christmas will be too, and I’m not even that sad about it, honestly. It’s different, and that’s sad, certainly, but it’s a sadness that I completely accept and am willing to feel.

My personal takeaway from this is that traditions can change. I knew that, sure, but this year is the first time any of my own major traditions have changed. And it’s okay. But I think that, for a lot of people, traditions are comforting. It’s a comfort to know what you’ll be doing on a holiday. It’s a comfort to know that no matter how crazy your life is, a holiday tradition is something to go back to. It can be really nice, and hard to let go of. That’s probably why this Thanksgiving marked a big uptick in travel, and in COVID cases. Enough people thought that traditions were important enough to them to take the risk. I’m predicting that Christmas will be the same way. Big travel holiday, despite experts warning against it. It’s a shame, but people will risk a lot to resist change. I get that, change is scary, but at least for me, COVID is scarier. Weird.

Of course, some traditions can stay. My family usually has an ugly sweater party with some friends where we all wear sweaters and my mom’s best friend wears her Hanukkah onesie and we eat food and watch movies. We’ll still do it, just without the friends, though I think they’re doing it at their own houses too. We’ve been watching a bunch of new Christmas movies, just to see if they’re any good. I liked Happiest Season, with Kristen Stewart, not only because it’s Kristen Stewart in a gay movie and that’s like, my dream come true, but also because it combined very realistic relationship drama with your usual silly Christmas movie tropes.

Some traditions will have to change, but they can stick around in a slightly different form. The evening of Christmas Eve is usually spent with my grandmother, and we sing songs and tell stories, and it’s generally really nice. We can’t do that exact tradition, obviously, but we might be able to see each other outside, social-distanced. On Christmas morning, my dad’s parents usually come to my house and we have brunch and exchange gifts. That won’t happen this year, but we will still send them gifts, and I’ll give things to my household. We’ll still have brunch, just my household. It will still be Christmas. The holiday will still be the holiday, even with changed traditions. Change is scary, but it’s just a change. The fundamentals are there.

There’s also another side to holidays that isn’t my lived experience, but the whole point is to learn about experiences other than my own, so it’s important to talk about anyway. For lots of people, the holidays are really stressful. Some people might have a really, really bad relationship with their families, for a whole host of complex reasons. Some people might not have families at all. Some people, a lot of people, actually, will have to work. And others will go to the store and say to the cashier, “oh, I’m so sorry you have to work on a holiday!” as if they aren’t the reason the cashier has to work. Especially this year, so many people have lost family and friends that even after the rest of the world returns to normal, their traditions will never be the same. Some people have a tense relationship with food, so food-based holidays like Thanksgiving are really stressful. There are a lot of reasons someone might not enjoy the holidays or any holiday traditions, and that makes this time of year really difficult. If any of you have an experience like that, I love you, and I see you, and I’m sorry this time of year ignores you so much or calls you Scrooge or anything like that. It sucks, I hear that.

Losing family and friends will definitely change traditions for good, but I’ve been wondering how much this year will affect all traditions, for everyone. Maybe some, maybe not at all, maybe a lot.

I think it’s a pretty common experience that when you’re trying to create a good habit, it takes a really long time, but it really only takes a day or two of not doing it for it to never happen again. Traditions seem like really big habits to break, but they also don’t happen very often, so perhaps not. I was going to say that I worry about whether any of the traditions I love will come back next year, but worry might not be the right word. This year was okay without them, right? So maybe I’m not worried, but I do wonder. I think that the traditions that are really strong and really important to a lot of people will stay. But the traditions that are more stressful, or a lot of work, those might not come back. When nobody is quite sure why they keep going, and it’s not a good time, maybe those ones will take this year and disappear for good. I think that would be a good thing.

I’m not sure which my personal traditions are. I think it’s different for different people. We’ll have to wait and see. I suppose technically I’m 18 and can drive and I could go to Thanksgiving without my dad if he really wanted to stay home, but that’s an invitation for even more drama, so that’s definitely not happening. There’s a lot I don’t know about the future, of course, but this especially is something that I won’t know until it happens.

Maybe we’ll create new traditions. Or maybe not. Maybe traditions aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Or maybe they’re important. I think the most important part of a good tradition is the community and mutual agreement that, at least for a while, everybody is on the same team. So maybe the content of the tradition doesn’t matter if the… I was going to finish that sentence with, “if the vibes are right,” but I don’t know if that suits… the vibe. We’ll go with it. If the vibes of a holiday gathering or celebration are right, maybe what you’re actually doing doesn’t matter.

Thank you for listening to Fast Facts for Gen Z. Follow this podcast to be notified whenever I make a new episode, and go ahead and follow me on Twitter for updates on new episodes or just daily thoughts and questions. This is Callie, signing off.