While every family celebrates the yuletide differently, there are cultural traditions that some families continue to keep passing on over the years. They can be centered around food, gift-giving, or participating in once-a-year family activities. These traditions were originally passed down from their ancestors and shaped into a version of their first American get-togethers, a few dating back to the English settlements. Much of the western parts of our country were taken away by the Spanish Conquistadors and Mexican soldiers, then settled by dreamers looking for a different life.
The commercialism now associated with most of the seasonal traditions has many families throwing up their hands in despair, yet they continue to try and make getting together with their families and friends the most important part of the season. Cutting down our own Christmas tree up in the high country is still one of my family’s favorite memories. I remember my surprise upon reading one of my children’s college essays that was such a fond remembrance of Christmas in Meeker. Writing about the fun of being out and tramping around looking for the perfect tree and taking it home and decorating it together apparently made a memory of mythic proportions. I had no idea, as I still remember the years when things didn’t work out as planned. One of the earliest memories is the year we went up Piceance creek and lost the dog for what seemed like a couple of hours after she took off after a rabbit. The other was more than a decade later, when our children were in charge of tramping around in the White River National Forest and selecting the perfect tree. We kept looking and looking for quite a while, even finding the perfect tree before we all realized we had forgotten to get a permit. No one wanted to go back out so they had to settle for my friend’s cast-off Kindergarten tree.
While our families all lived so far away, we felt closer to them through melding our old-traditional observances of the occasion, as well adding a few twists. Talking to them on the phone helped a bit, but it could not compare to what happens on social media sites that we have come to take for granted.
I still gravitate toward being with people, so my favorite thing about the White River Valley was the care and kindness we were given by all the unexpected visitors at our door. Two elderly gents I interviewed early on set the tone with their thoughtfulness. One December afternoon, the doorbell rang. I opened the door to find a woman delivering a poinsettia. A few weeks later, the doorbell rang again and my new friend handed me a silver dollar for baby’s first Christmas.
Since that first experience, I have greeted countless unexpected gift-givers of all ages standing at my door simply to say “merry Christmas.”
By DOLLY VISCARDI – Special to the Herald Times
