What Are Holiday Traditions Really For?

A few weeks ago, we put up our Christmas tree. It was only a few days after Thanksgiving, which is as it should be—though I'm sure that those of you who start the Christmas season before Thanksgiving are perfectly lovely people regardless. 😉

Anyway, we usually get a live tree from a local farm, and we decorated it with all the ornaments we had in the attic. Looking at the ornaments is one of my favorite things to do. We have such a wide variety of them that it's really entertaining to go through the boxes, and it brings back a lot of old memories—a ballet shoe picture frame ornament that I used to put hand-drawn "art" in, for instance, or the set of silver, pink, and green mushrooms with sparkles on the top. 

I'm sure you have ornaments that bring back a lot of memories for you when you look at them, so you know what I'm talking about. And decorating our tree this year was a very interesting experience. It made me think a lot about the traditions around Christmas time, and it made me realize that the way I'd thought about traditions in the past was overly simplistic, at best. 

I used to think that the traditions of the holidays were absolutely necessary to keep the "magic" of the holidays from fading away. I didn't want to lose the childlike shivers of excitement that came on Christmas morning, and I thought that the way to do that was to stick rigidly to a set of actions, regardless of possible inconveniences.

Yeah. Maybe not the greatest conclusion. 

The problem with that way of thinking—and it is a problem, I now realize—is that it misunderstands both the purpose of holidays and the purpose of traditions. We don't keep tradition for tradition's sake. It all serves a purpose. But what is it? 

 

"Here I Raise My Ebenezer..."

Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing isn't a Christmas song. But it certainly is a good one, and it's one of my favorite hymns. 

The first few lines of the second verse go, "Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I've come / And I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home." 

(The word "Ebenezer" already has Christmassy connotations due to Ebenezer Scrooge, the main character of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. That's not the kind of Ebenezer the song is referring to, though it's kind of a funny coincidence.)

The origins of the word "Ebenezer" are found in 1 Samuel 7, and it means "stone of help." The story goes like this: The Israelites fight the Philistines and they lose the ark of the covenant for 20 years. Finally, they repent and return to the Lord, so Samuel and the Israelites fight the Philistines again, and win. 

1 Samuel 7:12 - "Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer, for he said, 'Till now the Lord has helped us.'" 

The Ebenezer is a monument to remind the Israelites of how God helped them in the past. It's a physical display of God's saving work, a tangible reminder of something that the Israelites should never forget. 

Honestly? I could use some Ebenezers. God has helped me in so many ways over the course of my short life, and I know he's going to do the same in the future. But do I remember it? 

No. When I'm struggling, I forget all the miraculous things God has done. I forget that God is my loving Father and Shepherd who watches over me with love. 

Remembrance, in short, is something that I desperately need. Something that we all desperately need. 

And holidays are all about remembrance! (Here's an article that goes into this more, if you're interested.) Holidays are a time to slow down, take a breath, look back at the year and reminisce with friends and family. To remember. 

I think that the traditions around the holidays serve as a kind of Ebenezer. They're tangible things that you do or read or listen to or think about, things that draw your mind down memory lane before leaving you there to wander around for a while. 

What was it like, the last time you did this? How did last year's Christmas go? Or the year before that? 

What was going on in your life at that time? What were you struggling with? 

How far has the Lord brought you?

 

When Remembering Hurts

Christmas isn't always a good time of year. It's "in the bleak midwinter," as the hymn puts it, and it's a time of whirlwind activity that can get really stressful. And sometimes life is just really tough around Christmas time. 

Maybe the memories aren't all good. So why would you want to remember them? 

Or maybe this Christmas season isn't all that good for you. Maybe you're struggling to see the point of celebration when everything is so hard and painful. 

But I think that's exactly what the Ebenezers are for. 

If past Christmases were hard, use this time to remember how far the Lord has brought you. Is your life perfect? No. But it's better than it was, and remembering times of darkness helps us appreciate the light in today.

And if it's this year that's the hard one? If the memories are good, but impossibly distant? 

Then take the good memories as a reminder that the bad times don't last forever. 

Life is full of seasons, pleasant ones and unpleasant ones. And seasons may last a long time, but they aren't permanent. There were good times in the past, so we know that the bad ones can't last forever!

The good times are going to come again, whether they come in this world or in the world to come. We know that for sure. 

My challenge for you is to use this holiday season as a time to remember. Where were you last year? The year before that? Five, ten years ago? 

How has life changed for you? Do you think that the changes were good or bad?

And, most importantly: how have you seen God's faithfulness over the course of your life? 

Because God is faithful. He's far more faithful than our tiny brains can even understand. He stays with his people for lifetimes. 

And we forget. So often. 

So pile up your rocks this holiday to remember how God has helped you.