Twelve Traditions of Christmas - Part 12

CHRISTMAS CARAMEL ROLLS.  We can't have Christmas without these rolls for breakfast.  That pretty much sums it up. This is actually a fairly easy recipe to make, but it's hard to have it ready right away in the morning, so one year I made monkey bread, which I thought would be faster to make and just as tasty. Well, I followed the instructions to the letter and instead of presenting a beautiful mound of perfectly baked rolls, I turned the rolls out and they were a gloopy, gloppy mess (and yes, I need BOTH of those adjectives!).  Groans of dismay echoed around the room and I scooped it all back in the bundt pan and put them back in the oven.  I'm afraid more time in the oven did not improve things much, and we resigned ourselves to eating the doughnuts that one of the boys had brought back from HyVee the night before.

I can't remember the first time I made these caramel rolls on Christmas morning and probably had no idea at the time that I was creating an enduring, beloved tradition.  But that's how it is: all traditions have to start somewhere, sometime. It's funny how we cling to our traditions and how important they are to our memories.  Although I chose to write about the twelve traditions of Christmas, I could easily have come up with more. Sometimes it seems our whole holiday season is a finely scripted event, and yet each year new memories are made and things are just a little bit different because the people enacting the traditions are growing older and changing.

Is it wrong to hold so tightly to our traditions?  Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish their traditions.  But Paul commended the Corinthians for maintaining the traditions that he had delivered to them.  He told the Thessalonians to stand firm and hold to the traditions that they were taught, either by spoken word or by letters written to them.  It's clear that our traditions must not supersede or reject the clear commands of God.  And there comes a time when old traditions must be let go and new ones started.  But from where I sit, all of these repetitions are part of our family dance and it's a dance I'm not in a hurry to change or quit.