Say what you will for finances and household chores, but nothing challenges newlyweds quite like holiday celebrations. Traditions have to be meshed. Other people’s feelings need to be considered. Family members whom you did not marry need to be given their due regard. And people never make you talk about it before the wedding, like they will about children and religion and doing the laundry. Sure, it may come up if you’re doing the mixed faith thing, but the sparkle in your eyes is too bright for you to focus on such minutiae. And then you’re blessed with children and matters only get more complicated as you seek ways to pass along your important traditions without running hog-wild over your spouse’s history.

This is what I was thinking about while our family chopped down our Christmas tree.

I was a teen-ager before I visited a cut-your-own farm, at the behest of my brother who had been seeking a way to meld his ideas of the holidays with his wife’s. Somehow I fit into the plan, probably as convenient labor.

Off and on over a decade of living in Rochester we have patronized the same farm out Route 104 where the houses spread out and the industrial buildings sprout like mushrooms. For the first time in a long time, our entire family was in attendance. Maybe it’s not a “tradition,” but I liked watching each of us take our turn at the saw. And I loved tossing the tree into the car, turning, and being engulfed in a different sort of tradition: the family snowball fight.

December, 2005