Tradition! Tradition!

"Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as... as... as a fiddler on the roof!"

New Year's Eve marks a peaceful end to the craziness of the holiday season in our home.  Himself and I have not gone out to celebrate since the year Thing One was born, when we moved to our current house in the sticks...the roads are dark and winding and full of deer and being out on them after midnight with a bunch of drunk yahoos is asking for trouble!

The replacement tradition began simply: every year, we made a special dinner for two.  When the children were really tiny, we would have to wait to begin cooking until they were in bed, since they were such a handful.  When they got a bit older, we could cook and eat with them awake, but we would feed them their kid-friendly dinner first and then attempt to eat our special one with chaos swirling around us...crawling babies, boys pushing toy trucks around the table, and always, always, somebody wanting to sit on Mommy's lap.  An inevitable stage in the process, and one I was thinking about last night as I looked around the dinner table.  We had cooked only one meal--filets mignon, mashed potatoes, and sauteed green beans--and we were all eating it together.  With the good china and fancy wineglasses for the adults and real conversation and I was so proud, so proud of these little people who are so rapidly becoming big.

Somewhere, back in the dinner-for-two-only early years, my in-laws gave my husband a Bill Cosby DVD for Christmas.  "Himself" (how appropriate), one of the funniest monologues I've ever seen.  A huge chunk of it is about parenting and children, and it has some really good lines.

"Parents are not interested in justice, they're interested in peace and quiet!"

"It was because of my father that from the ages of seven to fifteen, I thought that my name was Jesus Christ and my brother, Russell, thought that his name was Dammit. "Dammit, will you stop all that noise?" And, "Jesus Christ, sit down!" One day, I'm out playing in the rain, and my father yelled, "Dammit, will you get back in here!" I said, "Dad, I'm Jesus Christ!"   

"I am not the boss of my house. I don't know how I lost it. I don't know where I lost it. I don't think I ever had it. But I've seen the boss's job... and I don't want it."

"My wife and I were intellectuals before we had children. We were very, very bright people. My wife graduated from the University of Maryland, child psychology major with a B-plus average, which means that if you ask her a question about a child's behavior, she will give you at least an 85 answer. I, from Temple University, physical education major with a child psychology minor, which means that if you ask me a question about a child's behavior, I will tell you to tell the child to take a lap."

"[Talking about his first child] My mother looked at it and said, "Oh, how precious." I don't know why she said it. Well, I didn't know then. I know now, because my mother put a curse on me. A long time ago, I remember when I was a child what she said, and I later found out that mothers, all mothers, put a curse on their children. They say, "I hope, when you get married, you have some children who act exactly the same way that you act." And this curse works! I mean, it started with that child! My wife and I have not been intellectuals since."

When we first started watching it, the kids were so small that we didn't fully appreciate the truth behind the humor--the older they've gotten, the more we relate.  That year he received it, we threw it into the DVD player on a whim after we had finished our New Year's Eve dinner and put the kids to bed, laughed like a pair of fools through the whole thing, and a new NYE tradition was born.

The next year, as we were sitting on the sofa next to the Christmas tree and watching that DVD, it occurred to me that it might be a good time to take down the tree...the kids were still so small that they couldn't be trusted around loose ornaments or hooks, so it had to be an adult-only activity.  And another tradition was added...a special dinner, the movie, and then taking down the Christmas tree became the order of the night.  Even now that the kids are old enough to help, or at least not actively hinder.   And throughout, we sip good champagne from the flutes we used at our wedding--no point in those gathering dust.        

After the movie, we switch to network TV and watch the bands play and the ball drop, toast the New Year, and go to bed.  Not fancy or loud or over-the-top, but it works for us; it is enough of a ritual that it officially marks the end of one year and the beginning of the next.

Welcome, 2013.