The Tradition of the Present Moment

Tomorrow we will be making our annual Christmas pilgrimage. It is a solemn and important tradition that Bob and I both cherish. It brings so much warmth and joy to our hearts during this dark and cold time of year.

Yep. We’re goin’ to Coney Island.

I meant every word about it being an important tradition and it truly does bring us both joy. There is nothing quite like an authentic coney from the original Coney Island.

Now, this tradition, like some you might have, requires some sacrifice. We’re not the only ones who love to visit this shrine. So we will have to stand outside in line along with all the other pilgrims. Every year, Bob actually spends time planning for our departure, calculating the optimum time to arrive, accounting for the time it will take to find street parking, and factoring in the distance on the walk to 131 W. Main Street. Every year it varies just slightly, but in the end, this planning pays off and we find ourselves ensconced on two (very uncomfortable) stools at Coney Island’s long counter placing our orders. This can vary year to year, but only a bit. When we leave, we stink up the car with the joyful smells of coneys and onions, and all is right with the world.

Tradition.

Our annual pilgrimage to Coney Island gives Bob and I a sense of continuity. Even if everything else changes around us, that smelly little diner seems frozen in time. We can’t imagine a holiday season without that trip.

But not every tradition sticks, does it?

Our first Christmas together, Bob went and picked out a tree. I was perfectly content for him to go by himself, and I trusted him to get a good one. We had a kind of magical tree stand that was supposed to be able to level any tree, no matter what. But this tree was trouble. We kept trying to get it to stand up straight but it was just not working. Bob would take the tree out to the garage and cut off a little more and then a little more until what was an 8-foot tree was shorter than me. And if you know Bob you know: this would just not do. So he went back to the lot and found a nice, big tree that he made sure did not have a 90-degree bend in the trunk. We didn’t want to ditch the original one, which by this time was just 4 feet tall, so it became the “kitchen tree.” I decked it out with Christmas cookie cutters, ribbons, and fruit-shaped ornaments, and it was charming.

This certainly felt like something that could or should become a tradition. The King Kitchen Christmas Tree. We laughed about it until we cried. And, we did try to keep it going for a year or two. But in the end, we could never really recreate the feeling of that first Christmas. That experience was all about working together, improvising, and making due. A worthy lesson for any newly married couple. But it wasn’t something that necessarily needed to be relived year after year.

I have a love/dislike relationship with traditions. I feel like there is a lot of pressure put on us to make and keep them, especially this time of year (with birthdays and anniversaries being a close second). It’s not that my family had none, it’s that there were periods when things were not especially “stable” so what was happening at the moment trumped whatever tradition might have dictated.

So in a sense, it was a little bit of a foreign concept to me to have customs and traditions that were expected to last for years. Which means that sometimes I have found myself arguing against set traditions. It has gone something like this—Bob: but we always have colored lights on the tree. Polly: but we don’t have to have colored lights on the tree.

The problem I have run into is that trying to relive some moments just doesn’t seem to work. It’s like that epic party you once threw. You know the one. Everyone was in an awesome mood. The music was perfect. Everyone was getting along. The conversation was bubbly. The drinks were flowing and the food was delightful. It was like being in a snow globe with the happiness falling all around you.

That party was so good you want the feeling again. So you try and repeat it. But some little something is just never quite right. That is why I have been the tradition spoiler— because I simply don’t want to be disappointed.

Maybe what I’m advocating is a “tradition of the present moment.”

In my tradition of the present moment, it’s less about perfectly replicating an experience and more about showing up and being present. It’s creating something meaningful in real-time. This year, our immediate family tried something very different from years past. Rather than buying lots of gifts, we agreed to keep it simple, buying one gift each and playing a fun gift exchange game. We may or may not do it again. But for this year, it was the tradition of the present moment. And it was great.

The tradition of the present moment means that there is no disappointment that something didn’t look exactly as it did the year before or the year before that. It also means there’s no expectation that everything is flawless. It means that traditions change and evolve like we do, shaped by who and where we are.

For Bob and me, the pilgrimage to Coney Island might not always look the same. Maybe someday we’ll live too far away to make the trip. Maybe there will come a year when we skip it altogether. But the tradition isn’t really about the coneys (although they are amazing). It’s about a simple (smelly) moment of nostalgic joy and connection.

And maybe that’s the key—letting go of the pressure to force tradition into something static and perfect. Instead, we can hold on to what brings us joy, adapt when the time is right, and sometimes just let go.

So this year, when Bob and I find ourselves perched on those uncomfortable stools (way, way too close to everyone else at the counter), soaking up the stainless-steel glow of Coney Island, I’ll savor it as it is—perfect for right now. And next year, or the year after, if we end up doing something totally different, that’ll be okay too. Because the best traditions, I think, are the ones that make space for joy to show up however it wants to—no strings (or colored lights) attached.