Strains of the Season: Secular Traditions
Last Christmas Eve, my life was drowning in a grief and confusion that I still cannot find the words to describe. A few weeks prior, my husband had checked himself into a rehabilitation program for addictions that had been hidden from me. I had no contact with him for a month, and I knew he would be gone for even longer than that. I also had six children under the age of ten. Dancing with grief when there is supposed to be celebration everywhere is a heavy task for anyone, especially a mother who is so aware of the little eyes taking their cues from her. With all my heart, I wanted to protect them from as much as I could, while giving them some sort of holiday memories worth holding on to.
But I was exhausted. More than exhausted, I was weary and numb and hurting. I had missed the school Gingerbread House party, stayed home from a gift exchange with friends, and never got around to sending Christmas cards.
For the last nine years on Christmas Eve, we have been putting out a plate of cookies for Santa and his reindeer near the fireplace, just for fun. And my oldest daughter, Harper, was determined to keep this tradition alive for all of us. I was in no position to have baked anything at this juncture. I was stealing sleep in thirty-minute increments, dragging myself out of bed to get the kids to all the places they needed to be, and was still walking around in the same black jogger pants I had been wearing for the last three days. But with an assortment of Christmas goodies generously dropped on our front porch by people who love us, we had plenty to make a small plate of treats. Harper let her younger brothers and the two toddlers pick out their favorite cookies, and she added a handful of baby carrots from the refrigerator. I hardly remember this part, to be honest. I just remember wanting to get six children to sleep so badly it hurt.
Eventually, I crawled into bed, where two of my kids had been joining me since their dad was gone. I must have fallen asleep within seconds of closing my eyes, but when I woke up in the morning—with no thought at all about the treats the kids had left out—and walked out to the kitchen, I saw it there on the ground by the fireplace: the plate of cookies, half eaten. Crumbs everywhere. Carrots in the garbage.
My nine-year-old.
At some point the night before, she had pulled herself out of bed, turned the light on in the living room, and pretended to be a hungry Santa Claus with his reindeer, eating up the cookies. She made it look like magic visited the house in the middle of the night. Completely on her own, she created a memory for her little siblings that her mom was incapable of that Christmas. She didn’t tell me she was going to do it, and she never asked me why I didn’t.
I would have never guessed a secular holiday tradition could give my daughter the opportunity to display the heart of Christ so profoundly to our family that I’d be brought to tears.
Wisdom and freedom
We moms sometimes wonder if secular traditions like these have a place in a sacred season devoted to celebrating Christ’s birth. The word “secular” means “of or relating to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred.”[1] In and of themselves, many secular things—whether an item, a vocation, an idea, or a tradition—are amoral, meaning they are neither good nor bad on their own but could fall into a moral category depending on their origin or how they are used. So how do we apply this to our holiday traditions? How do we know when we are using something for good or for bad?
I’d love to be able to give you an answer, but alas, there isn’t just one answer that fits every tradition and every family.
The Holy Spirit gives us everything we need for life and godliness,[2] but we don’t often get an exact formula in Scripture for many of the wisdom decisions we make as parents: schooling, medicine, finances, holiday celebrations, etc. While the Bible guides our discernment, we must acknowledge the freedom given to believers as well. If there is no direct instruction in Scripture, it’s up to us to use a combination of individual conscience and discernment to determine what serves and edifies our family best.
Some questions we consider in our family when it comes to secular traditions around the Christmas holiday are:
Can our children understand the difference between imagination and truth?
Is this tradition offering worship to anyone or anything other than God?
Does this tradition cause anyone to stumble into sin?
Are our motives for this tradition God-honoring or self-serving?
While we can look around at what others are doing and find either inspiration or warning, it’s important to remember that no one is more qualified to answer these questions in our own hearts and homes than us.
The blessing of tradition
A dear friend and mentor once told me that traditions create identity, and identity creates belonging.[3] What we are really doing when we make, carry on, and celebrate traditions—secular or sacred—is creating something that defines our family, that gives our children a sense of who and what they belong to. Traditions give us joy to anticipate and memories to relive again and again. If we have laid down a foundation for our children that puts the birth of Jesus at the center of Christmas, we are free to enjoy the delight that can come from imagination, decorations, and yes, even secular traditions like leaving cookies out for Santa.
Jesus’ grand entrance into a world where he would share our pain and provide our salvation deserves our awe and our worship. But gift exchanges and cookies, matching PJs and holiday movies—or anything else that might have little spiritual significance in and of itself—can bring people together in ways that are very significant. Our children need roots in our home, and even the simplest traditions that they look forward to year after year can help those roots grow.
My daughter displayed selflessness and love to her family on what was one of the darkest nights of my life, using pretend play—a non-religious, made-up tradition meant only to make my children smile. She was determined to carry on a simple tradition for her young siblings that had brought her joy in the past. A plate of cookies for an imaginary character became a vessel for God’s grace, in the form of my daughter’s heart. She brought me to my knees in gratitude for Jesus that morning, for the truth that nothing is too far gone for him to redeem. And because of that, I will never, ever forget that plate of cookies.
[1] Dictionary.com
[2] 2 Peter 1:3
[3] Gilbert, Krista
