Half Baked Traditions
I love Thanksgiving. The food, the family recipes, the cakes and pies, and smells and sights
of a table laden with holiday treats. Our traditions include quiet music playing in the
background, freshly ironed tablecloths set with the best china, silver, and crystal, hand-
lettered place cards, an artfully designed centerpiece of flowers and gourds and candles.
Well, not really, but I do make an effort to use the good dishes, have a centerpiece of some
description, and lots of food. If we’re having a large family gathering, we may quibble over
sweet potatoes with marshmallow or with pecans, or we may just have both. One year we had four different types of dressing/stuffing!
Although I’ve never had a Martha Stewart-worthy holiday, I have gone over-board some years in planning, preparation, and presentation. Is is really worth the effort to make a cornucopia of bread dough? To make pecan, apple, and pumpkin pies for seven or eight people? To roast a whole turkey for three?
What drives us to create extra work for ourselves on holidays?
In part, it may be an attempt to impress our guests, to convince them that we always have
dishes that match, clothes that are clean and pressed, and that our table always runneth over with bountiful blessings. Another part, though, may be hope, a sort of contractual prayer made manifest that if we prepare the perfect holiday experience, then our guests will not argue politics, drink to excess, monopolize the conversation, or fight with one another. Because we hear stories of these things happening, right? At the very least, if we do our part to create perfection, then everyone will agree it was the best holiday ever!
It’s that belief in perfection I want to explore. Fortunately or unfortunately a tendency toward perfectionism runs in my family. Not in the sense that we want to be the best, just the best that we can be. That seems okay. There’s nothing really wrong with arriving at a three year old’s birthday party with homemade petit fours when cupcakes or cookies would have been more appropriate. And I enjoyed making my daughters’ Easter dresses every year. It’s tradition to make cranberry relish and cheeseballs and ten different cookies every Christmas.
Admittedly, I/we can run to excess. Who needs sleep, right?
Perfectionism is a dubious gift, a double-edged sword. While I appreciate the impressive feats of culinary expertise and decorating grandeur my mother passed along, I also recognize that perfectionism can cause us to miss out on other of life’s experiences for fear of falling short.
How much fun have I missed by being afraid to audition for a play, dance at a wedding, join in a sing-a-long? My wish is that we would all take advantage of opportunities to try new things and to believe that we are good enough and know that we don’t have to be perfect.
In days of yore, women’s magazines challenged women to put a little Christmas in every
room, prepare festive meals, and create the perfect holidays for our families. Today, social
media would have us believe that everyone’s home looks like a perfect New England
Christmas with snow and twinkling lights and greenery just so. It’s lovely and all, but definitely comes with a price. In the hustle and bustle toward being Pinterest perfect, we forget why we’re celebrating. Light show. Check. Picture with Santa. Check. Cookies. Check. Tree, gifts wrapped, packages delivered. Check, check, and check.
As for me, I’m scaling down the expectations, choosing what’s important to me, and balancing what has to be done with what I want to do. Simple abundance seems a nice way to ring in the New Year. It’s still hard for me to change traditions, to lessen the amount of decorating or baking I do, but I am learning to let go and spend more time playing games or working puzzles with my family. There my treasure lies.
The ability to be fully present in the moment, to be wholly oneself and be okay with ones
perceived imperfections, is the greatest gift of all.