Traditions

By Patti Fralix

You can see the magic of fall all around. When the leaves start to turn and the nights begin to get cool, it is time for that most magical time of year. 

Once again, most of us go into full speed ahead for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukah, and Christmas. Some of you even finished your holiday shopping before October even arrived! Too often, we fail to remember that we and our loved ones get the most joy from traditions that we hold dear.

I can almost taste the fresh cranberry sauce and smell the sage in the turkey and dressing. The preparations for the family members who come for three to five days to celebrate Thanksgiving together are soon to begin. Not exactly Martha Stewart, I do not start to cook and prepare the first of November, but I do start getting excited long before that. This is my favorite time of the year, when family and friends celebrate together, which has less to do with the food than the fellowship. While the food fills our tummies, the memories feed our souls. The traditions we share at this time of the year are ones to hold dear. 

One of our traditions is celebrating Thanksgiving together, all 30 plus of us. Aunts and uncles and adult children are in the kitchen for days preparing our special recipes that are always requested. In the early years, I thought I had to do it all myself to be the appropriate hostess. That changed the year I was in Canada speaking during Thanksgiving, and my husband Mike hosted the family without me. A master of delegation, Mike involved all in the preparations that year, and everyone had so much fun being involved that we have never veered from that approach. I learned from this experience that if all are involved, it is more like everyone’s holiday, which of course, it should be.

For most of these years, the extended Fralix family has honored us by coming to Raleigh to share this holiday. It is a tradition that Mike and I began. We love traditions and this is one of our favorites. A few times through the years we have had reason to have Thanksgiving elsewhere. 
A few years ago, Mom Fralix asked us all to come home to Florida for Thanksgiving that year, and we did. We thought what Mom most likely “knew” that she would probably only have a few more years with us, which turned out to be the case. We have missed her, and her dressing, ever since. None of us have the heart to make Mom’s dressing; it was hers to make, and even if we could make it, we shouldn’t; it was Mom’s. 
The dressing’s absence is a tangible symbol of her absence. 

Brother Phil and family hosted us one year in another part of Florida. That year our friends from Cape Town, South Africa, Bernard and Claudia Richards, joined us. Mike and I traveled with them throughout Florida with a stop in Niceville for Thanksgiving. We enjoyed a wonderful, low-stress (for us, since we had no company to prepare for; all we did was show up and eat!) event. 

In 2003, we all convened at our beach house at Caswell Beach on Oak Island, NC for the holiday, since our Raleigh home was under renovation. We had a great time, although it was somewhat different. We still had the Thanksgiving china and related touches, and added some new traditions, such as a low country boil. Golf was much easier since it was across the street. We had “Thanksgiving at the Beach, 2003” golf caps made, which many still sport. Although it was fun, it was apparently too much of a departure from tradition. When the poll was taken last year, the adult children requested to come back to Raleigh instead of going back to the beach. They said, “Yes, it was fun,” and “Yes, it was the same in some ways.” But they couldn’t explain more definitely other than to say, “Well, while in many ways it was the same, it really wasn’t.” Hmmm.
It must be the tradition. Now that’s powerful. And they weren’t talking about the food.

What about your traditions? It doesn’t matter what they are, but it does matter that you have them. They connect us to our pasts in a very special way. It has something to do with the fact that we are creatures of habit in so many ways. Yes, we know that we have to change, and we do. But can’t we hold on to some traditions that connect us by memories, and still be willing to change when we need to? These days, when so much around us changes, we may need traditions more than ever. It may have something to do with our mortality and our desire to have traditions and memories that outlast us. Like Mom’s dressing.

Patti Fralix inspires positive change in work, life, and family through speaking, consulting, and coaching. She is founder and president of The Fralix Group, Inc., a leadership excellence firm based in Raleigh. She can be reached at pfralix@fralixgroup.com.