Christmas traditions that stand the test of time

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

Every year, Christmas is different. Different weather. Different presents under the tree. Different people at the dinner table. Different dinner tables. Different conversations.

And yet every year, Christmas is the same.

It’s the sameness that brings the magic. In this ever-changing, here today/gone tomorrow, impossible-to-keep-up-with-never-mind-begin-to-understand, always-at-war-with-someone world, Christmas not only continues to offer hope that someday there might be peace on Earth, it also reassures us that there are some constants. Because, though the world keeps changing at record pace and all of us keep changing too, in the most important ways Christmas is just as it always has been.

Think about it. Year after year for centuries, it’s the same Christmas story. No matter who is telling it. Jesus was born in a manger. The shepherds came. Then the wise men. A star guided them.

Year after year, for centuries, we listen to the same carols. No matter who is singing them. “Silent Night,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Joy to the World.”

Candles in windows. Wreaths on doors. Lighted trees. Candy canes. Sleighs. Santa. Gifts. Christmas pageants. Choirs. The expressions on the faces of children who believe in Santa. The generosity of the season. The kindness. These are the same in 2023 as they were in 1853.

I have a child’s Golden Book. It’s oversized and well-worn and almost as old as I am. It was written by Kathryn Jackson and published in 1952. It’s brittle with age, its pages close to dust, its cover taped and torn.

“The Santa Claus Book” holds 43 Christmas stories and poems. That’s what it says on the first page, where I wrote my name Beverly in cursive six times. I must have been learning cursive the December I found that book under our tree.

I know I’ve read all of these poems and stories many times. I read them over and over when I was a child. I read them to my own children when they were small. When my children grew up and had children of their own, I had copies of the book made (this was before home printers) so that they could read these Christmas stories to their children.

Christmas Day is like a page plucked from this book. It’s cherished and, despite all that has changed, it is still relevant.

The scent of pine. The first sip of eggnog. The tinny sound of a wind-up ceramic tree. A Christmas clock that chimes portions of hymns on the hour. Glitter on the floor. Christmas cards. Christmas songs on the radio. And “The Santa Claus Book.” These are my portals into the holiday.

There are so many portals. Watching “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Reading “The Little Match Girl.” and “Granny Glittens and Her Amazing Mittens.” Making spritz cookies and Aunt Lorraine’s gently stir-and-boil until the soft ball stage chocolate fudge. Unwrapping a ceramic tree that was my grandmother’s and a small clock that Father Coen gave me. My mother. My father. Sister Grace. Uncle Frank. So many people from so long ago come into my heart because of some words in a book, a scene in a movie, a taste, a scent, a phrase in a song.

Every December when I watch “Scrooge, the Musical,” I think about the year I saw it at a movie theater at the South Shore Plaza in Braintree with my mother. We didn’t know it then, that this would be the last Christmas she would be healthy, the last Christmas we would go to a movie together.

The movie makes me see us as we were. My mother is 46, the age my daughter is now, and I’m 23. It’s a warm December night, no snow on the ground when we leave the theater. It’s a clear night, early evening, the sky bright with stars. I walk my mother to her car. Why do we have two cars? I don’t know. We’re smiling, still under the movie’s spell, when we hug goodbye. I watch my mother back out of the parking space and drive away. And I feel now exactly what I felt then: Lucky to have had that afternoon, and lucky to have had this mother.

I don’t like the hype of Christmas. All the deals and “Final Hours to Save!” and “Buy! Buy! Buy!”

What I love is what’s never changed. The stories, the songs, the celebrations. The gathering of family and friends. And the memory of family and friends who exist, not just in some heavenly realm, but right here at our tables, in our memories, and in our hearts.