Like all traditions, the celebration of Christmas is rich in symbols, music and rituals passed down through generations.
As time passes, the traditions remain but the original meaning or reason for them is lost or forgotten.
This cute little joke about trimming a turkey sums it up with a chuckle:
A man and his wife were at her grandmother’s home for turkey dinner. He stood in the kitchen watching as his wife cut the end of the turkey off before she put it in the roaster. “Why did you cut the end of the turkey off”, he asked. “I don’t really know” she said, “We just always do it. You should ask Mom.”
So he found her Mom and asked her. “Hmm, I’ve never really thought about it,” She said, “you’ll have to ask Grandma.”
So he went and asked Grandma.
“Well, I don’t know why they keep doing it, but I used to do it because I had to.
When the girls were young, we lived in a house with a very small oven and I always had to cut the end of the turkey off so it would fit in the oven. “
So many traditions are like that. They once had a practical purpose or symbolized something that no longer exists but we like our traditions and we keep doing them year after year, generation after generation as shared rituals that are old and familiar.
This book explores the origins of many of our Christmas traditions, tracing them back to the practical reasons for them and to belief systems that once existed but have been lost to time.
