I am finally getting it. I've never quite understood what's going on with all these families who are trying to follow certain patterns every Christmas, Easter, Thanks Giving Day and any other occasions they find fit to follow a family tradition. I thought they did so to give them a sense of comfort and of predictability, two of some of the basic human needs.
Ironically enough, what has helped me actually get the whole tradition thing it's the Vampires Diaries....yes indeed, and although I am Romanian and Transilvania is part of Romania, this has nothing to do with that. Vampire Diaries is a TV show, I'm not even sure on what channel, which caught both my brother David and my attention about three weeks ago. We both agreed on watching that first episode all the way (we normally argue what channel to watch, he wants his MTV cribs shows, and I usually demand the news station). We both ended up liking the show, and because it ends on a climax each time, we were anticipating watching the show the following week.
Following Thursday, without even mentioning the intent of watching the show again, around 8pm David was in front of the TV letting me know the show was starting.
Now, maybe that doesn't sound like a lot, I mean any typical 15-year-old may react just like that, but knowing my brother, he is more aloof and wants to do his own thing, and since I have been gone out of the house for some time now (and the fact that I'm 10 yrs older than him), we don't have many things that we do together.
Third week of watching the show, it hit me! We have actually developed a family tradition of watching the Vampires Diaries every Thursday night. And as much as I dislike wasting time watching TV, I realized the greater thing which is behind watching the show. My brother and I are bonding...it has become our thing that we do together. This is more important to me than anything else I could be doing during that hour.
I know this is not the best example of a family tradition, but through this experience I got a little bit of the vision of what family traditions can do for us. I am committed to set my own family traditions when the time will come. I am not sure if one should sit down and decide what they should do periodically or if we should experience different activities and based on how much the family has enjoyed it to decide on making it a tradition.
