Rethinking Rituals

Moving to another country means clinging to bits of the old traditions—and creating new ones

Part of the Nutcracker troops back in California. All photos © Cheryl A. Ossola

Cari amici,

My elder son is on a plane home to the U.S. as I write this, after having spent two weeks with me in mid-December in lieu of time at Christmas. We—both of my sons and I—have been lucky to spend Christmas together three times in the last four years, but this year it couldn’t happen. Now that my son has left and I’m in my too-quiet house with only a morose dog for company (she misses him too), I’ve been thinking about the traditions we build around the holidays, and how they change when the geography and logistics of our lives are no longer what they were.

The holidays carry such weight for many of us—our emotions are spring-loaded, ready to react to nostalgia or loss, joys or sorrows, reunions both real and wished for. How quickly we latch onto our traditions, and how much grander and more loaded those events and actions become in our hearts and minds than those of “ordinary” days. Traditions and rituals have power—they make us feel connected and loved—but when we can’t observe them (not by choice, but when circumstances of time or place intervene), they leave emotional gaps in our lives. And then it’s time to find new ways to fill them.

So much has changed over the years. Some of it saddens me, but mostly it feels like a normal progression of life. Though we might try to replicate the past at times, it doesn’t always work. Take the tradition of the Christmas tree. When my sons were small we would go to a tree farm and cut one down, always a day filled with happy arguments about size and form, plus a reality check about the limiting nature of ceilings. We paired this annual excursion with a stop in a small-town shop where my sons would each choose a new Christmas ornament. The cute wooden ornaments I bought for them when they were very young gave way to SF Giants-themed decorations, Garfield and Snoopy figures, guitars and pianos, and, in the case of one son’s selections, far too many Lucite monstrosities. That craze ended with his insistence, when he was about 9 or 10, on buying a pendulous ornament that can best be described as a dildo and which I tried, rather desperately, to talk him out of. Of course, now the tale is a treasured part of our family history, and the dildo always gets a prominent place on the tree.

Later we made the switch to shopping at tree lots, and it wasn’t a hardship—we still got a tree, and we still decorated it together. And it was always a six-footer, which left me with a difficult decision to make after I’d moved to Italy. The logistics of car-less me getting a six-foot tree home from a lot and up 30-something steps that grew steeper near the top seemed like a bit much, and so I bought a small live tree for my sons’ first Christmas in Italy. Set on a stone shelf that extended from the fireplace, it didn’t seem so small, and my sons didn’t complain. But later I decided it didn’t make sense to buy a small live tree every year (because they always die), and so I convinced myself that a large fake tree was the way to go.

Thing is, I have always hated fake trees, perhaps because of a hideous 1960s shimmery silver conical disaster belonging to some family friends, which we were forced to endure Christmas Eve after Christmas Eve when I was a kid. Its gaudy horror is still burned onto my retinas. And yet one day last year, out shopping with no thought of ever buying a fake tree, I found myself considering one. It looked pretty good, honestly, more realistic than most. I worked very hard to talk myself into buying it, and I succeeded—it was a practical choice, a one-time cost (and on sale!), and the only way I’d have a big tree again because I wasn’t going to haul a real one home on my own every year. It made sense.

You know where this is going, right?

I hate the tree. My sons have tolerated it with grace. This is the imposter’s second appearance in my living room, and, I swear, its last. I will have a forest of dead mini-pines in my courtyard; I don’t care. Take it from me, when it comes to Christmas traditions and other high-octane emotional stuff, don’t fight your instincts.

For now, though, the imposter still stands, and each time I walk by I give it the malocchio and threaten it with a pre-Christmas expulsion. After all, it’s just me here now, and the dog doesn’t care. I have my mother’s crèche, a made-in-Germany wooden set she prized that throws me straight back into my childhood, and other decorations that make me smile. This albero finto does not make me smile.

What other traditions have been lost or mutated? From the time my first son was born until four months before she died, my mother traveled to us for Christmas, and, until her health prevented it, she and I would go to midnight mass. I’m not a practicing Catholic now, but I enjoy the rituals of the Church. I remember the prayers, the sense of community. I love the music at Christmastime, the sense of expectation—of the birth of Jesus for those who believe, and of presents under the tree. Maybe this will be the year to revive that Christmas Eve tradition.

I’ve reluctantly given up filling stockings for my sons, but only in the last few years. Really, since Covid. Next time we’re together for Christmas, you can bet they’ll have stockings with their predictable chocolate coins and rollerball pens. Little boxes of Italian hard candies replace the once-essential Pez dispensers and packs of extra candy that my sons liked to eat by the handful, tossing aside the carefully chosen dispenser (often Star Wars themed)—yes, annoying Mom is also a tradition. For years, Santa delivered two Nutcrackers each Christmas until their ranks (of soldiers and Santas and Mouse Kings and traditionally garbed citizens of various countries) left no surface un-Nutted. I won’t revive that tradition, but I did buy one fur-hatted soldier for my house here, to keep the spirit going.

I will always have torrone and nuts and tangerines (here, clementines) on hand—another vestige of my childhood. I will always bake cookies—in the past, at least three kinds. This year I made only one batch while my son was here, and I forgot to add salt, che disastro! After four years of using unsalted butter and a reminder to add salt scrawled on the recipe, you’d think I’d get it right, but no. I haven’t made my grandmother’s panettone in the last few years, so I should do that. My father made it every year after his mother’s death, and I took on the tradition after he died. My kids (and my mother) used to love punching down the puffy dough balloon after each rising (there are three!). That’s a memory worth preserving. My family’s panettone is more bread than cake, and there’s nothing better toasted and buttered.

Accepting changes to lifelong rituals and traditions, whether they’re forever or happen in a particular year or season, is part of what you sign up for when you trade your native country for a different one. And sometimes you create brand-new ones. This year my son and I missed out on one recently established tradition—normally, the day before he flies home, we go to Rome for one last day together before he heads off to his hotel and I hop the last train back to Perugia. This year I couldn’t make the trip with him and the sense of loss cut deep. Our farewell embrace felt so wrong—a day early and in the wrong city. We’ll try again next time.

Tell me, what are your holiday traditions, and how have they changed over the years (if they have)? What brings you the most joy at this time of year? Or, if it’s a time of struggle, as it is for so many, what brings you comfort?

I’ll end this letter by saying thanks to each one of you for reading and sharing my words—having this ongoing exchange enriches my life, and I hope it does the same for you. I wish everyone a peaceful holiday season, in whatever form you celebrate it—or if you don’t, then I wish you peace anyway, and the sense of hope and possibility that comes with the winter solstice, as more and more light lengthens our days.

© 2022 Cheryl A. Ossola

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Poems of the week:

• “[little tree]” by E.E. Cummings

• “Christmas Trees” by Robert Frost