Thanksgiving, Tradition, and Dinner Rolls

If there’s one holiday that I would say is all about tradition (at least in my family), it’s Thanksgiving. There’s the turkey, of course, the omnipresent football game on TV, and – if we’re lucky – a little bit of snow coming down. That last one’s especially awesome when it’s dark and we’re all gathered around the kitchen table playing board games. It’s just...ugh. It makes me wish that I could experience that right now. Luckily, Thanksgiving isn’t too far away.  

Tradition, especially as it relates to holidays, is a funny thing. It’s like, ‘why don’t we all do the exact same thing every year at the same time and find immense joy in the fact that it’s the same?’ One of my friends would probably quote something from Fiddler on the Roof here. I haven’t seen that film, though, so I’ll just stick to giving you the essence of what I’m trying to say: holidays seem to make us happy when we can indulge in the same sort of fun things we did last year, and the year before, and the year before that.  

I sometimes wonder what my ancestors’ Thanksgiving traditions looked like. I mean, my grandparents had to get their ideas for our holiday traditions somewhere, and they passed them down to my parents, who now have passed them down to my younger brother and me. I’m assuming that my great-great grandparents didn’t watch “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” every year, but traditions can also be formed anew, even if the spirit of the holiday remains the same. But did they set up their Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving, on what most of us call “Black Friday?” Where did they get their Christmas tree? Or – did they have that same delicious cranberry Jell-O that’s a staple at every Nelson family Thanksgiving?  

What I’m trying to get at is – who came up with these traditions in the first place? Did someone in my family just decide one year that we were going to have a certain brand of dinner rolls at every Thanksgiving dinner? How long until someone finds a different brand, a better brand that we’ll eat at Thanksgiving when my brother and I are middle-aged and host holidays at one of our houses?  

I tend to like it when things stay the same, especially for once-a-year events like Thanksgiving. So I’m looking forward to coming home after a long drive and finding my house looking the same as I left it, and a few days later greeting my aunt and uncle as they come in the front door carrying those yummy King’s Hawaiian rolls. I can’t wait to see my grandparents and their dog, and for it to get dark outside after dinner and maybe start snowing.  

Okay, here’s my obligatory paragraph reminding you that change can be good. I mean, if my family’s Thanksgiving traditions had never changed over time, we’d probably still be eating Jell-O with, like, vegetables or cottage cheese in it instead of cranberries. Didn’t people like that a couple of decades ago? I’m going to be thankful for that this Thanksgiving.  

But really – what's Thanksgiving all about? We’re thanking God for lots of things, including how He sent His Son to die for us. Jesus tended to do some things that were pretty anti-tradition (at least in the Holy Land at that time), at least in my opinion. Selling stuff in the temple was normal. So was doing absolutely no work on the Sabbath. Even the respect that Jesus gave to women was very different from the tradition of the culture at the time.  

Jesus Himself says it best, which really isn’t surprising. “’Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?’” the Pharisees asked Him. “’They don’t wash their hands before they eat!’ Jesus replied, ‘And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?’” (Matthew 15:2-3 NIV). The earthly traditions that we invent don’t always align with God’s will, and we know that God’s Word is everlasting in a way that traditions never will be.  

So this Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for tradition, but I’m also thankful for changes in tradition, whether they’re happening now or happened 2,000 years ago. Without changing our traditions, we can never make progress. And who knows – maybe the new kind of dinner rolls will be even better than King’s Hawaiian. 

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