A woman and her husband want to spend Christmas Eve at home with their almost-3-year-old toddler to begin their own family traditions instead of spending it visiting with her mother and sister. Her mother understands, having started the existing tradition herself when the girls were young. But her sister is taking it incredibly hard and is making the woman feel guilty for "ruining" Christmas.
When should you follow an existing tradition? And when is it time to start your own?Tradition. It's a funny thing. Isn't it? It's something you've done for, oh gosh, who knows how long. In fact, it's probably something that was being done well before you were even around. And the very idea of there being a tradition is that you should stick to it and keep doing it. Year in, year out of the same thing. Stopping it is "breaking" it, like a connection to the glorious past and your ancestral line has been severed.
But someone somewhere at some point had to be the first one to start that tradition. And then it wasn't even a tradition at all; it was just someone doing something one time, probably breaking another tradition to do it. Then the next year they decided it was a good idea and that they should keep doing it. Thus a new tradition was born.