Tag Archives: tradition

Holiday Flexibility

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Short post today. It’s Christmas Eve, after all, and I have a lot to do. Cleaning, cooking, baking, candlelight service, checking my list again (just like Santa)…but most importantly, preparing for Christmas Day.

I hate when I allow my schedule to dictate my joy level. So I’m intentionally choosing rest (I took a 15 minute nap on the couch last night about 7:30), and peace and the love of Jesus. Tonight we’ll have the slow-cooker filled with soup and keep the light on for anyone who stops by…for a few minutes or longer. Because I want to make sure there’s always room in my inn.

As a pastor’s family, we didn’t have a lot of annual traditions. Things always depended on weather and where Christmas fell during the week. We spent A LOT of Christmas Days on the road between our two extended families in northern and southern Illinois. Do you know that most places are closed on Christmas Day? (sarcasm) Ate a few cold truck stop sandwiches through the years. Drove through heavy snowstorms and over black ice a time or two – all because we wanted to see our families over the holidays.

So this is what I’ve learned (you know I’d get to it, right?) – be flexible. Don’t set your schedule in stone tablets, never to change no matter the circumstances. Don’t expect your adult children to always adhere to your annual traditions. Remember the most important thing isn’t the actual day you celebrate – it’s the reason you celebrate. The family you hold dear are no less precious on December 26th. or January 5th. or March 29th. Allow your family to celebrate the best way they can and maybe that means getting together later or earlier or next weekend. Or celebrating more than once. (yay!!)

Since my boys are now married, we’ve learned to adjust to what works best for all of them. Don and I are so thankful our own schedules allow us to accommodate what works best for everyone. We’ve “taken turns” on holiday get-togethers. We’ve opened gifts a few days early so our kids can be out of town on Christmas Day. We all communicate our expectations so when we do gather together, there is less stress and more joy. I’m blessed with amazing extended families, in-laws, and now “joined by marriage” families. We are thankful for the love they show year round, not just at Christmas time.

May your family find that happy balance of tradition and flexibility that brings light and life to all your celebrations.

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Picture courtesy of incourage.me – blog post December 24, 2020

Music is a Love Language

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The next chapter in the ongoing saga of “Kris turning 60” – aren’t you glad there is an end to all of this? Me too.

Music. Make it a part of your life.

Music is a unifier. When you can’t understand the speaking language of your child, try listening to the musical language they are speaking (or at least listening to). Try to find common ground in the bass and treble clef, even if it wouldn’t be your personal choice. See a concert together. Watch one together on YouTube. Discover a new artist you both enjoy. Talk about the latest song or the upcoming concert tour. Play music in your house, in your car, on your phone. Instead of closing doors when the music goes on, open them up. Ask questions. Watch how your kids respond to you enjoying “their music.” Dance together in the kitchen…or better yet, embarrass them by dancing with their friends in the kitchen!

If your kids express an interest, help them learn an instrument. Piano and guitar lessons can be pretty affordable. It doesn’t have to be a band instrument, even a little ukulele with some YouTube instructional videos would be fun. Both Don and I played instruments when we were younger (wayyy younger), though neither one of us do so now. We have a variety of instruments in our basement, due mostly to our children, but there is one really nice acoustic guitar that I own and I swear, someday I’m going to re-learn how to play it.

Music is a huge part of the McGarvey family. My oldest son has traveled the world playing music before thousands but it all started in our unfinished basement with pencils on empty popcorn tins as a toddler. Later he wanted a drum set so I negotiated. Two years of piano lessons first, then drums. Now he plays drums, keyboards, and acoustic, electric, and base guitar. He’s played every genre, every type of venue, though I’m sure he has a bucket list of venues he’d like to perform in.

Encourage musical interest, no matter the form.

My youngest is a music fiend but in a totally different way. He loves listening to music, attending concerts, discovering new artists, creating playlists, supporting his brother’s bands, embracing different genres. If I have a question about an artist, he’s the one I trust to know if I’d like that music or not. I think he’d make a great agent for an artist (shh – don’t tell him I said so).

img_4258Listen to all types of music.

We played music in our house all the time. Depending on the ages of our kids, we went from Donut Man to Mary Rice Hopkins; from DC Talk to Switchfoot; from Ella Fitzgerald to Louis Armstrong to Trombone Shorty; from Ben Rector to Colony House to show tunes; from I Am They to Lauren Daigle to Bethel Music. We have Bluetooth speakers in almost every room, ipods since the boys could take care of them, and hundreds of pairs of earbuds in multiple locations.

Establish a music tradition in your family. Follow a favorite artist.

In the last six years, I’ve established a tradition of taking my kids to at least one live concert a year, specifically the indie rock band NEEDTOBREATHE. We’ve traveled around the Midwest to see our favorite group…actually they’re MY favorite group, but the kids come with me anyway. We’ve discovered some new artists who we really enjoy – so much that we’ve gone to their concerts too. And the kids take me to their favorite live concerts too! This tradition, bound up in our common love of music, has made for some sweet memories, great travel stories, and good tunes!

I don’t know what our family would have turned out like without music…and I’m glad I don’t have to find out. This is one bit of wisdom I’m glad I discovered very early in life.

 

 

 

Tradition!

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Has anyone seen Fiddler on the Roof? It is a musical set in imperial Russia in 1905. The story centers on Tevye, the father of five daughters. Throughout the production, Tevye attempts to hold true to his Jewish traditions but outside forces creep in and change happens. It’s a longer movie, but so worth it. Tevye’s hold to tradition above all else eventually withers away as he and his family are forced to leave their village by the Tsar’s edict…Change happens…to all of us.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a few customs to hold onto…Traditions within the family can cause a cohesiveness that is hard to duplicate. Traditions can create memories which will last throughout lifetimes. The McGarvey’s have a few traditions of our own…

IMG_3835My husband is a sports lover. Fortunately, he married a sports-loving woman because we really enjoy watching and/or participating in lots of sports. And of course, we raised our two sons to be sports nuts as well. And we were very, very successful. I guess we aren’t as extreme as some families, but we taught our kids how to play all those sports at a young age. Boys_golf_partnersAs homeschoolers, we could take an afternoon and go play 18 holes of golf or start up a quick kickball game in the backyard. And sports watching is a sport in our house. The girls that love my guys have had to get used to this…and I love them for it.

This so happens to be our favorite time of year – when all the stars align, and all our sports are happening at the same time. We are a March Madness family – we’ve filled out brackets for 20 years (David wins most often). We’ve seen the process morph from copying it out of the Monday morning newspaper to multiple online bracket groups. It is also the start of baseball (two Cub fans, two Cardinal fans) and The Masters (golf, for those not sports-minded) is only a few weeks away.Cubs_fans

Our traditions center around activities we enjoy and have enjoyed together. When the kids were younger, we spent our short vacations in the Wisconsin Dells, specifically the Wilderness Resort. We have a loyalty to that location that will keep us from enjoying any other Dells resort. It’s Wilderness or nothing. It’s our tradition.

About six years ago I started listening to the music of a certain band, NEEDTOBREATHE. I bought five tickets to see the band in Chicago (side note: we also took in a Cub game on that trip – we love our sports). The boys and I (with their two girlfriends) attended the concert and we were hooked. It was so much fun – not just the concert, but the whole day spent with family, in a new location, doing fun things, being flexible, enjoying each other. We still tell stories of that first concert in Chicago. We attended two more concerts that year (St. Louis and Iowa City). We’ve tried to attend at least one NTB concert each year, not just because we enjoy their music, but because we enjoy each other. We make the whole trip an experience filled with memories with people we love. Even Don’s gone a couple of times. It’s our tradition.Concert_goers

So, I have 4 small suggestions for beginning any tradition in your family:

  • Make it something all of you enjoy…or at least a large majority. Because we all love baseball, we can handle attending either Cubs or Cardinals games (though two of us will always be less ecstatic than the other two) but since only one of us is a Hawkeye fan, we don’t choose to go to any Iowa sport together.
  • Don’t adhere to too many absolutes. We fill out our brackets each year, but we don’t maintain the method must stay the same. Paper or online – doesn’t matter. We go to our annual NTB concert, but we don’t have to eat the same food every time or only see them in one city. In fact, we like seeing them in lots of different locations. Flexibility within the tradition gives you more great memories.
  • You are never too old to start a tradition. Our concert going idea started when my kids were already grown, and I was in my fifties. I’m looking forward to starting new traditions in the future.
  • Keep it simple. Allow life to happen, and as it does, natural traditions will begin on their own. Forcing traditions onto your family may backfire and cause more stress than joy.

I hope you enjoy a few simple traditions –  Making memories with family is the most important thing.

Day 8 – A Tradition Unlike Any Other

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The_Masters

I hope Augusta National Inc. doesn’t come after me. The title of today’s blog is a trademark they filed in 2014, after veteran sportscaster Jim Nantz coined the phrase almost 30 years ago. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, just walk away right now. Save yourself a few minutes of your day. Tradition, in the McGarvey household, is spelled S-P-O-R-T-S.

We love almost every sport although we have had a few discussions (i.e. arguments, debates) about what constitutes a “sport.” I think we’ve gone both ways on horse racing, non-Olympic year curling and rhythmic gymnastics (Olympic sport or not). We most closely follow  the Big Four (baseball, basketball, football and golf) though we make exceptions for the Daytona 500, the Triple Crown and the Indianapolis 500.

The McGarveys could not care less about robins and groundhogs…in our house, the signal of Spring’s arrival is March Madness, the Final Four, baseball’s Opening Day and The Masters. Ah!  I can smell the magnolias already.

Our tradition starts with an email from David informing us of our March Madness brackets. We started filling out individual brackets when the boys were pretty young. I would photocopy the big one printed in the Monday USA Today, the morning after the announcement. When it came to picking winners, age made no difference…Sean always, always, always correctly picked one of the underdogs, but overall it usually came down to Don or David. Now, of course, we’re all high-tech with on-line brackets on various websites. Doesn’t matter to me – I still get killed in the second round.

Televised basketball games run non-stop from that opening Thursday morning through Sunday evening…and then start up again the following weekend, until there are only four teams remaining and my living room spells like a locker room, dirty socks and all. I loved it.

Each year, the men’s championship basketball game is played on a Monday night, followed by the start of The Masters (“a tradition unlike any other”) on Thursday. David used to take off from work the four days of The Masters. He almost cried when his friend scheduled his wedding on Masters Saturday. (Really? Who does that?)

Our favorite players don’t need last names (Zach, Jordan, Jason, Tiger) and we root for them as if they are our neighbors and best friends. We were all together watching when Tiger’s miraculous chip went in on the 16th hole in 2005 – and two years later, when our city’s favorite golfer claimed the green jacket – and then two years ago, when a kid the same age as our boys took home his first major championship by 4 strokes.  Just a few of our favorite memories.

This year…oh boy!…this year, baseball’s Opening Night game is the Sunday prior to the men’s basketball championship. AND, it’s the Cubs versus the Cardinals in St. Louis. Seriously – in our house, it can’t get any better.

To be honest, the hardest part of my empty nest thing is the loss of this bonding around our favorite sports. Our tradition took a hit when Sean went away to Ames for school. Last year, David was living in his new apartment and our living room was much neater (the couch cushions actually stayed on the couch all weekend) and no one ate any snacks or drank any Dr. Pepper. Even my boys notice and try to help me. Last fall, Sean and I watched a post-season Cubs game on bar stools at a bowling alley in Ames. David made it a point of coming home for Game 7 of the World Series so he could be with me when my team won (and wasn’t that a nail-biter!?) Not sure what I’ll do this year – may need to Skype in Sean when my Cardinal-loving men start trashing my Cubbies. Except, this year, I can give it back. #WorldSeriesChamps

A New Tradition

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Holidays are more than dates on a calendar. They are usually markers on a memory timeline and most families have at least one tradition for each major holiday. With Easter Sunday less than a week away, you have time to create a new memory, a special new tradition, to mark this very unique holiday.

Some families research and observe some or all of Holy Week, the eight days between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. You can google any one of the days of the week and find the unique observances surrounding each one. For instance, did you know that the Wednesday of Holy Week is often called “Spy Wednesday?” This day is observed by many Eastern Orthodox believers as the day Jesus was visiting Simon at his home in Bethany. While there, Mary anointed Jesus’ head and feet with costly perfume. Jesus’ disciples were indignant at the waste of money. Tradition says this was when Judas Iscariot decided to betray Jesus to the Sanhedrin (Mark 14:1-10).

Maundy Thursday commemorates Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. The word “maundy” is Latin and refers to the part of the evening when Jesus’ washed his disciples’ feet (John 13:1-17). The night concludes with a meal, which provides the scriptural basis for the Eucharist or Last Supper (Luke 22:7-23).

Good Friday always seemed a misnomer to me. It is the day Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus on Calvary (Matthew 27). In many areas of the world it is a legal holiday, including 12 U.S. states. Why is it called “good?” There are disagreements about the exact meaning, but many believe the “good” simply meant “pious” or “holy.”

Johnny Hart, Good Friday 2

Most Protestants don’t observe it, but Catholics often refer to the next day of the week as “Black Saturday.” There are unique traditions for both western and eastern Christian religions for this day.

Of course, the celebrations abound on Easter, beginning with sunrise services in many churches. New clothes, egg hunts, baskets filled with gifts and candy, joyful hymns declaring Jesus is alive! He is risen from the dead! (Matthew 28:1-15)

What a great season to start a new tradition in your family. Observe a Maundy Thursday or Good Friday service in a different church than what you are used to…Give Easter baskets to a women’s shelter or orphanage…send Easter cards to servicemen and women…Read the scriptural accounts of Holy Week to your kids, celebrating each day as Jesus may have…Have a foot-washing service with your small group…Participate in communion on Thursday night.

Enjoy this spring time holiday as you never have before ~ create something fresh and new or resurrect a family tradition from your own past. Either way, make a memory to last a lifetime.