40-Day Christmas Challenge | Day 25: Choose One Tradition to Protect • Everyday Cheapskate

Christmas traditions are funny things. Some become treasured family rituals. Some hang around because nobody has officially canceled them. And some become so much work that we’re too tired to enjoy the people we’re supposedly doing them for.

Today we’re looking at the other side: What’s worth keeping?

Not everything. One thing.

Today’s Challenge

Choose one Christmas tradition you genuinely want to protect this year. Then make sure there’s room for it.

Maybe your family has done it for decades. Maybe you started it three years ago. Maybe it’s something you’d like to begin this Christmas.

Big or small doesn’t matter. Meaningful does.

Do This Today

1. Think about what you’d actually miss.

Don’t start with a list of everything your family normally does. Ask:

If Christmas came and went without this, would I be disappointed?

Maybe it’s Christmas Eve church.
Reading the Christmas story together.
Decorating cookies.
A particular meal.
Driving around looking at lights.
Opening one gift on Christmas Eve.
Making Grandma’s peanut butter cake.
A family game.
Breakfast in pajamas.
Watching the same movie.
Calling someone who lives far away.

Whatever immediately came to mind? Pay attention to that.

2. Ask whether it still fits.

Traditions aren’t valuable simply because they’re old. Life changes. Families change. People move. Schedules shift. Something that once fit beautifully may need a little alteration.

Maybe the giant cookie-baking day becomes an afternoon making everybody’s two favorites. Maybe the big gathering becomes brunch. Maybe everyone can’t make the annual outing anymore, so whoever is available goes. Maybe the tradition stays exactly the same. Fine too.

The goal isn’t to preserve every detail. It’s to preserve what makes the tradition matter.

3. Protect it.

If your tradition needs a date, put it on the calendar. If it requires tickets or reservations, take care of them. If it needs ingredients or supplies, add them to the appropriate list. If other people are involved, tell them.

Don’t leave something important floating around as: “We should do that sometime before Christmas.”

“Sometime” gets awfully crowded in December.

Quick Win

Finish this sentence:

It wouldn’t quite feel like Christmas without ____________________.

There’s your tradition. Now ask:

What do I need to do to make sure it happens?

Do that one thing today.

Don’t Turn a Tradition Into a Production

Suppose your tradition is decorating cookies together. Wonderful. That does not automatically require six kinds of cookies, five colors of icing, matching aprons, a hot cocoa bar, personalized mugs, coordinating pajamas and photographic evidence that everybody had a magical time.

You can decorate cookies. That’s enough.

Sometimes we add so much Christmas to a Christmas tradition that the original pleasure disappears underneath it.

Protect the part you love. Skip the accessories unless you love those too.

Traditions Are Allowed to Change

Sometimes changing a tradition is exactly what keeps it alive.

When our boys were toddlers, we started an annual Family Christmas Party with close friends, their children and our extended families. It lasted for 35 years.

As you might imagine, a lot changed in that time. Those five little kids grew up. Most married. Babies arrived. We said goodbye to beloved grandparents. The family circle grew and shifted.

The party survived because it changed too.

One year, we even did away with the increasingly elaborate gift exchange and replaced it with something that cost almost nothing. There was grumbling. My mother-in-law was especially unconvinced.

And wouldn’t you know, that became the gift exchange I’ll never forget.

That’s the thing about traditions. We sometimes work so hard to preserve every detail that we forget what we’re actually trying to preserve.

Keep what makes the tradition matter. The rest is allowed to change.

New Traditions Are Allowed Too

Maybe you’re thinking: We don’t really have a tradition I care about.

Good news. There was no deadline. Start one. And please don’t feel obligated to manufacture something profound. Pick something you would genuinely enjoy repeating.

Take an evening walk to see the lights. Make pancakes on Christmas morning. Buy one ornament that represents the year. Take the same silly family photo. Call the same faraway friend.

If you enjoy it enough to do it again next year, congratulations. A tradition has begun.

Why It Matters

Traditions give Christmas continuity. They connect one year to another. Sometimes one generation to another. But their value isn’t in how many we can maintain. It’s in what happens while we’re doing them.

We’re together. We remember. We laugh. We worship. We tell the old stories again and make new ones.

That’s why today’s challenge isn’t: Keep all your traditions.

It’s: Don’t accidentally crowd out the one that matters.

Your Turn

What’s the one tradition that makes Christmas feel like Christmas at your house? And has it changed over the years? Tell us in the comments. I’m especially curious about the tiny traditions nobody outside your family would understand. Those are often the best ones.