Nurturing Traditions Through Sacred Time

5 comforting truths for feasting and fasting within the liturgical year

Dear friends,

For the second time this year the smell of permanent marker wafts through the air and half-filled boxes are scattered through our apartment. Yes, that’s right. We’re packing up to move just weeks before Christmas. Our new rental, a cottage set beside stables, is a few minutes away. And fortunately, all else in our life here remains the same. Relief, joy, exhaustion, determination, and confusion make up the air we breathe these days.

This is the year tradition really could have been “lost in the move”. If you’ve been keeping count, we’ve shuffled around quite a bit this year. We’ve totaled and traded in a couple vehicles, we’ve welcomed another child, moved houses, lived out of suitcases, spent an ungodly amount of time strapped in the car, left behind familiar faces and commutes, with so many other adjustments in between.

It’s all too tempting to forfeit any effort towards ritual or celebration this year. Reasonable excuses abound. My three year old is refusing naps. My nine month old is walking, eager to weasel her way into the bathroom or climb atop boxes. Our ceiling is leaking water from the apartment upstairs. My heart is heavy. My husband works long hours.

Where do I find the time for ceremony right now?

To answer this question I think of my children’s natural orientation towards repetitive and imaginative play. I consider my desire for beauty and contemplation. And I can’t help but notice my husband’s joyful ease in relationships — a gift of connection at work from the mechanic’s shop to the parish. Time ebbs and flows, but the most important pieces of the puzzle already exist. Ceremony need not be started from scratch, nor does it have to be an extracurricular. It’s already the connective tissue that supports the vision we have for our family. In short, tradition finds a way.

Still Life by Albrecht Kauw

Traditions, even accidental ones, invite us to remember the arc of a larger story within tangible time and space. Christianity is centered on an incarnational mystery. The created world around us is as much apart of our faith as the immaterial. Rituals of feasting and fasting are ways we embody our faith in the God who forgives, comforts, instructs, gathers, heals, questions, and protects. We return every so often to particular meals, people, clothing, conversations, songs, and art to remind us of our place in the story of the natural world, the life of Christ, or in the community we belong to. By doing so we tap into the balance between belief and practice.

As the liturgical new year unfolds this week, here are five things bringing me comfort.

Tradition evolves over time.

Every time I return to a ritual, say a holiday meal or a wedding, I’m rarely the same as I was before. I scoot up to the table with new experiences, different relationships with those around me, and maybe a new haircut. I circle back to the same story with fresh eyes.

The lifetime of the experience itself will change, too. If I resist the lure of all-or-nothing, I find increasing delight in “limited edition” traditions. A brief sprint of 3-4 years enjoying Michaelmas or Candlemas is just as much a tradition as is a thirty year streak of Advent candles.

Tradition travels light.

Before the reign of today’s modern influencers, Martha Stewart built an empire on the mass consumption of recipes and entertaining tips. In her world perfection was attainable even on a Kmart budget. Today’s algorithms capitalize on this idea when curating snapshots of beautiful table scapes, farm fresh ingredients, or quiet children gathered around candles without the reality of dirty dishes piled high or spilled wax.

Don’t be fooled into thinking your celebration is only meaningful with expensive supplies or excessive materials. At the core, the act of remembering is sustained through storytelling. The use of presence, imagination, curiosity, and language can do more to nurture meaningful connections than an abundance of props.

Traditions are awkward sometimes.

Most rituals are a performance of sorts. Just as you might learn a song or dance for the first time, it might be cumbersome to start something new, experiment with something different, or even to dust off a practice long forgotten. Notes will be sung off key; toes will get stepped on. We’ll be subject to small talk. A sense of humor and willingness to try again are essential.

Tradition is not precise.

The liturgical calendar is loaded, truly, with opportunities to remember the particular legacies of Christ and centuries of saints. It’s easily a full-time job to coordinate consistent, satisfying traditions around every single one, every single year. (And honestly, this sounds like too much work.) Simply celebrating the major feast days on the actual day is an achievement for me, but this level of precision is completely unnecessary. Feast days are not due dates and therefore I have freedom to simplify and expand celebrations as I see fit.

Tradition is alive.

If you bristle at the word tradition thinking you’ll soon become one of God’s frozen chosen, fear not. There is a distinction between tradition and convention. Thomas Merton, a mystic, writer, and Trappist monk in the heart of Kentucky, explained it best in his book, No Man Is an Island:

“Tradition is living and active, but convention is passive and dead. Tradition does not form us automatically: we have to work to understand it. Convention is accepted passively, as a matter of routine. Therefore convention easily becomes an evasion of reality. It offers us only pretended ways of solving the problems of living— a system of gestures and formalities. Tradition really teaches us to live and shows us how to take full responsibility for our own lives. Thus tradition is often flatly opposed to what is ordinary, to what is mere routine. But convention, which is a mere repetition of familiar routines, follows the line of least resistance. One goes through an act, without trying to understand the meaning of it all, merely because everyone else does the same. Tradition, which is always old, is at the same time ever new because it is always reviving - born again in each new generation, to be lived and applied in a new and particular way. Convention is simply the ossification of social customs. The activities of conventional people are merely excuses for not acting in a more integrally human way. Tradition nourishes the life of the spirit: convention merely disguises its interior decay.”

Traditions are important to me and my husband, not because we have so many from our own childhoods, but because we don’t! Through our marriage and our individual journeys to the Anglican arm of the church, we’ve been encouraged by the invitations of cyclical traditions to remember the Spirit’s work in our family and in the Greater Story. Thanks to the internet, I’ve spoken with other women in recent years and know we aren’t alone. Folks are drawn to the idea of ritual as a means of healing and inspiration, whether or not they participate in a church community. The calendar seems to transcend many of our differences. Together we mark sacred time and pass on the Story worth repeating over and over again.

A lovely friend hosted our family for Thanksgiving.

The 2024-2025 Liturgical Calendar Guide

For three years now I’ve shared my liturgical calendar guide with the world wide web. It’s grown in content and popularity over time, which tells me we’re all longing for a deeper connection with our faith through ceremony, sacred time, and ultimately, the life of Christ.

Gather your household or small group into a circle of scripture, ancient themes, and rituals through the liturgical year. Personal and group licenses are available.

(Psst! Paid subscribers will find a free preview of the Advent resources included in this guide, plus a discount code, in the Library.)

Enjoy your Thanksgiving leftovers!

Elizabeth