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As a mother I've pondered many deep and profound things. Perhaps you can relate:

• What drives little boys to rub their fingers between their toes and then demand that you smell them?
  
• Why does a preschooler wait to scream, "I gotta go pee-pee, NOW!" after you get to the farthest corner of a huge store—when the bathroom was right next to the front door that you entered 2.7 minutes before?
  
• Why do kids decide they have a new favorite food immediately after you buy a bazillion of their old favorite food that they now refuse to eat?
  
• Why can't one child stand something until they realize their sibling likes it, and then all of a sudden, they think they will literally die without it?
  

And, perhaps, the most perplexing question of all: Who decided the Thanksgiving meal should be served at 3:00 in the afternoon smack-dab in the middle of toddler naptimes and infant feeding schedules?! (I'm thinking it was some network television programmer who wanted to clear the schedule for all those football bowls.)

Ah, in the immortal words of Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof, "Tradition!" Nothing quite rings in the holidays (yours, mine or someone else's) like:

Tradition! The time we eat our meal.

Tradition! The family with whom we eat our meal.

Tradition! The types of side dishes we do or do not serve at our meal.

Tradition! The tensions and stress that invariably follow!

I'll let you in on a little secret: Tradition can be highly overrated. Sometimes you just have to shake things up a bit. Or at the very least, be willing to relax some of those "that's the way it's always been done," rules in a concerted effort to make the traditions we keep joyful, meaningful and doable. (Imagine that!)

I dared to smoke ribs one year and load up twice-baked potatoes when the kids were of an age that even thinking of doing all the traditional Thanksgiving baking and cooking made me want to stick my head in the oven. Now I admit, my family requested it never happen again. But for that time and place it worked because it fulfilled the, "Tradition Doesn't Always Matter," criteria: It was doable. It maintained my joy, and the children had a meaningful memory of a meal they never wanted to repeat on Thanksgiving. *smile*

As you go into the holidays with your laundry list and ideals wrapped in traditional expectation, slow down long enough to examine them and ask yourself the following questions:

If you answer "No" to any of the above questions, be bold! Be brave! Be tough! And chuck what's hindering those things from happening. And if 3 p.m. is the hour of choice for Thanksgiving dinner, suggest another time such as 9 a.m. and serve turkey sausage for breakfast.

Julie Barnhill is One Tough Mother to three children and author of seven books, including the Every Mother Can series and One Tough Mother, available at MOPShop.org. She is a popular national and international speaker.

Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today International/MomSense magazine. Click here for reprint information on MomSense.

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