Last week, my two teens left school in the middle of the day for a meeting—with Santa.
I can’t believe picture-taking with him has gone on for eighteen consecutive years. This tradition has survived so much. Divorce. Our original photographer retiring. The kids growing up and not wanting to wear matching outfits Mom picked out (or do as she says in general). And Covid.
In 2020, the year of remote schooling, Santa gamely moved his operations to an open air venue. We found him freezing standing behind a log cabin-like set with a closed window, which he slid open just as the shutter clicked 12 feet away and the kids pulled down their masks.
This time the studio was back at Swanson’s Nursery, just outside its lovely greenhouse of a cafe. As I sat beside the koi pond waiting for lunch to arrive, and the kids went to the gift shop, I wondered why this one has lived on when so many other traditions died away. (I miss the ice skating, the theater, the carousel rides…)
No clear answer came. Pictures just kept being a “yes” and I kept making it happen.
The kids returned to devour their sandwiches with a little old-timey box in tow. Inside, I found an ornament of a nested hen warming her eggs. “See, a mama and her babies,” Kai said. My chest stirred.
Perhaps, in life as well as in business, what resonates with others and becomes a perennial hit is not for you and me to decide, and certainly not ahead of time.
Perhaps, what remains over time and imbues our shared lives with meaning can’t be figured out by math.
Hen or not, and Christmas time or not, it seems I’m simply here to warm whatever eggs I’ve laid. And to mourn my losses—some were senseless—and nourish what keeps living, through disappointment and heartbreak, with all I’ve got.
That’s my secret for “acing” holiday traditions.
I hope it works for you, too.
