Traditions.
    
    We’re for them.  I mean our family is for family traditions—also cultural, political, national, and societal traditions.  Because nothing connects disparate peoples faster than standing around a roaring bonfire attempting to burn a bunch of raggedy clothes on a stick, supposedly representing a sitting president of the United States—the raggedy clothes not the stick.  This is what’s known as the effigy burning tradition (see Berkley, Indonesia, Watts, all the Palestinian territories, and, of course, the take over of the US embassy in Iran.)
    
    Traditions bring people together.  Traditions strengthen family ties and give the grandchildren something to talk about at grandpa’s funeral.  “Remember the way Pop always  had to work the word penetrate into the yearly Christmas toast.”  They’ll say.  “It was his favorite word.”  They’ll remember.  Ahh, traditions.

    And so our family established in that old year, the year of our Lord two-thousand and seven, our newest family tradition.  We celebrated our first annual “Burning of the Christmas Trees Bonfire and Extravaganza” on New Year’s Eve.

    There were three family Christmas trees thrown into the raging inferno symbolizing the ringing out of the old year and the ringing in of the new.  There was one Christmas tree that we called the cheap tree.  It was purchased on a Monday morning at Home Depot for $24.99.  It was the second shipment of cheap Christmas trees to the Saint Cloud Home Depot, the first shipment of cheap trees having sold out rather abruptly.  There was a rumor of rioting over the “cheap trees” going around. They say a guy got knifed. I can’t confirm that.  Sarah, our new daughter-in-law bought the “cheap Christmas tree.”  Then there was the cut rate Christmas tree.  This tree was purchased for a reduced price by my son-in-law who picked out a seven foot tree and then had the tree guy cut off one foot—thus making it a six foot tree.  He paid for a six foot tree.  And then there was Poppy and Ya-Ya’s Christmas tree—full price, full height.

    One by one we tossed them on the roaring funeral pyre of New Year’s Eve celebration.

    One by one they went up like the dried out bones of fire starter that they were.

    We laughed.  We danced.  We celebrated, right up until the point where Poppy threw our full price, full height Christmas tree on the bonfire, where it rested just long enough to become fully involved, and then it bounced off and rolled.  

    That’s when the screaming commenced, or as four-year old Zoe put it, “That was way cool.  I hid.”

    There is nothing quite like a giant rolling triangle shaped tumble weed of fire death coming at you to make you appreciate family traditions and the new year. If that’s not enough we video taped it.

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