Christmas 7

 

     I read this yet again just the other day.  Aren't holidays made up of traditions?  When our kids were little if we did something just once, it was immediately declared "a tradition."  Forevermore we had to include that activity in every Christmas.  It got to be a little overwhelming after a few years of "traditions" stacking up.  I remember whispering to Patient Husband once as we came up with a "new" thing to do, "Oh, please...no....don't bring that one up. I can't take another tradition...I'm exhausted!"
      Young Truman and his elderly cousin Sook began their tradition of making Christmas fruitcakes with Sook's declaration on a particular November morning, "It's fruitcake weather!  Fetch our buggy.  Help me find my hat."  And the adventure began.  Rolling Truman's old wicker baby buggy out to the fields and collecting fallen pecans, they used their pinched pennies saved all year to buy their supplies.  Truman takes us with them as they purchase, bargain, even deal with the man who sells whiskey.
     This is time travel. This is innocence.