Nothing Beats A Little Chewy Carrot Pudding

When it comes to Christmas, I believe in tradition.

Actually, this trait is hardly restricted to Christmas. I was first labeled a traditionalist when I about 12, during a non-Christmas related incident.

It was a Saturday morning, and my sister was proposing to make something exotic for breakfast, such as poached eggs with Pop Tarts. I considered this to be an affront to time-honored custom.

“I want pancakes,” I said. “It’s Saturday morning. We always have pancakes on Saturday morning. It’s a tradition.”

She looked at me witheringly and said, “You know what you are? You’re just plain old-fashioned.”

And then she proceeded to make poached eggs with Pop Tarts.

She was right, of course, which startled me. I knew that age 12 was awfully young to be old-fashioned. Should a person be old-fashioned before even reaching puberty? Probably not. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was proud of it.

I have remained a traditionalist over the years, sometimes to the detriment of progress and common sense, and often causing me to utter words that I had to retract: “I’ll never drive anything but a Chevy,” “You’ll never catch me swinging an aluminum bat,” “Never will I descend so low as to use voice-mail.”

However, Christmas is the time of year when being a traditionalist is worthwhile. One of the best things about Christmas is that it allows us all to be traditionalists. We can surrender ourselves to customs that have slowly accumulated over the generations and even the centuries. It allows us to do things we would never dream of doing the rest of the year.

Walk from door to door singing songs to strangers? Are you nuts?

Make a concoction of raw eggs and nutmeg and drink it?

Mix up some kind of goo involving grated carrots and plums and suet and brandy and then steam it for hours and then set fire to it and then stick it in my mouth and chew it? What am I, some kind of crazy person?

No, I just happen to be a traditionalist, and that above-described dish is our family’s traditional Christmas carrot pudding.

Traditions like carrot pudding are what make me love Christmas so much. It’s not that I actually love our carrot pudding, nor even like it very much, but it gives me a connection with the past. Now, when watching the Bob Cratchit family gathered around their Christmas table in Victorian London, I can say to myself, “I know what they’re going through. I’ve actually had to eat plum pudding before, or a near facsimile.”

Besides, there is something comforting about a season ruled by tradition; a season in which the ritual of picking out the tree is followed by the ritual of setting up the Nativity scene, followed by the ritual of lighting the Advent candles, followed by the ritual of accidentally setting fire to the Nativity scene with the Advent candles. Yes, a rich Christmas is a Christmas rich in tradition.

A decent respect for tradition will also keep you from committing such Christmas travesties as buying a plastic tree or decking out your house with more flashing wattage than a Las Vegas casino.

However, tradition has its darker side. There’s a good reason why the phrase “a slave to tradition” has entered the language. A blind devotion to tradition can result in the perpetuation of things that don’t deserve to be perpetuated. Segregation was a Southern tradition, but it hardly made it right. Over in Bosnia right now, I’ll bet the Serbs feel they are fighting in the name of tradition, also.

So far, tradition has not caused me to commit atrocities of that nature, but it has caused me to wear my bright red Christmas vest every year, which causes people to mistake me for a maitre’d.

It also causes me to tut-tut just a little bit too much about plastic trees and flashing lights, which probably aren’t really crimes at all.

But they’re not my idea of tradition either. The Cratchit family wouldn’t have been caught dead with a plastic tree.

, DataTimes MEMO: To leave a message on Jim Kershner’s voice-mail, call 459-5493. Or send e-mail to jimk@spokesman.com, or regular mail to Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review