Sing It With Me.....Tradition...Tradition.....

I am all about tradition, especially in sports. I think there is often a fine line between superstition and tradition, but it doesn't matter to me. Teams do some of the same things again and again, and fans participate in some of those rituals.

At many college football games, fans (and players) hold up four fingers at the beginning of the fourth quarter. In gymnastics we hold up four fingers at the beginning of the fourth rotation (in dual meets). Why (and when?) we hold up four fingers in college basketball, which has two halves instead of four quarters.....well, I don't know.

UGA football teams have worn red jerseys and silver britches (they aren't pants, either, they're britches) for a long time. Never mind that they aren't really silver but gray (shhhhhh.......). They recently unveiled a special Nike uniform they will wear for the first game this year, and while I'm not sold on the red-on-red look, I absolutely LOVE the red and silver helmets. It doesn't matter much anyway, since the uniforms are only for one game. (Is it just me, or does that sound a tiny bit expensive?)

And none of this has much to do with what prompted this post.

I was folding clothes and watching the Braves vs. Cubs baseball game when Freddie Freeman, the Braves' rookie first baseman, came to bat. I didn't realize at the time that it was his first ever at-bat at Wrigley Field, which is fraught with tradition all by itself. Freddie jacked the first pitch over the ivy-covered wall for a home run. True to the Wrigley Field tradition, the fan who caught the home run ball threw it back onto the field.

Baseball players don't usually get to keep souvenir home run balls because the fans keep them. (Except for that extraordinary man who caught Derek Jeter's 3000th hit, a home run, and now is in deep do-do with the IRS for all the "thank you" gifts with which the Yankees rewarded him.)

By throwing the ball back onto the field, though, the fan enabled Freddie to have a memento that will likely mean a lot to him throughout what I hope will be a long career with the Braves. (I'm certain one of the Chicago outfielders retrieved the ball for him. If they didn't, I don't want to know about it.)

I've always wondered if I were lucky enough to A) go to a baseball game at Wrigley Field; B) sit behind that beautiful ivy-covered wall; C) catch a home run ball; and D) live to tell about it, would I be able to throw a home run ball back onto the field? (I mean, assuming I were there to cheer for the Cubs, which I probably wouldn't be, especially if they were playing the Braves.) Heck, I caught a FOUL ball hit by Andres Galarraga in Atlanta, and I carried that bad boy around for DAYS, showing it to anyone who would stand still long enough for me to tell the story.

Okay, I didn't really CATCH it. Hubby jumped up for it, his co-worker jumped for it, twenty people around us jumped up for it, and I was positively frozen in my seat. I still don't know how it wound up in my lap. But by golly it's mine. If it had been an actual home run ball, I don't think I could have brought myself to throw it back on the field. It wouldn't matter WHO hit it.

One more cool thing about this game and I promise I'll shut up. One of the Cubs hit a pop fly to the third base line, and Chipper Jones was going for it in foul territory. He had to lean way into the seats to catch the ball for the third out, and when he did, he simply turned his glove over and allowed a woman in the front row to pluck it out of his glove for a keepsake. I thought she was going to cry. Then I thought I was going to cry.

I sure hope Chipper didn't strain his wrist turning his glove over like that. I'm just sayin'.......

Christmas Traditions.....

My Christmas traditions are all out of whack, and I can't decide if it's a good thing or a bad thing.

Ever since Hubby and I married, I have put the Christmas tree up the day after Thanksgiving. I avoid Black Friday shopping like the plague (ha ha ha ha ha -- I made a funny . . . You know, Black Plague? Black Friday? avoid it like . . . never mind), and I usually put on some Christmas music and put up the tree.

This year we were "camping" (what is the verb? RVing?) at a state park, and there was football to be watched when we got home. I had all day last Sunday, but I didn't think about the tree. Once I'm out of my routine, it's pretty much out of my brain. Yesterday I spent with Katydid and our mother, and today . . . Well again, I had all day, but I didn't do it. Hubby didn't get the tree out of the storage building for me, so I'll use that as my excuse. I could do it myself, but I married him just for chores like that one.

I don't really have any shopping to do. Hubby and I have stopped buying gifts for each other. We agree on something we would like to have, and we pool our money for it. Last year it was a trip to the casino on Christmas Day. This year we are both planning to get new cell phones. Sweet Girl isn't coming home for Christmas, and apparently I cannot possibly buy the right things for her, so she's getting gift cards. Unless she tells me otherwise. Sullen Teenager gets a mall gift card, because all she wants are clothes and more clothes. We wouldn't dare try to buy FOR her. Weesa is getting a GPS (and I hope she doesn't have the link to this blog anymore), so we have that to buy. I ordered a decorative something for my mother-in-law only because Hubby thinks buying her a box of chocolate and giving her $100 every year is okay. My siblings and I don't exchange gifts, and we stopped trying to buy anything for our mother years ago.

We have a big meal at mother-in-law's house on Christmas Day, the only day she insists on cooking and having everything at her house. Her house is tiny and there are approximately 16 of us all together. She lives right down at the end of our road, approximately 100 yards, and we are always the last ones there. And the first ones to leave.

Sometimes we go to a movie on Christmas Day. That's what Hubby and I did the year before we got married. In fact, that was the day he met my mother. We met Katydid and the Barracuda at the mall, and I introduced everyone. Hubby was trying valiantly to say the right thing, so he told the Barracuda, "I'm going to take care of your daughter."

To which the Barracuda replied, "You better."

And he married me anyway.

If we don't go to a movie, we go to the park for a much-needed walk after all that food. Then we come home and take naps and call ourselves watching football. Hubby usually has to work the day after Christmas, so that is when I take the tree down. This year he won't have to work, so maybe I'll coerce him into helping me. Depending on the weather. Odds are good that he will go play golf. And that's fine too.

Christmas is so different when you don't have "kids" anymore. Should I start wishing for grandchildren?

Christmas Traditions.....

My older siblings had a Christmas tradition that I missed out on because I was the baby. They would always burn candles on Christmas Eve, even when they had to hide it from our mother because she would have A) kicked their fannies and B) thrown the candles in the trash. We had two houses burn down when I was young, though (a couple of years apart, I think), so I can kind of understand her paranoia.

When Bobby was in Vietnam, he and my eldest sister, Nurse Jane, planned a time when they would both be burning candles at the same time on Christmas Eve. This was naturally in the days before email and internet, so I can't imagine how they managed to figure out the time difference. I don't mean they were lacking the intelligence to figure it out. But I mean, Bobby didn't exactly write a letter saying, "Okay, it's 8:00 PM here now. What time is it there." And two weeks later when the letter arrived, Jane would say, "Oh, it's _____ o'clock here now. So the time difference must be _____ hours."

Bobby came home safely from Vietnam, only to die in a motorcycle accident the next year, just months before he was to be discharged from the Marines. After he died, we started the tradition of gathering at the cemetery where he is buried and burning candles and singing "Silent Night." Apparently that was Bobby's favorite Christmas song. It was beautiful, seeing the burning candles from the highway. Some years we gathered there only to watch the wind blow the candles out repeatedly or we stood in a light rain and hoped we could keep the candles lit just long enough to sing.

Some people have thought it was rather morbid of my family to gather at a cemetery on Christmas Eve. But I loved the tradition, although it always made me sad that Bobby couldn't be there with us. I was only eleven when he died, and I always wondered at each stage of my life what he would have thought about me. More about him next month, on his birthday.

As we all married (and married and married) and started families of our own, it became too difficult for us all to gather on Christmas Eve. It is too far for some to drive for such a short time, and there are always children and grandchildren to get to other parents' and grandparents' homes. So we each carry on the tradition in our own homes, lighting a candle for each person present and one for Bobby. This way Bobby gets lots of candles instead of just one.


Before we go to bed, I'll play "Silent Night" on the piano; maybe I'll sing, maybe not. [My Christmas gift to you is that I did NOT make a video of that.] The two years that Sweet Girl has been in the Persian Gulf on Christmas Eve, I couldn't make it through the first verse. This year isn't quite that sad, because I know she's only down in Florida and not way "over there."

But I still wish Bobby and hubby could have known each other.

Merry Christmas, y'all!