When my sister’s boyfriend came to watch us cross the finish line of our half marathon, my mom warned him that “now that you’ve done this once, Lauren will consider it tradition and expect you to be at the finish line every year.”  Ha, I’ll be damned if that isn’t a frighteningly accurate summation of my life.

Look, I’m well aware that once I do something and love the outcome, I’m hell bent on repeating it year after year.  You know, to recreate the same level of predictable happiness that I attained the time before.  And there is no time that I’m more determined to be repetitive than during the holidays.  I can’t help it, it’s such a special time of the year and I’m deathly afraid of changing things up, for fear of disrupting my own vision of how things should be.  Plus the holidays totally cater to tradition, making it just that much easier to convince myself that things MUST be the same way they were last year.

But the thing is, and I’m just sloooowly realizing it, is that things DON’T have to be the same to be good and changing things up just creates opportunity for NEW good experiences.  Take Thanksgiving for instance.  Every year, we run a Turkey Trot.  This year, we didn’t.  And can I tell you what a HUGE RELIEF it was to just have a calm relaxing morning at home, drinking coffee and watching the Macy’s Day Parade?  It’s like these holiday traditions are so ingrained in my head that I don’t even ask myself if I even really want to do them or not.

So even though I’m still hell bent on taking advantage of every single holiday moment, this year I’m really going to keep in mind that things do not need to be pre-determined.  Spur of the moment decisions are fun.  Changing it up is exciting.  And even if I end up missing some holiday tradition, there’s ALWAYS next year and the year after that and the year after that!

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Are you a creature of habit, especially this time of year?

Are there any holiday traditions you CAN’T go without?