Brian Park – Contributor

As the Earth has completed another spin around the sun, we have passed another holiday season. The season of giving, family and tradition. Or for many other students and myself, the time to complete all the chores our parents have saved up for us during our time away. Nevertheless, I had a great time catching up with old friends and getting much-needed sleep over the holidays. However, there was one aspect of the holidays that I missed out on: the participation in traditions. This year, there was no horribly decorated Christmas tree, no post-Christmas Eve dinner games with the family and fortunately, no elf on the shelf watching my every move in the bathroom. Now this sounds like a horribly sad Christmas, and it was, but it also wasn’t. 

Image courtesy of Brian Park

To provide some context, my parents have to run their convenience store even during the holidays, so we do our best to visit family in Toronto for dinner, but we are unable to find the time to do much else. So while it is great to see family members I seem to only see once a year, it feels a shame that the only tradition our family has been able to keep up over the years has been one dinner. I missed going to Church with my family on Christmas Eve and singing Silent Night with the choir. I missed the feeling of being crowned the chopstick champion of the former annual Park family Chinese chopsticks tournament. However, I realized there are still many other traditions in my life. 

Anytime I am back in my hometown, I attend at least one Wing Night with the same friend group where we get to catch up, play pool, chow down on dollar wings and drink one too many pitchers. This may not be your traditional tradition, per se, but it has become an unspoken custom among hometown friends that we look forward to every time we are reunited. This excitement of repeating an event is also where the magic of tradition lies. Tradition does not have to be playing pin the tail on the donkey on Christmas every year; it can simply be catching a movie with your friends once a month, or even just walking your dog every morning.

Traditions can be as complex or as simple as one desires, but I believe that traditions are something we should aim to continue as long as possible in our lives. As traditions can also create a sense of belonging and identity. Here at Bishop’s University, one of our beloved winter traditions was almost taken away from us. The experience of attending the Rail Jam and Winterfest is a tradition only Bishop’s students can understand, and an event that forms a group identity for our school community. Allowing for students from all kinds of differing graduate classes to connect and feel a sense of belonging to the Bishop’s identity.

Moreover, there is a lot of value in tradition, and I think we do not value it enough within our generation. So go out there, take the initiative and begin a tradition of some sort, and maybe one day you’ll be able to pass it on to the next generation.