Holiday Season, Florida Style

Here in Florida, “season” is much more important than “the seasons.”  Season begins as the weather turns cooler. Folks start arriving from Canada, Michigan, New York, Ohio and all points north. Florida roads have almost as many RVs on them as they do cars.

Season doesn’t come in to full swing until January, but there is a moment when the seasonal season and the holiday season coincide. Christmas barbeques and holiday boat parades become the order of the day. Colored lights wrap around palm trees, and people wear their Santa hats to the beach.

In the years I contemplated making the move from the Northeast to Florida, I wondered how the holiday season would be, in a land that doesn’t snow. It turns out, we have snowfall events that feature soapflake snow and ice skating on plastic “ice”. We even ironically wear sweaters that say “Let it Snow.”

As the snowbirds arrive to begin our Florida winter season, the excitement in the air is palpable. There are stories to share, friendships to renew and people to meet.

There is a whole season of activities to plan; the first of which involve the celebration of the holidays, Florida style.

This is my seventh holiday season in Florida. I’ve been to Winter Solstice drum circles on the beach, and celebrated the New Year by jumping into the ocean. I’ve eaten Christmas Dinner on a picnic table.

It’s not the holiday season of my youth, and hot chocolate doesn’t have the same allure when it’s not freezing out, but I’ll take it.

If you need me, I’ll be stringing colored lights on my adult-sized tricycle, getting reading for the holiday golf cart parade.

Holiday Warmth in Florida

When I first moved to Florida in the spring of 2008 I was really curious about how folks would celebrate the holiday season in a warm climate. Coming from the Northeast, I couldn’t quite imagine people in T-shirts and shorts merrily singing “Let it Snow.” As it turns out, that is exactly what happens. People wear Santa hats to the beach, too.

I would have thought celebrating the holidays with snow motifs might be done as comic irony, but that doesn’t seem to be. In the end, a symbol is a symbol.

Whatever religious or secular holiday you might celebrate during the winter months, snow is a symbol of the festive time fast approaching. This seems to be true no matter the actual weather.

I had also mistakenly believed that once here a few years I would get used to a warm-weather holiday season. The fact is, my delight that the only snow I will see this year is symbolic does not seem to diminish over time.

If you, like me, are a non-native getting ready to celebrate the winter holidays in Florida, here are some things that might be helpful to know.

1. When decorating the outside of your Florida home for the holidays, there are three important considerations. First, your lawn is a legitimate place to arrange some festive lights – I mean, you can actually place the lights directly on the ground. Second, winding lights around the trunk of your palm trees is de rigueur year round and cannot, in and of itself, be considered holiday decoration. Finally, amid your blow-up snow globes and sleighs make sure you leave enough room for your grill and patio furniture. You’ll need it for holiday entertaining.

2. Christmas is for barbeque. That’s right. As signs throughout Publix supermarkets proudly declare, there is no better time to gather the neighbors and get your grill on than…Christmas. While ribs are a popular holiday treat, don’t forget there are many fine ways to cook your whole holiday turkey on the grill!

3. You don’t have to dine in the dining room. There are so many important decisions to make about your holiday meals. Here in Florida there are options we didn’t have back home. You can eat your dinner on the patio, the deck or the lanai. Don’t know what a lanai is? You must not be from around here.

4. Dress for the occasion, not the weather. Knit hats, scarves and boots look super-cute with short shorts or sundresses. You can even buy fashionable jackets that look like parkas.  Your Florida parka is about as warm as the fake snowstorms at the outdoor shopping malls are cold, so don’t bring it on your ski trip.

5. Seasonal foods are delicious on the beach. Don’t forget to pack plenty of holiday-inspired treats in your beach cooler. Nothing is more delicious after a refreshing ocean swim than a piece of pumpkin pie.

Wherever you are and whatever you celebrate, the holiday season is upon us. I must say I greet it with a bit more joy knowing that the only thing I’ll be shoveling this winter is my garden.

One thing I’ve learned from celebrating the holidays in Florida is this. Our seasonal festivals are an important part of who we are. Weather changes a lot of things, but it doesn’t change our need to gather our friends and families and celebrate our traditions together.

Time and Tradition

During the holiday season we hear a lot of talk about tradition. Traditions matter, not just at this time of year, but always. Traditions give us our sense of identity. They can give us a sense of unity within our families and our communities. Traditions can help us remember our history, our symbols and our myths. Traditions mark the passage of time. Traditions give us a sense of uniqueness and a sense of belonging.

Sometimes traditions are used to hurt and oppress people. Sometimes tradition is what keeps people from doing what they want to do. Some people use the concept of tradition as an excuse to continue practices that exclude people, or that honor one group of people over another.

Today I am thinking about tradition because it is the second day of Kwanzaa. I feel a bit of kinship with those who celebrate Kwanzaa because I see a similarity between the traditions that came out of the Black Nationalist Movement of the 1960s and traditions of Wicca which all grew out of a book published by Gerald Gardner in England in 1954.

Each of these movements is very young in comparison with Christian traditions that are at least a thousand years old and Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist traditions that have been practiced for thousands of years.

Often younger traditions are ridiculed as non-traditions, or as things that a single person or small group of people "just made up."

Wicca and the Black National Movement have something else in common in that both have tried to reclaim and reconstruct traditions that are lost in time. In doing so sometimes the history is not quite accurate. Once again comes the accusation; "You just made that up!"

My answer to that accusation is this. When traditions are lost due to violence, oppression and fear one hasn't got much choice. Why is it wrong to build on what you know and imagine the rest? And, is that any different from medieval artists imagining what Jesus might have looked like and painting pictures that to this day define for us our image of Jesus?

Many families create their own traditions that may or may not be passed to the next generation. Perhaps a tradition is simply what works for a group for a period of time - no matter how long or short.

On the other hand, a practice that is thousands of years old can have power simply because of its age. Can we say that the lighting of the Hanukah Menorah is more powerful than the lighting of the Kwanzaa candles or the God and Goddess candles simply because Hanukah has been celebrated for at least two thousand years longer than Kwanzaa or the Neo-Pagan Wheel of the Year?

Sometimes religious ceremonies require creativity. When that happens new traditions are born. Who is to say that the creativity that inspires new traditions is not the same creativity that inspired traditions that began thousands of years ago? Everything needs to start somewhere. The Spirit that inspires us, whatever we may call it, is just as present now as it was in the ancient past.

To reclaim, reconstruct and reinvent that which has been ripped away helps us heal ourselves and strengthen our communities. To celebrate a tradition, no matter how young it may be, brings power to the present and hope for the future. From this perspective the celebration of Kwanzaa and the Wheel of the Year is just as valid, powerful and important as traditions with an ancient history.