anyway needles to say i'm still here. if you can stay you ought to stay regardless of tradition. it's hard to make new ones but you don't have to honor the dead ones that no longer serve and never did. i remember how my dad, a jew who was rejected by a chicago jewish businessmen's club so the story goes, rejected the jewish club and became a self made man made of money. with money you really can make your own traditions and be as bad as you want to be. when we were kids he hired this evil santa who brought presents but we were transfixed by his corpus and his stiff beard that didn't move with his evil laughter. we pulled it off, and then knew it was only charlie, or some other schmuck. 
the other day mom said only my little sister was sent for xmas at dad post divorce, on a plane by herself with a name tag and a pair of fly united wings. but i remember xmas at dad's blue blood blue stone mansion. i know we were there because it was a hellish tradition, a divorce decreed punishment, and the step sister, little monster, got a mountain of gifts to our one sweater. now he's gone longer than the xmas tradition lasted i guess, but i was getting his ghost sweaters for years, and i may still get more. who knows, traditions come and go they get elaborate twisted or simplified but somehow they never die.