Opinion: 22-year holiday tradition ended, but memories made, love shared lives on

Terri Gehr is founder and principal of Gehr LLC, which offers transition leadership services to non-profit, civic and public sector organizations that are growing, evolving and facing challenging environments.  In her spare time, she enjoys creating special moments and memories with family and friends.

“How long do you think we’ll be doing this?” my husband asked, as he mixed cement for the fourth straight hour one afternoon in December.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll ask the girls.”

David and I were steeped in our annual holiday project with eight girls — the daughters of seven couples with whom we are friends — making steppingstones as holiday gifts for their parents.

“Girls, David wants to know how long we’re going to keep doing this, what do you think,” I asked. The chatting stopped as they looked at me, uniformly startled and incredulous.

“Forever,” one finally said.

It was rewarding to hear, but it got me wondering about the true shelf-life of our yearly gathering.

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The holiday project tradition had begun seven years earlier when three of the girls, ages 5 to 7, from two families who were long-time friends of David’s, spent the day with us. We went to the local conservatory and botanical gardens to snap some photos and while they were being developed at a local camera store, we went to our home to paint picture frames. Later in the day, we picked up the photos, framed and gift-wrapped them, and the girls went home with gifts for their parents.

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We expanded this holiday adventure the following year, inviting daughters of five other families. These seven families lived within a couple miles of each other, most in the same neighborhood.

What were the projects?

We painted pottery, and David and I did our best to help as needed to ensure a relatively decent outcome. In addition to sending the girls home with their hand-crafted holiday gift, I took a group photo that I later framed as our gift to the girls.

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Over the years we made ornaments, painted bird houses, weaved baskets at Longaberger (supervised by professionals), sewed sets of placemats, welded mug stands, made scented soaps, stirred up caramel and other sweet treats, crafted journals, sweated through the making of hand-blown ornaments, mixed scents and glitter into wax and produced lovely candles, and scrapbooked family calendars.

And each year we took a group photo.

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While we hosted a few of these projects at our home, most occurred at venues around the city. It was always a special pleasure for me to scout out options and talk with the owners about this event. It made them smile.

Almost always those who staffed us expressed their joy and gratitude for being included in our tradition. At times it was hard to tell who was having more fun, us or them.

Over post-project lunches or dinners we heard stories of classmates, boyfriends, successes and heartaches. We made our way together through grade school, middle school, high school and college.

We watched “our girls” grow up and mature into lovely, smart, athletic, kind and compassionate young women. When the first of the girls got engaged, we invited the moms to the post-project luncheon, turning it into an ornament shower for the bride-to-be, adding another special element to our tradition.

Why did the tradition end?

The pandemic brought the holiday project tradition to a halt after 22 years.

The tradition didn’t last forever after all.

Demanding work schedules, the arrival of babies, travel, and life’s many other demands made it increasingly difficult to coordinate a single day to gather during the busiest season of the year.

Twenty-two projects.

Twenty-two group photos.

Six ornament showers.

And countless special moments.

It was quite a run.

Other traditions will emerge, of that I am sure. In the meantime, we’ll savor the holiday project memories we created together.

Terri Gehr is founder and principal of Gehr LLC, which offers transition leadership services to non-profit, civic and public sector organizations that are growing, evolving and facing challenging environments.  In her spare time, she enjoys creating special moments and memories with family and friends.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: What is the value of holiday tradition? Ideas for holidays traditions