Christmas has always been my favorite holiday and I am creature of habit when it comes to celebrating. I like our traditions. The breakfast casserole, the hiding of the pickle in the Christmas tree, baking cookies for Santa, a movie on Christmas night…the list could go on and on. This Christmas was different. It was the first time we celebrated alone, just my husband, son, and me. We went out for Christmas Eve dinner (because why cook a giant meal for three people and leave town the next day). We ate Wendy’s on Christmas day on our way to the east coast of Florida. No one came over on Christmas morning. We didn’t do Christmas Eve with my husband’s family. We decided against a trip to Williamsburg and the annual trek to Virginia the day after Christmas. In the weeks before Christmas I was a little disappointed knowing some of our traditions were going to be lost this year.

Here’s the thing…when all was said and done, letting go of some traditions was kind of…

Liberating.

In the days after Christmas I thought about this in the context of education. The traditions in education are too numerous to count: rows of desks, bell schedules, yearly calendars, teacher desks, yearly testing, valedictorians, unit and chapter assessments, textbooks, SAT’s…

I wonder if giving up one of these traditions would provide the same sense of liberation for some educators, the same sense of relief I felt giving up a few holiday traditions this year. Yes, I felt a lot of trepidation leading up to the holidays as I know many educators are about giving up classroom and school traditions. But, I think I may have discovered a few new traditions and my holidays weren’t any less bright because of it.