Bing and Chewy Jesus

We surprised Cricket while she took her afternoon nap yesterday: we set up the Christmas. Not the entire tree, only 3/4 of the tree; with a one-year old and her toys, we have run out of room for the necessities in life. Necessities like the aforementioned tree and garland and stockings and a non-chewable nativity scene. So we put our daughter to bed, stashed away her not-so-used toys, and began the process of creating a winter wonderland in our living room. But before my wife and I could rearrange our downstairs for the Christmas season, we had to get into the mood. We needed a little Bing Crosby.
In the six-and-a-half years of marriage, my wife and I have carried on a Christmas tradition of putting up holiday decorations while watching the beloved classic, White Christmas. Since last week, we have watched the movie five times, and will probably watch it at least two more times before Thanksgiving arrives. It is not only a tradition; it is an obsession. The Mrs. and I cannot get enough of Bing and Danny acting like girls in the song "Sisters" or the foursome singing "Snow". In our minds, it's priceless.
So, for the better part of our adult lives, we have started, stopped and re instituted family traditions that only we would recognize as sentimental. We have changed the arrangement of the furniture around to accommodate for the full Christmas tree, searching for the perfect place in the house to place the artificial monstrosity. We would dress the front-porch railing with lights and garland and the door with a fake wreath. The yard would also light up at night with Santa and two reindeer attempting to push off from the frozen ground. We had years to put much thought into the arrangement, and we kept tweaking it, looking for the right arrangement for our quaint home.
Now, we have a waking daughter, new to the traditions of a stable family. What do we do? Do we keep up with traditions we have already made, or do we scratch the old traditions and make new ones with her? I think it's a mixture of both old and new. There's a little room for chewable nativity scenes and Bing Crosby to coexist in our household, and hopefully we have many years to figure out how they do.