Holiday traditions about passing piece of love

I set out this week to follow in my family's tradition of making the best Christmas toffee on the face of the planet. Seriously. It's amazing.

I grew up watching my father meticulously smooth out the melting chocolate atop the hardening butter and sugar concoction.

It smelled delicious, and I can still see my dad slaving over the hot pan, telling me how his mother used to make the same toffee. This was no ordinary treat, you see. This was a family tradition that had to be baked just perfectly or Christmas would be ruined.

Well, I ruined Christmas this year.

I wanted to pass on this delicious memory and tradition to my own daughter, but somehow my toffee ended up burned, the chocolate didn't spread right and my kitchen was in shambles. It was not at all how my grandmother did it.

But as I looked at my poor replica of the famous Christmas toffee, I realized maybe I had done my part simply by trying to carry on my family's traditions — even if I'm the worst chef in my entire ancestry.

I never really cared about family holiday traditions before I became a mom. I saw myself as the terminal point in the family tree, so who cared if I didn't make wassail and blare Mannheim Steamroller carols from the stereo as soon as the Thanksgiving meal was cleared off the table?

But now I want my daughter to love all the same traditions I did. Suddenly, I'm not the terminal point — I'm the intermediary between her and generations of mothers and holiday traditions.

This week, for example, I sat with a group of my distant cousins — all children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of Louisiana Heppler, the mother of 11 boys and girls (including my grandmother).

We sang the traditional "Hang Up the Baby's Stocking" — a song my great grandmother sang as each one of her 11 children celebrated his or her first Christmas.

Most of us in that room had never met Louisiana or heard her sing the song to her babies. But there we were, singing the same words as cousins Polly and Jane mixed the same harmonies as Louisiana did more than a century ago.

This Christmas, my grandmother will sing the same words to my daughter: "Hang up the baby's stocking. Be sure that you don't forget! For the dear little dimpled darling, has never seen Christmas yet!"

That's what holiday traditions are all about — passing on a piece of ourselves to generations that follow. And more importantly, it's about passing on a piece of our love.

Like when my mother carefully unwraps each delicate piece off the Hummel Nativity set that belonged to her mother. It's not about the figurines; it's about her memory of unwrapping each camel, wise man and baby Jesus with her own mother. Suddenly, she feels a small child again, marveling at the porcelain faces as her mother tells her the story of a baby boy born in Bethlehem.

Little pieces of love passed down through the years.

So maybe I didn't ruin Christmas this year. Maybe when my daughter bites into that burned piece of toffee or touches the delicate baby Jesus, she'll get a glimpse of a long line of strong women that came before her — generations bound by a tradition of love.

Erin Stewart's blog, Just4Mom, can be found Tuesdays and Thursdays in our blog section, deseretnews.com/blogs.

E-mail: estewart@desnews.com