A tradition worth keeping

Published 7:00 am Wednesday, December 13, 2006

As so many do, the Christmas Fund check from an off-island reader came with a handwritten note: “Please accept this small token as our contribution to the ‘best thing Bainbridge does.’ It is hard to believe there are ‘down and outers’ in this land of plenty, but it is good to know Bainbridge Island is doing something for theirs.”

The editor responded thusly: “The thougthful Seattle donor was wrong on only one score. The recipients of the Christmas boxes next week may be ‘down,’ but they most certainly are not ‘out.’ The fund’s gifts of food and clothing are the island’s anonymous way of saying, ‘Be of good cheer. Have courage. You have friends.’”

The comments appeared in the Dec. 18, 1958 edition of this newspaper, which reported that the fund had bested the previous year’s total of $945 (then a record) for a new mark of $1,230.04. The fund was augmented by memorial donations honoring W. Mervyn Williams, who the newspaper reported had assisted his wife Genevieve “in her charity chores as head of the island’s welfare agency.”

Established nearly 60 years ago, the Christmas Fund is still a going concern. Donations can be dropped off at the Review, American Marine Bank and Walt’s Lynwood Market; and per tradition, fund correspondents Joan Wilt and her daughter Sarah (see page A7) will acknowledge donors with cryptic and playful hints in their column the following week. When it’s done, the funds will put welcome and practical gifts under the trees of islanders who for whatever reason find themselves “down” – food vouchers for each family member, new sleepers for the young ones, a certificate for a new book for each child. A gift of good cheer, courage and friendship – what could be more “Christmas” than that?

So we can’t begin to imagine why donations to this year’s Christmas Fund are down. Adjusted for inflation, that 1958 total would today be about $8,100; adjust once more against today’s vastly more populous island – more checkbooks, and much fatter ones – and it makes the 2006 fund’s current total of $3,931 look sadly anemic.

Perhaps that is the problem. On today’s island, personal wealth is seen less as a blessing than an admission fee at the front gates of the community, so it may be even harder to believe there are actually “down but not outers” in our midst. Or perhaps it is a failure to embrace tradition itself, as we blithely discard hand-me-down customs for newer ways.

An online compendium of “cynical quotations” (now there’s just what the world needs) suggests: “Tradition is what you resort to when you don’t have the time or the money to do it right,” and “traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening.” Winston Churchill was no more sanguine, telling the House of Commons in 1944, “A love of tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril; but the new view must come, the world must roll forward.” And way back in 1916, Henry Ford told the Chicago Tribune: “History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we made today.”

With that last, we can agree somewhat: history is made by our actions in the present, and carrying on the custom of holiday giving requires conscious action in this moment. That’s what islanders did six decades ago, when the saw a need and established the Christmas Fund as their answer.

You can see tradition as a stultifying influence, the refuge of those who cling to the reassuring skirts of the past. Or you can carry forward those shared rituals that, through the passing years, meld individuals into a community.

Tradition binds us – and we should let it. The Christmas Fund can still be among the best things Bainbridge does.