A Letter on Carrying the Light Forward
My Dearest Friend,
There are moments in adulthood that shake you in the quietest way — not the big, dramatic turning points, but the small ones that tug at the thread of who you’ve always been. Moments when the light you’ve carried from childhood flickers, shifts, and asks you to notice it anew.
For me, one of those moments came the first Christmas I spent far from the Midwest, standing in the aisle of a grocery store that didn’t stock lefse. Not in the fridge case. Not near the bakery. Not even tucked away on a seasonal display.
Nothing. Just shelves filled with everything except the thing that meant home — a reminder that some lights don’t glow everywhere unless we bring them with us.
I remember standing there with this strange, sinking feeling — the realization that if I wanted lefse that year, I would have to make it myself. No more picking up a package the way my mother did, the way my grandmother did, the way stores in my childhood seemed to offer it as naturally as hanging Christmas lights.
It felt like a small grief and a small awakening all at once. If this tradition mattered to me — it was mine to tend. Mine to kindle. Mine to keep glowing.
So I went home, pulled out my great‑grandmother’s 1930s church cookbook, and decided that if she could do it with whatever tools she had on hand, then surely I could manage it with a cast‑iron pan, a rolling pin, and a prayer.
I made it rustic. Imperfect. Flour everywhere. The kind of attempt that would make a proper Norwegian grandmother shake her head. But it was lefse. And it was ours.
And in that humble, flour‑dusted light, I understood something new: tradition isn’t something you inherit fully formed. It’s something you choose — again and again — and choosing it is how you keep the flame alive.
Every family carries a light forward — sometimes softly, sometimes stubbornly, always with love.
I come from a line of women who carried that light long before I knew I’d inherit it. Great‑grandparents who held onto Scandinavian recipes because they reminded them of the parents whose stories lived on through them. Great‑aunts who passed down tales like lanterns along a path. A grandmother who set lutefisk on the table for my great‑grandfather because it was his favorite — a tradition no one particularly enjoyed, but everyone honored because love can be stubborn in the best, brightest ways. A mother who believed that ritual — not place — is what makes a house feel like home.
Their choices shaped me, even the stubborn ones. Especially the stubborn ones.
And now I find myself in that in‑between generation — the one with a foot in two worlds, standing where the glow of the past meets the spark I’m kindling for my own children.
I am the child shaped by the light handed down. And I am the mother shaping the light that will go on after me.
I still make the lefse. I still cook the Christmas Eve meal that has shifted and shimmered through four generations — from lutefisk, to oyster stew, to red chili, and now to the white chicken chili my own family prefers. A tradition kept alight by time, steadied by love, and gently changed by each set of hands that carried it.
I still put lights inside the house — not three trees the way I grew up with, but strands woven along the banister, tucked on the mantle, framing doorways and windows, casting a soft glow that echoes the warmth of my childhood home.
And I’ve added traditions too, little lights I gathered along the way. St. Nick visiting on December 5th. The annual cookie decorating party of my childhood now expanded into a cookie swap — a tradition I added — inviting others to offer the baked goods of their own families and cultures. Over the years, our table has held Moldovan, Peruvian, Japanese, and Midwestern recipes side by side, each one a tiny lantern of someone else’s legacy.
Tradition, I’ve learned, is where memory becomes motion — a continuity of light passed hand to hand, glowing differently in each new keeper’s palm. It honors where we come from and welcomes what we discover along the way.
The Lesson
Legacy isn’t about perfection — and it isn’t about rigidity either. It is about choosing to keep a light glowing because it matters.
You don’t hold a tradition because you’re afraid to let it go. You hold it because something in it still warms you. Still roots you. Still reminds you that you come from somewhere — even when the distance between you and home feels impossibly wide.
And holding a tradition doesn’t trap you. It connects you.
It says, I remember who I am. It says, I remember who loved me into this world. It says, I am choosing to carry this light forward, even if I must learn how to hold it differently than those who carried it before.
To the Spouse Who Suddenly Realizes You Are Now the One Making the Magic
Maybe this is your first year realizing that the traditions don’t happen unless you make them happen — that the light doesn’t glow unless someone tends it, shields it, keeps it burning steady against the drafts of a changing season.
Maybe you’re far from family again — another Christmas in a place that doesn’t smell or sound like the ones you grew up with, and you wonder whether the light you carry can stretch that far.
Maybe you’re looking at your children, or your partner, or even just a quiet house, and realizing that you are the bridge between generations. The bearer of memory. The keeper of the gentle flame.
If that’s you, hear this:
You are doing something sacred when you fight to keep something alive that matters to you. You are honoring a lineage. You are writing the story your children will someday step into. You are carrying a light forward — in your own hands, in your own way, in your own season.
And whether your traditions arrive soft as candlelight or stubborn as lefse made on a cast‑iron pan, they are proof of love.
Yours. Theirs. And the light that has carried all of you to this moment.
