We just finished Christmas breakfast #1. Like many families separated by distance, we split our time between households and celebrate Christmas a few times over the week. Over breakfast, we found ourselves talking about the professional conventions we’ve attended over the years, remembering the dinners, workshops, and trade show booths we organized or wandered through. People come to these gatherings to tell the stories of their brands, to connect, and to learn.

That conversation made me think. What if our holiday gatherings are doing the very same thing, just without the name badges?

Family Christmases are, in many ways, Tradition Conventions. We gather not to pitch products, but to pass along meaning. The booths are our tables and living rooms. The materials are familiar objects: the ornament that only comes out once a year, the pan that has cooked decades of Yorkshire puddings, the recipe card written long before we stored everything digitally. These are the visual aids for our stories.

Like any good convention, the real value isn’t just in showing up, it’s in the exchange. When someone asks, “Where did this come from?” or “Why do we always do it this way?” a story gets told. That story explains not just the object, but the people behind it: what they valued, what they celebrated, what they carried forward.[QUOTE]

These moments matter because they don’t happen automatically. Without the story, traditions flatten into routine. The item becomes decoration. The practice becomes habit. With a story, even the simplest object becomes a bridge, allowing meaning to be shared from one generation to the next.

Holiday gatherings give us a rare audience: multiple generations, present and paying attention, even if just for a moment. Sharing the stories behind our traditions during these times ensures they don’t disappear when the item eventually breaks, fades, or gets packed away.

Because in the end, the object isn’t the heirloom.
The story is.