I’ve been working on a family tradition this week, and I got a little melancholy. Let’s be real. Some of the fun disappears when you are shopping for grandchildren’s Christmas pajamas in the Men’s Wear Department.

Our first grandchild turned sixteen this weekend. He is the starting quarterback on his football team, and he has to bend way, way down to kiss the top of my head when he says, “hello” in his deep man-voice.

Several of his cousins are close behind in this race to grow up. They are no longer candidates for the Christmas plaids or fluffy snowman motifs of childhood. They tend to sleep in basketball shorts.

For one, brief moment on Saturday afternoon I thought of giving up. I abandoned my online shopping cart at Old Navy and closed the browser window on Carter’s. I even ignored a coupon from Target.

I started composing an email to my children explaining that the Christmas pajama tradition had obviously outlived its usefulness and would be replaced by a sensible gift of cash to be applied to college tuition funds.

And then I remembered Remi.

This is his first year for Christmas jammies, and I’ve had his for weeks. He has never opened a set before. He has never experienced any of our other family traditions, either. He hasn’t learned to count down to Christmas by opening the little, white gift bags each day. He has never heard Grandpa read Narnia, and he hasn’t tried to sleep all night with a crowd of cousins on our guest room floor.

Maybe we are getting close to launching some grandchildren out into the big, wide world. But, we have several who haven’t even been to kindergarten yet. We certainly can’t give up on important traditions now. We’ve really only just begun.

I trashed the silly email, and opened up my browser. I have a new plan now. My next stop will be a Google search with the following parameter: basketball shorts with snowmen.

#Traditions!