Some number of years ago, I started going out with my friends for Chinese food and a movie on Christmas day. No one handed this down to me (though I admit I may have been influenced by my Jewish friends), and I don't have offspring who will someday forget why it's done, but still, Christmas just isn't the same if I don't. Is that a tradition, habit, custom, practice, preference, lifestyle, or a practice?

To answer this and similar questions seems risky, since what I value may be different than what a larger group of people values, and when you start assigning relative merit to such things, we end up straight down the same path we've trod many times here - the same battle between the traditionalists and the modernists.

Regards,
Rex.