Step 27: Have and Keep Traditions

It is an old German tradition that eating pork and sauerkraut on New Year's Day will give you good luck throughout the year. So every New Year's Day, my family bakes up a pork roast and kraut to engage in the traditional feast of our ancestors.

However, this year was different. We had eaten a ton of food over Christmas. We had chocolates and raspberry tarts and mashed potatoes soaked in butter and piles of meat and more chocolates and more raspberry tarts. We were exhausted by the food we had eaten. After eating a thousand bagel bites and cheese sticks on New Year's Eve, we just didn't have it in us to eat that New Year's Day good luck meal. We decided to scrap the annual feast and try to digest the food we'd eaten the year before.

This was a big mistake. Our luck had finally run out. On Wednesday, January 27, our laundry room caught fire. Not just a baby fire. A real fire. With fire trucks and police. And smoke. And everything ruined. My family cannot even return to the home because of the smoke damage. It would be harmful for the kids to breathe in the air.

The moral of this story is: If it's not broke, don't fix it. Pork and kraut had been working for us for a long time. We had no business messing with century old wisdom. Sometimes you just have to force the food down even when your tummy is full.