My father loved traditions, and he wasn’t a bit ashamed about it. He delighted in hiding Easter eggs in spring and grilling hot dogs on Independence Day. But one tradition was for the two of us alone — our annual Christmas eggnog toast, whose significance I didn’t recognize until years later.

The ritual began with special glasses, which I still have today. Three short ones and five taller ones: remnants of sets of six, possibly; probably old-fashioneds and double old-fashioneds, in bartender lingo. Their heavy, square bases taper up to smooth arches on each side, which fit my thumbs perfectly, and then curve into thick, substantial rims. The glasses feel comfortingly solid in my palms. They’re the kinds of glasses that, nowadays, I’d imagine sipping Scotch on the rocks from while sitting in a leather chair by an open fire on a cold day, perhaps listening to Ella Fitzgerald.

The shorter glasses — and only those — were used just once a year. At some time that Daddy deemed appropriate, he would remove them from the top shelf of our knotty-pine kitchen cabinets, where they sat next to snowflake-thin crystal glasses and flowered china, which occasionally emerged for special meals but primarily terrified kid-me into Never Touching That Shelf … Ever.

In the 1960s, popular holiday songs featured Bing Crosby crooning “White Christmas” and Firestone contributors like Barbra Streisand cooing “Silent Night.” photograph by Alex Boerner

Our eggnog toast was one of two major December traditions that belonged to just Daddy and me. The other was jumping in the car and racing off to buy the annual Firestone and Goodyear Christmas albums before they sold out, which they often did. Hitting a tire store for an anthology of Christmas music may sound strange today, but it was a big deal in late-’60s and early-’70s Winston-Salem. It was up there with getting your picture taken on Santa’s lap at Sears. But what I heard on those records was something different from festive cheer: They provided my first exposure to opera, jazz, and symphonic music — sounds of new places and fascinating people. They scratched an itch.

Daddy often sang around the house — he taught me the words to “Mack the Knife” at a shockingly young age — but he rarely bought albums. Aside from the Bing Crosby holiday collection Merry Christmas, those tire-store anthologies were the only records that he owned. He’d bob around the house all December, singing along to Crosby’s “White Christmas,” imitating the crooner’s voice by mumbling nonsense syllables to make us laugh.

• • •

In 1941, my father escaped his impoverished rural upbringing in Iredell County by enlisting in the Army, which took him to North Africa; Sicily, Italy; and Normandy, France. That may have been how he got so attached to “White Christmas,” since Crosby often performed for the troops during World War II. But Daddy had had enough excitement by the time I came along in 1956. By then, he was happy in his mid-level office job, home by 5:30 p.m., eating my mother’s fried chicken and collards for dinner, then stretching back in his recliner by 7. All the while, he was quietly seeing to it that his family never wanted for anything.

In the ’60s, the Sealtest milkman delivered milk to our back door, as he did to most of the other back doors in our suburb, where kids swarmed from yard to yard and being daring meant running around with sparklers on New Year’s Eve. During the holidays, the milkman also brought eggnog. It was all very controlled and predictable. And if this sounds like a stereotype, it was, and my father seemed to love it, from mowing the yard on Saturday mornings in the summer (and running the mower under my window to tease teen-me, who liked to sleep in) to putting up the Christmas decorations in December.

We were united in our appreciation of eggnog, which often draws wrinkled noses and snide cracks from others.

During our holiday eggnog ritual, Daddy would pour the sweet, creamy concoction into our special glasses, adding an ample slosh of what he called the “nog” (bourbon) to his. My job was to sprinkle the nutmeg. I took my work seriously, spreading it so thick that the drinks looked like crusted crème brûlée. But there was no need to worry about too much nutmeg flavor — my mother’s spices dated back to the Truman administration.

Once the eggnog was poured, Daddy and I tapped our glasses together and toasted. I don’t remember what we toasted to. It might have been to the gifts that Santa was going to bring me or to hoping for snow on Christmas Eve, or it might have been simply to having a merry Christmas. We were united in our appreciation of eggnog, which often draws wrinkled noses and snide cracks from others, like my mother. But not for Daddy and me. Eggnog toasting was our special tradition.

• • •

By the time I took off for college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the early ’70s, our tradition had fallen away. The travel itch that started whenever I’d listen to the jazz and opera on Daddy’s Christmas anthologies turned to restless rebellion as I ran from my family’s Tuesday-is-meatloaf-day suburban life. I longed for flavors — Indian curry in Scotland, crunchy crickets in Mexico, oysters on the half shell with champagne in France. I wanted to taste it all. During the holidays, I skipped the egg and went straight for the nog.

Then I began creeping toward 68, the relatively young age when Daddy died. Time has a way of twisting the lens, and for me, it brought our eggnog toasts back into focus. Tradition isn’t always a brick to be shattered; sometimes, it’s a warm place where the emotional connections that we need are gently forged. Like most things that Daddy taught me, his main message was indirect, something one gleans only from experience. “You’ll just have to find out for yourself,” he said many times during heated discussions (Mama called them arguments) with teen-me.

Well, Daddy, I may be a tad slow, but I get it eventually. Today, I understand. And I’m grateful.

As for the eggnog glasses: They’re now stored in my china cabinet. I could use them at any time — to sip a cold margarita on Cinco de Mayo or have Irish whiskey on St. Patrick’s Day. After all, there are no sprigs of holly or Santa faces on the glasses that brand them for Christmas use only.

But I can’t do that. It wouldn’t feel right. They’ll be our eggnog glasses — mine and my father’s — forever.