I’ve always been one to set traditions or practices wherever I go, in work, in vacation, in life, I guess because those traditions become touchstones if things go awry.

I count on knowing that something is going to be the same even if all else is askew, and one tradition that I started here at the Post is bagel Friday.

Food is my language of love anyway, but here in the newsroom, no two days are ever the same, and days can run together sometimes. We all need a little base of some kind to get re-centered, remind ourselves what day it is, eat something good and even have a minute to laugh together.

Traditions, however small, matter. I know that those who believe in innovation, creativity, moving forward will sometimes say that tradition is too rooted in history, the past and it stifles growth, but I think there is room, even need, for both.

Traditions create connections, build bridges and memories and give solid foundations from which to grow. You can alter or build on traditions or totally leave them behind, but having them even in your past is a benefit. They are a starting point.

They create connections not just among family members but among coworkers, who may have little in common outside work. In a world of uncertainty, little traditions, like our bagel days, help us solidify our identity as a team.

They are also a way to teach children or others about history. It can help us keep our heritage, and even our language, alive.

They also give us a moment to pause and reflect, or just take a breath, and let the busyness of life stop for a moment.

If you don’t have traditions from your family growing up, I encourage you to start one of your own, however small.

Baking and decorating cookies at Christmas is a tradition my grandmother and mother started. They saw an article in the Charlotte Observer more than 50 years ago about sugar cookies that had been decorated for Easter. The cookies in the pictures were stunning, almost too pretty to eat. My grandmother, always one to tackle new ideas off the hop, began practicing baking the cookies, getting the texture just right. Then she worked on the royal icing, and a “paint” icing that could be brushed on. By the time she felt like she had it well in hand, it was November, so she and mom decided to make Christmas cookies.

Those were two talented women, and the cookies they made were just as beautiful as those in the paper, and mom’s first-grade students, who received them, didn’t want to eat them. Instead, they took them home to show their mothers.

I started helping before I was 10 years old, and I loved sitting at the kitchen counter, with cookies spread out all around us, decorating and talking and laughing and messing up once in a while to have an excuse to eat a cookie. My younger cousin, when he got tired, would say “my hand’s got the shakes, I gotta stop,” but not til he’d made a mistake and need to eat a cookie.

I remember wrapping plates full of those cookies (or small tins for larger families) and delivering them to neighbors. A few years in, people started looking for those cookies, and when I showed up at the door, they’d be waiting, smiles on their faces. We’d made it not just a family tradition, but a neighborhood one.

When our youngest son joined the wrestling team in high school, I took the cookie baking I still did at Christmas and made yet another tradition. I put the school logo on cookies and gave them to the team after matches. For four years, the team members looked for those plastic containers with the cookies to come into the gym with me.

It’s been more than 10 years since I baked cookies for the wrestling team, but any time I see any of his old teammates, those cookies are one of the first things they mention. Something small and even silly still bonds us through the years. And I love that.

Yes, we have to move forward. No, we don’t want to get stuck in the past. But there is something to be said for the value of traditions that connect us, and that provide often sweet memories of good times. For now, bagel Fridays will do.

Elisabeth Strillacci covers crime, courts, Spencer, East Spencer and Kannapolis for the Salisbury Post.