William Herbert "Skip" Boyer, 32°
15817 N. 6th Place, Phoenix, Arizona 85022

A bittersweet family tradition is part of one family's holiday dinner.

The "Damn Ham," 18 pounds or so of hickory-smoked, country, sugar-cured goodness straight from the Ozark country of Missouri, will arrive on our doorstep soon, as it has every holiday season for 31 years. Its arrival has been a holiday tradition for us since 1969.

For reasons that will be explained, the "Damn Ham" is an annual gift from my father, Brother Bill Boyer, 32°, Valley of Omaha. He doesn't have anything to do with its preparation. That's the job of the Burger family in a town with the highly confusing name of California, Missouri. The Burgers have been smoking hams since the 1940s when Dad Burger was looking for ways to supplement his family's meager income. By 1956, he was producing 5,000 hams a year as a sideline. Today, son Morris Burger is still smoking hams, and I have no idea how many he cranks out each year. I do know one of them has my name on it. Or at least my address.

But I digress.

The "Damn Ham" is, I believe, the longest-running joke in the history of my family. In 1969, my wife and I got married. That Christmas, Dad sent the first ham. He was betting my wife didn't know how to cook a real ham, and he figured it was his duty as a father-in-law to complete her education. This is serious business. If you've ever tried to cook a smoked ham, you know what I mean. If you haven't, well, someone needs to upgrade your education with one of Burger's best.

My young bride, however, was up to the challenge. She cooked it, and we ate it for weeks. It was glorious. And every year since then, another ham has showed up at our door. My wife has tried, in vain, to get Dad to send the pre-cooked kind. He just laughs.

Last year, Dad—in his 90th year—extended the joke to the next generation. My son got married last summer. You guessed it. The young bride got her first shot at cooking a ham. Dad just grinned.

The "Damn Ham" has become part of the tradition and folklore of our family. Even the name has a story. You may remember the wonderful novel by Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird. In the novel, the young daughter, Scout, has discovered swearing. At the dinner table one night, she looks sweetly at her father, Atticus, (played in the novel's movie version by Gregory Peck) and says, "Please pass the damn ham." The results, of course, were predictable.

Well, long about junior high age, my daughter, Melanie, read the novel and decided this episode at the dinner table was clearly the funniest thing ever written in the history of world literature. And, sure enough, "Pass the damn ham" became a permanent part of our family's lexicon. Hence, the official title of our annual offering from the Burgers, which has nothing at all to do with its most excellent quality, taste, or anything else but my daughter's warped sense of literary humor.

The annual arrival of the ham is an important and very anticipated part of our preparation for the holidays, like finding the right Christmas tree, hanging the front door wreath (another tradition, this one from my wife's parents), or watching me wrestle with the strands of outdoor lights. This year, however, it will be a bittersweet reminder of the meaning and depth of tradition in our lives. Dad, a few weeks short of his 91st birthday, was summoned to his Final Degree. Shortly before he died, he spent time settling his affairs from a hospital bed. One of the important things was to add another name or two to the list of scheduled recipients of Burger hams for this holiday season and to make quite certain the hams would, indeed, be sent. Some traditions should go on forever, he figured.

So the Boyers, young and old, will mark the holiday with a variety of small traditions which are so important to us all. Not the least of those traditions will be a hickory-smoked, country sugar-cured ham, which will be the guest of honor at dinner. And before we pass the "Damn Ham," we'll pause for a moment of prayer to thank the Great Architect for all the blessings that are ours, including the traditions of Masonry and the spirit that makes brothers of fathers and sons. And we'll add a small prayer for Dad. We'll miss him, but, of course, he'll always be there, grinning as I struggle to carve the ham.

Merry Christmas and a Hammy New Year!

William H. "Skip" Boyer has been writing since he was three. His mother objected to crayon on the walls, however, and set his career back several years. A member of the Scottish Rite Bodies of the Valley of Phoenix, Arizona, he serves as master of Paradise Valley Silver Trowel Lodge No. 29. A native of Nebraska, he is Director of Executive Communications for Best Western International and serves as the company's Executive Producer and Senior Writer. He is a fifth generation Master Mason.