Christmas Eve Tradition

Every Christmas Eve is the same. The morning is spent feverishly cleaning my house with my parents. My sister smartly hides in her room avoiding my father's inefficient cleaning routine. My dad mops the whole first floor, exhuming our mop for the first and last time of the year. I vacuum the living room and move the furniture out of my dad's way. I dust the shelves and entertainment center, only to have them re-dusted by my father after a reprimanding about my lack of dusting prowess. The morning is cleaning, more cleaning, and a few small arguments to get them out of mine and my father's system for the evening. No Christmas Eve has passed without at least a minor fight between me and my dad. Usually it relates to my unwillingness to participate in the cleaning festivities. I am expected to gladly appreciate my role as vacuumer/furniture-mover.
Christmas is tradition and if a Christmas passed without the regular rhythms it would feel wrong. A sans-conflict Christmas would be missing something, like Easter without church or Halloween without gluttony.
The afternoon is down-time and cooking for my parents. My sister comes out of her room for the first time all day to help my mom bake. My father tries to make himself busy, by which I mean make up jobs for me to do. "Buddy, can you do me a huge favor?" My dad pleads; a strategy of getting me to do chores that has led to my being unwilling to do them. "Yeah sure, what?" I say in a tone that I wish would convey "Of course I will, I'm your son. Just tell me what to do." My dad now can go one of two ways in the conversation. He can fight me on my tone or he can thank me profusely and tell me what the menial chore is. This parenting strategy has not had the desired effect that my dad thought it would. A strong parent that tells their child to do chores, lays down the law, expects things of their son from a young age, will have fewer conflicts later on. I see my friend's father and the way his system works. When my friend's dad wants a chore done by my friend it gets done with minimal grumbling and I think that I would have responded well to this. Childhoods would benefit from do-overs and parental evaluations.

Tradition is comforting to people. We are always searching for the best, easiest, truest way to live our lives and traditions are maintained because they are exactly that: best, easy, true.

Merry Christmas everyone/anyone