Family Traditions – A Whole New Year For Starting or Continuing Them

Fairy Godmother Carol Rice, co-founder of CherishBound writes the following article: No matter whom you call family;  tradition will make your bonds stronger.

Family traditions can:

-Create good feelings and help with a person’s identity and sense of belonging.

-Impart values and foster cultural customs.

-Give us a sense of security and continuity.

-Give us a way to celebrate life; the big and the little moments.

-Are part of the glue that holds families together by giving us a way to spend time together, deliberately.

As a young mother I worried about whether or not my husband and I were developing “traditions” for our family.  I knew they were important, I’d seen “Fiddler on the Roof.”  (I can still picture Tevia snapping his fingers over his head as he belts out the familiar song “Tradition!”) But I didn’t know if my little family had any; and if we didn’t, how would we create them?

We all long for a sense of heritage that we imagine traditions will give us, but so often I meet people who think it’s hopeless because they don’t think anyone passed on worthwhile traditions to them and they feel in turn, they don’t have anything they can pass on, or they feel it’s just too late because they didn’t start soon enough.  It’s an amazing thing when hearts and minds are opened to the reality that the first step is as simple as realizing that you can be the first step…tradition can begin with you.  (And ironically, in the process of developing traditions, most of us discover there are traditions that have been passed onto us; we just didn’t realize it.)

Here’s a few ideas to get you started in the upcoming weeks:

New Year’s – Write bad habits/ bad experiences on paper and burn them in a pit and then write out your plans/goals for the New Year.

Chinese New Year –  Give your house a thorough cleaning, hoping to sweep away all the ill-fortune there may have been in the family to make way for the wishful in-coming good luck…then give each child a red envelope with crisp new dollars for the new year!

Civil Rights – Tell the story of Martin Luther King/ Rosa Parks/ Underground Railroad and then ask each family member “What makes a hero/heroine to you?”

Valentine’s – Have a “love box” then during Valentine’s week encourage anonymous notes of love and encouragement to be dropped in for each family member.  Read them at the table each night that week.

St. Patrick’s Day – Serve Green Eggs and Ham for breakfast and Corned beef and Cabbage for dinner (on a table decorated in GREEN)

Every Day:  Use post-it notes to leave messages of encouragement, gratitude, and love on your child’s made bed, bedroom door, pillow, or in on their sandwich!

Birthdays – Decorate the dinner table with balloons and/or crepe paper and have the birthday person’s favorite dinner.

As you start your own traditions this year consider recording them in a journal like this one at Cherish Bound. At the end of the year you’ll have a record of some of your most treasured moments.