Become a successful family by starting family traditions

Last Updated on October 19, 2024 by Andrea

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What Are Your Favorite Traditions?

What are your favorite family traditions? Think about your favorite holiday celebrations as a child. What do you see? Smell? Hear? Do you feel cared for? Excited? Family traditions carve deep memories for us. When we share them with our children, we are extending the memories through generations – giving them a connection to the generations that came before them. Maybe it’s time for some new traditions. New family traditions are a great way to set a pattern of love and belonging for years to come.

Wigilia dinner: A Polish tradition

Christmas traditions are probably the most popular.

For generations women in my family, many extended family members, have gathered on Christmas Eve to prepare a seven-course meal to celebrate the coming Savior. The meal is said to include foods from all geographic systems – fish from the sea, rice and barley from the fields, mushrooms from the forest. The women would chop, stir, roll, and fill their way to dinner that would commence when the first star appeared.

The menu includes mushroom soup with noodles, pea soup, cabbage soup, barley and dried plums, pierogies (3 kinds), fish, and apple rice strudel. We also have nut and poppy rolled bread to pass during the meal. The dinner table is filled with special foods that everyone contributed to.

I have great joy in carrying on this tradition in my own home. I’d love to say I have a houseful of women gather every December 24 to recreate this menu. Alas, that’s not the case. I usually begin making the breads and pierogies in October and freeze them. I buy the noodles. But I do get up early and begin cooking everything from scratch. When I do this, I feel connected to the generations of women who came before me to make this meal with the exact recipes I’m using. My kids love the meal and look forward to it even more once we move past Halloween.

Traditions aren’t just for Christmas

I am also committed to a special Thanksgiving menu that perfectly blends traditional foods from my family and my husband’s family. I can’t wait for the same foods every year. The kids help some and always enjoy eating it, especially leftovers.

We also love decorating for various holidays throughout the year, opening gifts a special way on Christmas morning, and planning our new year.

Several times each year we take stock of our goals and plans – then revise as necessary. Doing so shows kids goals are attainable, but also flexbile.

These traditions bring our family closer together. They give us something to look forward to, a common activity to participate in, and provide anticipation of building memories.

Traditions are important for our kids

While the whole family often participates in traditions, they serve a special purpose for kids. Traditions contribute to a sense of identify and provide lasting memories for our kids. This sense of identity will help their self confidence as they grow up and start their own family traditions.

David Elkind, author of All Grown Up and No Place to Go, points out that traditions are particularly important for adolescents. Yes, those children we think don’t care about anything really do look forward to building memories through family traditions.

This is a very important point. Even if they look like they aren’t having fun, they are still in the moment and will remember it for many years. Get them involved – they can help cook, make decorations, or teach guests about the tradition. Ask if they have a special activity they want to add to the tradition. Then thank them for being involved!

Traditions beyond holidays

Not all traditions occur around holidays. Most of us enact traditions every day in the form of routines! When we have game night or a regular bike ride after dinner we are engaging in a tradition. Often bedtime stories are traditions for families. My mother in law loves to celebrate with ice cream – it’s a tradition for her and one we’ve adopted with our kids.

The way we say happy birthday is another popular tradition, often with a birthday dinner. Any special events in your family are good conditions for traditions. It’s okay to think beyond the dinner table! Special occasions are everywhere – we just need to keep your eyes open for them.

Our family traditions often follow our family values. What we value is what we focus on. So take time to line up your values with your traditions. For instance, we value faith in our family so we have lots of religious traditions like Bible stories before bed and praying before meals. While these were not part of my family history, they are part of the history of my kids’ lives. These traditions provide special memories for us and our children.

Remember that service can be a great tradition, too. Helping in a soup kitchen, cleaning up after a hurricane, shoveling someone’s front walk, and grabbing groceries for neighbors can all be wonderful traditions for the entire family.

Now what?

If you have traditions in place, great. Begin communicating about them in advance to build that anticipation. Get everyone excited about them! I know they take time, but it’s time well spent, I promise.

If you don’t have any traditions in place, it’s not too late to start. And the holiday season is the perfect time! ‘Tis the season for fall, Thanksgiving, football, Christmas, and New Years. Pick one and get started. Holiday traditions are the easiest to design traditions around. This book may help get some ideas rolling. On Thanksgiving we have two traditions – we have our traditional dinner and then we eat cookies and turn on a Christmas movie while we decorate the house and Christmas tree.

Think about your family history – what events or holidays are special to you? Start there!

If you aren’t sure where to begin with forming some traditions, I highly suggest heading to Pinterest. I’ll be honest, Pinterest is my time-killer of choice. I like it better than any social media platform because it’s loaded with great ideas, yet I feel none of the pressure I get from other places. You can pin ideas and return to them later. And don’t worry about “Pinterest fails.” You never have to tell anyone if an idea works or not! Just use Pinterest as your idea board and get started.

Get started!

The first time you do something that you may want to continue as a tradition, things may feel a bit awkward. That’s okay! Just keep at it. Each time you engage in the tradition you’ll find it flows easier and becomes more natural. Get the entire family involved and make it fun.

It may be time for a new family tradition! Get all your family members involved in making even daily events special. New traditions do no have to replace old ones. They can just add to what you already do.

So what holiday are you going to enact traditions with next❓

What are your favorite traditions❓

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💙, Andrea

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