Family Tradition Ideas
Celebrating Old and New Family Traditions
Welcome to the Family Tradition Ideas portion of this website....
Family tradition is the glue that binds. Whether it is Christmas traditions, Thanksgiving traditions or any other, tradition is especially important to our children.
The Importance of Tradition
Families are more mobile today... at least our family has been!
My career has kept us from living near extended family for the better part of twenty years. My wife, Sheri, and I have a large family of six children and travel "home" for the holidays was seldom a possibility...due to the expense.
This distance from extended family is more and more common in today's world. We move around, change jobs and travel much more than before.
For us, this has increased the importance of our family traditions.
Traditions play a huge role in creating an identity that our kids can relate to and take comfort in.
The house we lived in may have been different. The town we resided in may have changed, but the way we observed and celebrated at various times during the year always remained the same.
Christmas Tradition | Songs for Christmas | Thanksgiving Memories
Blending Old and New Family Tradition Ideas
All newlywed couples have to deal with the blending of two sets of family traditions...his and hers. Sheri and I were no different. Some of our traditional family "rituals" went well together and complimented each other nicely.
Her family opened gifts on Christmas eve and my family opened them on Christmas morning. Well, when we still lived near home, this made it easy for us. We spent Christmas eve with her family and the next morning was spent with my family.
When the kids came along, though, we had to "compromise".
In her family gifts from Santa came wrapped...in mine, all the gifts from Santa were unwrapped and set out on display. This was important to me because, as kids, we were allowed to get up early and play with gifts from Santa. But the wrapped gifts from family and friends weren't to be touched until mom and dad were up.
Well, we "compromised" ...we did it just as her family did! lol :)
Seriously though, she made concessions as well. Our kids have always opened their gifts on Christmas morning...just as my family always did.
Thanksgiving was easy. The more food the better, right?
So our Thanksgiving table consists of all the very best family recipes from her family and my family.
Traditions
"Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can't even describe, aren't even aware of"
Ellen Goodman
Year Round Family Traditions
When we say family tradition, we instantly think of the holiday season, but there are traditions that we
observe throughout the entire year. These include the "non-traditional tradition" that we don't even consider
as tradition.
Some other year round traditions include:
- All the other holidays such as Easter
- Birthdays
- How we celebrate high school graduation
- How we welcome in the various season of the year
- Opening day of the NFL football season (this is one of ours)
- How about your Super Bowl ritual (tradition)?
- When our children come of age.
- Sunday dinners
Family tradition is one of the few things that stays constant in our lives. We merge the best from both
sides of the family. Likewise we are always on the lookout for cool new family tradition ideas!
One new family tradition idea that we plan to start this year is that of putting our written New Years resolution into our Christmas stockings, right as we are ready to put them away for the year.
Then, when we get the Christmas stockings out again the next year, we all can read and decide whether or not we met those resolutions. It just sounded like a great idea. We are going to try it this year!
Life wouldn't be nearly the same without family traditions to cherish and look forward to.
Our children will never forget us, but it will be during the observance of long-held family traditions that their memory of us will be the strongest.
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