Creating Family Traditions

Whether it’s an annual Christmas nativity play, a special birthday song, a favorite spot to watch the fireworks, or a family board-game rivalry, creating and maintaining traditions is not only a terrific way to create lasting bonds, it’s also a ton of fun! When most of us think of traditions, it’s usually Christmastime that comes to mind first. For many families this exciting time of year is filled with events that make the season what it is: decorating the Christmas tree, making goodies, visiting Santa, and reading the Christmas story--what would Christmas be without these things! Children need predictability and strong family traditions provide that—that’s why we anticipate Christmas so much! And although Christmas is one holiday brimming with tradition, it shouldn’t be the only time these unique family customs come into play. The calendar is filled with fun holidays that have terrific tradition potential.

Fun For All Seasons
Holidays are important because they’re a break from the everyday and they give us a reason to come together and celebrate!

New Year’s
Write down a family resolution and seal it in a letter to be saved for one year. On New Year’s Day, open your letter from the previous year and discuss how successful your were in accomplishing your family goal. Remove the Christmas ornaments from the tree and decorate it with New Year’s decorations like balloons, noisemakers, party hats, and streamers.

Valentine’s Day
Make up silly “Roses are Red…” poems and place them in spots your family will find later on in the day like in lunch boxes or book bags. If you’re a father, give your daughters a rose; if you’re a mother, give your sons a heart cookie.

St. Patrick’s Day
Make a dinner out of only green food (e.g., spinach, green-colored mashed potatoes, grapes, Jell-o). Place one fourleaf clover cutout under someone’s dinner plate. The person who discovers the clover at the end of dinner is exempt from cleaning up.

Easter
Every Easter, write your testimony in a letter and place it in your children’s Easter baskets. Include a new gospelrelated item in your Children’s Easter baskets such as a picture of the Savior or a bookmark with a scripture written on it.

Fourth of July
Make a birthday cake for the country. You could even place sparklers on top for the birthday candles. Help your children put on a Fourth of July pageant in which they can recite a portion of an important document such as the Declaration of Independence or the Gettysburg Address.

Halloween
Create Halloween gingerbread (or graham cracker) houses as an alternative to the Christmas version. Use bright orange, purple, and black candies and frosting, along with plastic spider rings and cotton “spider webs.” Hold an annual extended family or friend trick-or-treat party. Use a hollow pumpkin as a serving bowl for soup, make “brain” Jell-O, and serve spooky punch (using dry ice). Have the family members or friends trick-or-treat to different rooms of the house.

Thanksgiving
Play alphabetical gratitude around your Thanksgiving table and have everyone name something for which he or she is grateful with the next consecutive letter of the alphabet. Place a strip of white butcher paper on top of your thanksgiving tablecloth. Have markers or crayons also placed along the length of the table. Have the guests write down some of the things for which they are grateful throughout the dinner with their name written next to those items. Then gather after dinner to read the gratitude notes.

Christmas
Make an addition to your family’s advent calendar by including service activities that accompany each day such as: clean a sibling’s room, help mom set the table, shovel the neighbor’s walk, take around Christmas treats to the neighbors, etc. Have a Christmas talent show in which everyone can sing or play a Christmas song, or recite a Christmas poem. Each day at breakfast during the week before Christmas have everyone draw slips of paper from a container. One of these slips will be marked with a star. The person who draws the starred paper is that day’s “Christmas Angel.” For that day, it is this person’s responsibility to do random acts of service and then mark the location of the act with a piece of a paper with a star on it.

Special Delivery
The spirit that comes into a home with the arrival of a new baby is unlike any other. This joy is something each member of the family should be able to remember with fondness. It’s also a good idea to provide your baby with mementos he/she can have throughout life as a token of the happiness that came with this birth. Here are some ways you can mark this special event in your family. Give your baby a personalized gift with his name and birth noted. This could be done in a variety of ways and brothers and sisters and grandparents could also be involved. For example, create a baby quilt with the child’s tiny handprints or footprints stamped on a square (or several squares) along with name and date of birth embroidered in the corner. Plant a tree for your new baby. Involve any younger siblings in the process and enjoy the tree for years as you watch both it and your child mature. Have each family member write the new baby a letter. Share your feelings about becoming a mother, father, grandparent, older brother or sister (again, perhaps), and what you hope you can share with the new child. Place these letters in the child’s baby book or a scrapbook for later reflection. Also, be sure to write down your feelings in your journal so you can share these reflections with your child when he/she is older.

Birthdays
Give your child a special family birthday party. If you want to throw a party with friends, that’s fine too, but be sure you have some quality family time. The Trauntveins, thanks to LHT, had a birthday donkey.

Special Family Events
Any event your family treasures can be a tradition. Just remember to do the same sort of things over and over until everyone looks forward to the day or event with anticipation. Maybe it is a camping trip or the day you harvest potatoes from the family garden. It may be playing games on Sunday afternoons or making Sundays in the kitchen on Wednesday night. Maybe it is family home evening. Whatever it is, do the things your family likes to do. You are making memories to last a lifetime and beyond.

Passing it Along
Ask any new grandparent “where the time went” and they probably won’t have a very clear answer for you. The process of watching your child from birth to marriage is one that most parents will say flew by in the blink of an eye. That’s why it is so important to make lasting memories of the most important occasions. Not only that, marking these special events provides a foundation for children. They’ll remember how much love and attention they were given at each milestone, and they’ll want to give their own children a similar experience. Consequently, by marking these moments in a special manner now, you’ll really be marking them also for future generations for years and years to come.

Some of the ideas in this article came from Bridget Rees.