Ask the readers: Your favorite family traditions?
Every Tuesday is Finance & Family Day at Zen Habits.
When you look back on your childhood, some of the best memories are almost undoubtedly of traditions your family had. It is these traditions that bring a sense of familiarity, of belonging, of home, to any family, and these are the times when we feel closest as a family.
Those traditions could include the holidays — Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Hanukkah, the Fourth of July, Cinco de Mayo, what have you — or they could be more personal traditions: reading before bedtime, getting together at meal times, going to church together, or other similar activities.
In my family, my little immediate family of six kids and the wife and me, we are creating our own family traditions. Sure, we still celebrate and love those traditions of the families who raised us, but we are also our own family now, and we are creating the memories of our children. It is a blessed time for us, and the bonding that comes with these traditions is more important than anything else.
So here’s my question for all of you:
What are your family traditions, from your childhood, and if you have your own family now, what are the new traditions?
To get the discussion going, here are mine:
From my childhood
- Christmas mornings at grandma’s
- Easter with all my cousins
- Mother’s Day and Father’s Day brunches
And now with my kids
- Family meetings and family day
- Making Christmas cookies with my kids and sisters at my mom’s house
- Reading with my kids
See also:
- Best All-time Children’s Books
- How to Teach Your Kids Good Habits
- Get Your Kids Outdoors
- 100 Ways to Have Fund with Your Kids for Free or Cheap
- Family Day and Family Meetings
- Baby Makes Eight: Raising Six Kids, Part 1 (Finances)
- Baby Makes Eight: Raising Six Kids, Part 2 (organizing)
- Positive Parenting
- Posted on 19 March 2007 in Finance & Family |
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Comments (9)
Stephen Says:
March 19th, 2007, 2:52 am
Oh Man! Six kids, I can only dream. My wife and I are very happy, but we spent out 20’s and 30’s doing “our own thing”. We just got married two years ago and would love to have a child. (Red or yellow, black or white, they are precious in our sight…).
My favorite Christmas memory is watching ‘Wonderful Life’ in B&W on Christmas eve, before Midnight service (not Mass, we’re Lutheran) and getting all of these “helping others” feelings. One year (maybe 1992?) it was ‘colorized! Blegh!! Now I am hooked on TNT’s 24 hours of “A Christmas Story”, HAH! the best Christmas movie ever!!!!
zenhabits Says:
March 19th, 2007, 3:08 am
LOL Stephen … I’m a big fan of It’s a Wonderful Life myself, in black and white. I remember the terrible colorized version. Donna Reed was my ideal woman for many of my teen-age years! :)
Nettie Hartsock Says:
March 19th, 2007, 5:25 am
Great question and inspiring blog. In my family I have amazing husband and two kids - Emma and Gibson. On Friday nights we have family date night and each member picks a turn for what we’ll have for dinner as well as what games we’ll play. Monopoly, Charades, Hearts etc. - it’s a fantastic way for us to connect sans any electronic devices!
zenhabits Says:
March 19th, 2007, 7:24 am
Thanks, Nettie … I love your family date night. It sounds a lot like my family’s Family Day on Sundays. You have a perfect tradition for bonding for your family. Thanks for sharing that with us!
Karen Maineri Says:
March 19th, 2007, 19:36 pm
My husband and I are busy professionals and both of our kids have children of their own. We love spending time with the grandkids. Last summer we started a new tradition: Cousins Camp. All 4 grandkids (ages 1yr, 3yrs, 6years and 13) come for a day of fun activities and an overnight. Last year it rained all weekend so we did indoor fun stuff: tye-dye shirts, homemade icecream, life size paper dolls (of each kid) and we started writing a play for a puppet show that we will complete this year. This year some of the ideas we have been kicking around are a nature scavenger hunt, a hay ride ( papa has a tractor), and a camp out with a campfire and maybe fireworks. This kids love it and we have a blast doing it.
zenhabits Says:
March 19th, 2007, 19:46 pm
Hi Karen … what a great new tradition! It sounds like a blast! I’m sure any kids would love it. Thanks for sharing that.
betsbillabong Says:
March 19th, 2007, 23:21 pm
Christmas stockings are a favorite memory of mine, and one of my favorite family traditions actually occurred after my parents divorced and my mom didn’t have much money. Once my youngest brother learned the truth about Santa Claus, we all picked names out of a hat at Thanksgiving each year and chose someone else to do a Christmas stocking for (with a $$ limit). We did this for probably 25 years… actually this year was the first year we didn’t b/c my brothers both have wives and children of their own so the holidays have become a little more convoluted. It was really fun for us, though; made us feel a bigger part of Christmas, I think.
Easter egg hunts are awesome. I also really enjoyed snuggling and watching 4th of July fireworks.
zenhabits Says:
March 20th, 2007, 1:32 am
Hi betsbillabong … thanks for sharing those wonderful traditions.
My family also did/does a gift exchange, which is very helpful with a large family. We also did another type of exchange which was a helluva lotta fun, and something you guys might enjoy. Here’s how it works (stay with me!):
1) It’s just for the adults — the kids have their own gift exchange. Each adult buys a present within a certain dollar limit (I think it was like $30), wraps it and brings it to the Christmas gathering. the gift isn’t for any particular person — it’s just a gift that you think would be cool to get.
2) At the gathering, you put all the gifts in a pile in the middle and set a stopwatch (20-30 minutes should be good). Then everyone gathers in a circle around the pile of gifts. You go around the circle, taking turns in order,and each person chooses a gift and unwraps it. Everyone says “Ooh!” and “Aah!” as the gifts are unwrapped (this part isn’t mandatory).
3) Then the fun begins. The next time around the circle, each person has the choice of either a) keeping the present he’s already chosen or b) exchanging it with the present held by anyone else in the circle.
4) This continues, going around the circle, until the stopwatch runs out. It’s a blast, because it becomes very apparent very soon that certain people want certain presents, and they strategize so that they end up with those presents. It’s a very fun game. I like to team up with someone else to conspire to make sure we have the presents we want! :)
Alex Shalman Says:
April 1st, 2007, 15:56 pm
Wow, we have a very similar gift exchange tradition for New Years. We don’t use a stop watch though. We pick numbers out of a hat and go in order, until the last person either keeps or switches the gift. Fun times!
