The Book of New Family Traditions (28 page)

CHAPTER 4

Holidays

Every ritual and tradition we practice is a distillation of our identities, and a vivid expression of the lessons we want to teach our children. The little rituals we do every day accumulate a quiet power and make a deep impression over the years, but they are like the pop songs of life, whereas holidays give parents a chance to create something more on the scale of an opera: monumental, bold, and unforgettable. Kids everywhere look forward to the major holidays with great anticipation, and holidays are always an opportunity to move family to center stage, whether your traditions are loud or quiet, intimate or crowded, secular or religious.

The same principles laid out for daily, weekly, and monthly rituals apply here as well: be thoughtful and intentional in your approach, balancing out the edicts of your religion, ethnicity, and family history with loads of personal touches. Start by thinking not just about what foods you’ll prepare or how you will decorate your house, but what messages you want your children to soak up from the proceedings. What are the overarching two or three themes that underlie all your holiday celebrations? And what are the major themes within each one?

Never forget that traditions are people made, and by nature they are always works in progress. Don’t be afraid to make changes as your kids grow up, or to drop and add not just specific traditions, but entire holidays, as you go forward.

Party on!

You Have My Permission to Change How You Celebrate

Warning
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Holidays can be harmful to your health and sanity!

It’s not surprising that plays and movies often show family psychodramas bursting out into the open on major holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s not only that we’re often thrust together with more members of our extended families and conflicts can arise, but we also have such high expectations. We’ve seen all the sentimental movies, magazines, and commercials about family holidays, and most of us have wonderful childhood memories of intense anticipation and excitement. Often, parents have worked very hard ahead of time to create memorable gatherings, and if something goes wrong, we feel crushed. Or exhausted. Or both.

So, before getting into fun ideas for celebrating lots of different special holidays, here are a couple of ways to prevent holiday burnout.

If you are celebrating something for the first time, don’t overdo it. Be realistic in the number of activities you plan, the number of people you invite, and the number of new recipes you decide to prepare.

If you’re celebrating an occasion you’ve marked previously, when it is getting close, do a quick evaluation of how it went the last time or last couple of times. Ask other members of the family, too, for their suggestions. If it felt overwhelming, figure out which foods, activities, and decorations were the most fun and rewarding, and skip a couple of the others. Sometimes more is less.

Just because something has been a tradition in your family for years doesn’t mean it has to be in the future. There are many different reasons for making drastic, as well as minor, changes. Perhaps your children have outgrown the annual Easter egg hunt or are too old to leave cookies and milk for Santa. Maybe the matriarch or patriarch of the family has died, or moved, and you need to change both where and how you celebrate. Or maybe someone who has been doing the heavy lifting tradition-wise is injured or suffering from a chronic illness.

When author and family educator Kathleen Chesto was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1986, she had to make considerable changes to her holiday plans. Her kids were old enough to be able to help with the cooking, so she put this question to them: Would you like to prepare our traditional feast yourselves, or should we pick a new menu that’s doable for me? They chose the latter, so the family switched from turkey to roast beef for Thanksgiving. Kathleen says it was a positive exercise because the whole family realized that being together was the centerpiece of their holidays and was more important than what they ate. They revisited the issue later, and when the kids got a little older, they switched back to more elaborate menus: They were ready to do the cooking themselves.

One more example: I know a family that had stopped celebrating Christmas together. The parents had divorced when the children were young but in later years still insisted on having fancy, formal dinners together for holidays. Everyone was miserable, suffered from indigestion, and began to dread the holidays. When the kids grew up, they all went their separate ways. But when they began to have children of their own, one sibling raised the idea of getting together for Christmas. The response was: only if we can completely reinvent the ritual for our generation. The new tradition is the opposite of their childhood dinners, a completely informal seafood feast. They throw tablecloths on the floor, eat with their hands, drink a lot of wine, and laugh a lot.

For Families of Divorce

As painful as divorce generally is, holidays rub salt in the wounds. They are fresh reminders of what’s been lost, and there are often awkward negotiations about who gets the children during what hours, on which days. If everyone is willing to be reasonable (a major “if”), then some kind of cooperative rotating system is created. I’m not equipped to suggest formulas, and people’s lives and preferences vary widely, but I think the real watchword is flexibility. This is the time to make delicious lemonade and invent yourself a whole new holiday, if need be. I know of a stepmom who wondered how she could celebrate Christmas with her stepdaughter on the weekend before the holiday without confusing her two young sons. She came up with a creative idea that was sensitive to everyone: When the stepdaughter comes for the weekend, the family celebrates “Practice Christmas.” Santa fills the stockings for all three kids, brings multiple gifts for the stepdaughter and a token gift for each of the two boys. They all loved the new holiday immediately and have celebrated that way for more than a decade.

As a mother and a stepmother, I’ve grown accustomed to celebrating the major holidays in more than one venue, and I’ve learned to roll with it. Sometimes Thanksgiving is at my house, and other times we head to my husband’s ex-wife’s house. Because she’s a much better cook than I am, this is more pleasure than hardship, and I know my sausage stuffing and pumpkin pie are welcome additions. Now that my stepdaughter is grown, she alternates Christmas holidays between her husband’s family in New Mexico and her parents. But even if she isn’t celebrating Christmas at our house, her mom will be here, enjoying Christmas morning with us and bringing along her mouthwatering puff pastry angels. Naturally, one of the six stockings that I made and hang on the fireplace mantel every year has her name on it.

I learned long ago that nobody likes a “traditions dictator,” even if it’s somebody who gets paid to write about celebrations. So I’m careful not to push my ritual agenda on others in my blended family. But I do take time to consider which ones are the most central to my own appreciation of a given holiday. With Thanksgiving, I insist that the three of us find a time to make our usual Thankfulness Tree (described later in this chapter), but if we aren’t eating turkey at home, we may create the tree the night before or even the day after Thanksgiving. (I remember one time when my son was little and we were having Thanksgiving elsewhere, and at a one point he grabbed my hand and said, “Let’s go sit on the porch and talk about the things we’re grateful for!”)

Celebrating Holidays

New Year’s Celebrations

New Year’s Family Blast

A great way to celebrate the coming of the New Year is to pay tribute to the year ending, while also welcoming the new year. Have a family-focused party and choose things from the following menu of ritual activities, depending on how much time you have and what suits you. Add your favorite food, drinks, music, and decorations.

Depending on your preference and the ages of your kids, you can do this either on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. If your kids want to ring in the new year but can’t stay up till midnight, turn the clocks ahead.

Review the Past Year

Sitting at the kitchen table or the family room sofa, look together at all the family photos you took in the past year and watch any family videos you made. Then, everybody gets a chance to vote on the best and worst day of the past year. Also, everybody fills out this list:

My most embarrassing moment this year was when I . . .

I should have had my photo on the cover of People magazine because I . . .

You guys can be annoying, but you really came through for me when . . .

Give annual family awards for “best athlete,” “worst school picture.” Use your imagination for more awards.

Make Resolutions

Cut small strips of paper half an inch wide and about six inches long. Take whole walnuts from a bag of mixed nuts in the shell and, using nutcrackers, carefully open the nuts and remove the nutmeats inside. Each person makes three resolutions and writes each one on a paper strip, which is then carefully folded and put into the nut. Glue each nut closed. Using markers, each person writes his or her name on a nut.

This idea comes from the Hilton family of Henderson, Nevada, and they glue ribbons into their walnuts and use them to decorate their Christmas tree. They reuse the same nuts every year, and once they started the practice, they began a tradition of reading last year’s resolutions aloud before writing new ones. That way they can review how well they’ve done. Nanette Hilton, the mother of four daughters, says she thinks it’s great for her girls to see that “life is fluid. They see Mommy and Daddy working on goals, too ... and sometimes failing.”

Tip: How can you live up to your resolutions if you can’t recall them? We each make three resolutions every year on New Year’s Day on colored paper. The three papers are hung on a nail in the kitchen pantry, just behind the family calendar. Every month when I change to a new page and a new month, I uncover those resolutions and we try to check and see how we’re doing so far on our promises.

Best and Worst List

We fill out the same survey every year. On New Year’s Day, it’s great fun not only to compare notes on the year just ended but to see what we all loved and hated in past years.

These are the questions we always ask:

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Best thing that happened to you?

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Worst thing that happened to you?

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Best thing you accomplished?

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Best thing you did for another person?

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Best movie you saw? Worst movie?

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Best book you read?

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Best TV program of the past year?

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What current events of the past year will make history?

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What will you remember most about this year?

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Name three things you hope for most in the new year.

First Footing: A Scottish Tradition

The Sanford family of Warren, Vermont, likes to honor its Scottish roots with a New Year’s tradition called “First Footing,” tied to ancient superstitions about the first person to cross one’s threshold in a new year. It was said to be good luck if the person was a dark, handsome man, and typically, that person would walk into a house just after midnight carrying symbolic gifts of food, whiskey, salt, and coal.

Jim Sanford, a Vermont architect with three sons, decided early on that he wanted to have one special tradition that was exclusive for each of his kids. First Footing was done with Owen, his dark-haired middle son, from the age of seven. (When Owen grew up and left home, his younger brother, Cooper, took over.)

They break with tradition by doing this on New Year’s morning, but the items they bring are true to their roots: bread (or a traditional sweet cake made by the boys’ mother), Scotch whiskey, logs (instead of coal, but also for warmth), and salt. Jim added cashews as well, to “promote a sense of humor” in the new year (nuts, get it?). And Jim and his son both wear kilts.

Except for reading aloud from a card explaining the ritual, the Sanfords don’t talk much, which is especially interesting when they come to a neighbor’s house for the first time. They come to the door without calling ahead, knock, bring the items to the kitchen, and Jim reads the card. Typically, he’ll pour two shots of whiskey, toast the head of the house, and then the son and father leave.

“I love that this is unique to us,” says Jim Sanford. “Lots of folks send Christmas cards, but who goes around drinking Scotch with their friends at 8:30 AM on New Year’s Day?” (Just so you know, this nonconformist also likes to wear a tie every year on the first day of deer-hunting season—to show respect for the deer.)