My 14yo son and I make cookies most years. Some years it's just one batch of sugar cookies and other years we go all out, depending on energy levels. But each year, I ask him what requests he has for the holiday season and the two things are decorate a tree and make cookies.
The first Christmas season of COVID, my office created a holiday lights scavenger hunt we could all do at our respective quarantined homes. We drove around and took pics of various items as a contest (white light-up deer, Santa on a roof, Mrs. Claus, the Grinch, etc.). It was STUPID FUN. Each year since then I've campaigned to do it again, but it's not as fun as that first time.
I'm curious if you think having more traditions would be more for your benefit or your kids'? I try to have traditions, but I end up altering things each year...it's a lot of work for the mom (always the mom) to come up with and reinforce traditions, so I often fall back on "well at least we did SOMETHING." But I also wonder if I'll regret not having more consistent traditions. We too celebrate Hanukkah, and it being different days each year is tough. I often just reschedule it to a more convenient week when we can be together for all the nights. Probably blasphemous but it's what I need to do to make it work!
Loved this column, Asha. My spouse is very keen on holiday traditions, much more so than I -- my family of origin didn't really "do" holidays of any kind. He's the one who has kept our traditions going even when the kids got to the Age of the Eyeroll, and now that one kid is in college and the other is halfway through high school, I really appreciate the effort. This year, after our annual production of driving out to the Christmas tree farm, our high schooler quietly got out the small artificial silver tree I bought many years ago for the kids' then-shared bedroom, and put it atop his bookshelf. I found this quite touching. Thank you for sharing your always-eloquent thoughts.
I think I went too much the other way; I created so many traditions when my kids were young that I turned the holiday season into this Really Big Deal that we just couldn't sustain, especially after their dad and I divorced. There were some really rough years (when my kids both said that they hated Christmas), and I blamed some of that on doing way too much in their younger years. So, maybe you're doing it all just right? Whatever that is :-) I'm happy to say that we're now far enough out from all that we've been able to start building some new rituals that work for who we all are now. The best part might be that, like your ornaments, the things that are remaining are the small things.
For me, it's a fine line between traditions being deeply comforting and deeply annoying. I try to avoid too many "have to" components to holidays. They make me feel trapped. I like to change things up, invent new ways to celebrate. I think for our whole family, the most important element of the Christmas holiday is the night we decorate the tree, telling all the stories that go along with the ornaments. Like you, we also have a whole season of holidays and birthdays combined. My husband's is in October and the kids' are right before and right after Christmas. I always felt like I was owed a full-scale collapse in early February. We always had a tradition with the kids of giving them a book a day, wrapped and hidden somewhere around the house each day for the week leading up to their birthdays. We kept it affordable with used books, books passed along from friends, and a couple special purchases. My son gave this up when he left for college, saying he just didn't have time for that much reading as an engineering student. I figured my daughter would do the same. But when we started talking about celebrating her birthday a few days early at Thanksgiving, she made it very clear that the book-a-day deal was still very much in effect. I was rather delighted. That's a tradition I'm happy to hang onto a while longer. I love choosing books, and I love that she still finds time to read every night at bedtime, even as a college student. I think (I hope) that families with a more relaxed take on traditions may have an easier time as new family members join in. That's what I tell myself, anyway.
My 14yo son and I make cookies most years. Some years it's just one batch of sugar cookies and other years we go all out, depending on energy levels. But each year, I ask him what requests he has for the holiday season and the two things are decorate a tree and make cookies.
The first Christmas season of COVID, my office created a holiday lights scavenger hunt we could all do at our respective quarantined homes. We drove around and took pics of various items as a contest (white light-up deer, Santa on a roof, Mrs. Claus, the Grinch, etc.). It was STUPID FUN. Each year since then I've campaigned to do it again, but it's not as fun as that first time.
I'm curious if you think having more traditions would be more for your benefit or your kids'? I try to have traditions, but I end up altering things each year...it's a lot of work for the mom (always the mom) to come up with and reinforce traditions, so I often fall back on "well at least we did SOMETHING." But I also wonder if I'll regret not having more consistent traditions. We too celebrate Hanukkah, and it being different days each year is tough. I often just reschedule it to a more convenient week when we can be together for all the nights. Probably blasphemous but it's what I need to do to make it work!
Loved this column, Asha. My spouse is very keen on holiday traditions, much more so than I -- my family of origin didn't really "do" holidays of any kind. He's the one who has kept our traditions going even when the kids got to the Age of the Eyeroll, and now that one kid is in college and the other is halfway through high school, I really appreciate the effort. This year, after our annual production of driving out to the Christmas tree farm, our high schooler quietly got out the small artificial silver tree I bought many years ago for the kids' then-shared bedroom, and put it atop his bookshelf. I found this quite touching. Thank you for sharing your always-eloquent thoughts.
I think I went too much the other way; I created so many traditions when my kids were young that I turned the holiday season into this Really Big Deal that we just couldn't sustain, especially after their dad and I divorced. There were some really rough years (when my kids both said that they hated Christmas), and I blamed some of that on doing way too much in their younger years. So, maybe you're doing it all just right? Whatever that is :-) I'm happy to say that we're now far enough out from all that we've been able to start building some new rituals that work for who we all are now. The best part might be that, like your ornaments, the things that are remaining are the small things.
For me, it's a fine line between traditions being deeply comforting and deeply annoying. I try to avoid too many "have to" components to holidays. They make me feel trapped. I like to change things up, invent new ways to celebrate. I think for our whole family, the most important element of the Christmas holiday is the night we decorate the tree, telling all the stories that go along with the ornaments. Like you, we also have a whole season of holidays and birthdays combined. My husband's is in October and the kids' are right before and right after Christmas. I always felt like I was owed a full-scale collapse in early February. We always had a tradition with the kids of giving them a book a day, wrapped and hidden somewhere around the house each day for the week leading up to their birthdays. We kept it affordable with used books, books passed along from friends, and a couple special purchases. My son gave this up when he left for college, saying he just didn't have time for that much reading as an engineering student. I figured my daughter would do the same. But when we started talking about celebrating her birthday a few days early at Thanksgiving, she made it very clear that the book-a-day deal was still very much in effect. I was rather delighted. That's a tradition I'm happy to hang onto a while longer. I love choosing books, and I love that she still finds time to read every night at bedtime, even as a college student. I think (I hope) that families with a more relaxed take on traditions may have an easier time as new family members join in. That's what I tell myself, anyway.
Just came across this great post which dovetails beautifully into our conversation about push-pull of holiday traditions. https://open.substack.com/pub/eboyle/p/real-simple-holidays
Sammmmm!!!! “You can’t really talk people into change,” Sam mused. “All you can do is be with them as they change.”
THIS IS SO GOOOOOOD. My heart just about leapt out of my chest.