“We don’t have any traditions, but it would be really nice to have some because they bring people together and they sound fun too.” – a 13 year old

The Benefit of Traditions
Traditions give our children a sense of belonging within our family. Traditions can be great fun as well as building stability and rhythm.

Establishing Family Traditions
The fun element of building traditions is that we can use them to create our own unique style of family life. It is worth each of us thinking how the traditions and rituals in our own childhood affected us. Traditions can continue through many generations, but what we do now may well be taken on by our children’s families.

Retaining Flexibility with Traditions
Family life must be allowed to evolve and traditions should serve us, not vice versa. Many of us feel nostalgia for rituals that have been dropped. This is part of moving on and allowing children to grow up.

Conclusion
Traditions not only provide fun. They also pass on important values. Some homes maintain a tradition of offering hospitality – regularly inviting people who would otherwise be on their own to Sunday lunch, having people to stay, even if that involves a mattress on the floor, putting together a lunch at Christmas for a family who would otherwise have nothing special to eat etc. Traditions like these will pass on the value we attach to showing kindness to others and sharing what we have.

Our own weekly tradition of going to church as a family has been very important in passing on our most fundamental beliefs and values to our children.

It is worthwhile thinking about the traditions that we are establishing.

Writing down a list of our daily, weekly and annual traditions will help us to identify the positive from the negative. We can then continue the ones that build up our family life and cut out those that demean or isolate one or more members of the family. Positive routines and traditions create powerful and enduring memories for our children. They reflect our own family’s values and define who we are, where we belong, and what distinguishes us from other families.

PAUSE AND PONDER

1. What daily, weekly and annual traditions contribute to giving your family its own identity?
2. Are there any traditions you should drop as they are unhelpful?
3. Are there any new ones you would like to introduce?
4. Which ones do your family enjoy most?

Even as we enter the season of celebrating traditions, lets take time as a family to halt in our busy schedules and go through this devotion to introspect our traditions, that builds our family identity.