Skip to main content

Creating meaningful family traditions

Here is an edited version of an article I wrote for a recent newsletter:
Every holiday season, whether those occurring in spring, summer, fall or the most boisterous season of all, winter, I am astounded by the buying power of a celebration. As my children were born I began to question the rush and bustle of our cultural traditions and ask, “How can I make each season meaningful and nourishing for myself and my family”. Most of our holiday celebrations revolve around the seasonal shifts of nature, because nature is something that a child can deeply connect with. In winter the nights are growing longer and the days are getting shorter. The deciduous trees stand bare, while the evergreens alone remind us of greener days to come. The beginning of winter coincides with our most widely celebrated holidays, whether Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or Solstice. If we are interested in making seasonal celebrations meaningful, personal and nourishing, we can employ an inquisitive lens to our existing holiday celebrations.
I did this a few years ago after a particularly manic holiday. My family celebrates both Hannukah and Christmas, often throwing in a dash of solstice here and there for good measure. A few years ago the frenzy of buying and wrapping, baking and stuffing led to a holiday that vomited gifts with a spasm of “more”. I was horrified. After opening presents for hours, I was spent. I watched my eldest son drunk with presents and asked myself, “Why?”. I realized that I didn’t have a reasonable answer. I spent the next year asking a lot of questions and I came up with a short list of goals that I hoped to achieve through family celebrations. The list included: peace, connection to nature and family, cultivating a sense of magic, etc.
Now, as I meet the winter holidays, I have several new holiday traditions that honor these goals, while incorporating some deeply nourishing family traditions. One important change revolves around my holiday mantra, “simplify”! Children don’t need chaos to experience the magic of the season, nor do we. In simplifying our seasonal celebrations I find peace, connection and a meaningful celebration with my family. In asking ourselves, “why” we do a particular thing or celebrate in a particular way, we begin to clarify our deeper intention and cultivate a seasonal celebration that is personal, meaningful and deeply nourishing for the whole family.
Happy Holidays!
Labels:

Comments

Veronica said…
i didn't know you celibrated Huankauh.
December 15, 2009 at 9:35 PM
Angelina Lloyd said…
Hey there my eldest neice...yes we celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas and Solstice---all in small measure (although despite my best efforts it always becomes chaotic). What are doing for the holidays.
December 16, 2009 at 9:17 AM
Bekke said…
Amen, sister! I am sooo sad that this wasn't published for the masses. :-) Bekke
December 16, 2009 at 8:38 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment.  It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float.  It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within.  It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains.  Eyes closed.  Eyes opened.  A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being.  It takes courage.
4 comments
Read more

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much.  It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall.  The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep.  But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy.  I am a woman who loves the spring.  I nearly live for it.  When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis.  I gorge.  This year has been hard.  Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally.  The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...
2 comments
Read more

grief

Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the ...
4 comments
Read more