How To Create And Keep Family Traditions

Family time is the best time, but in this day and age, family traditions can often get left behind. 

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This article will reveal some of the ways in which family traditions can be brought back to life. These traditions can be important for forming strong family bonds and creating a unique family identity. This is essential for giving your family life meaning and for giving your children a sense of belonging within the family. While life may get busy at times, creating and keeping family traditions provides children with a positive sense of nostalgia which they will ingrain within their own children.

A Bit About Family Traditions

Family traditions are a collection of activities and things that you do as a family on a regular basis. This can include things such as a weekly family night, bedtime bonding, Christmas tree or cookie decorating and many more. Basically anything that you do as a family routinely can become a family tradition. Family traditions are important for keeping family values and for bringing your family closer together. Traditions can be on any schedule – whether that be yearly, weekly, monthly or just something you do every now and again as a little family celebration.

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What Are Family Traditions?

Family traditions are a set of behaviours that are repeated and that have symbolic meaning within the family. These traditions provide families with a sense of identity and belonging. They can be very emotional and will often be reminisced about and discussed within the family. Family traditions are usually something that is continuously talked about year after year. They are something that can be looked back on as a classic ‘family’ thing when you’re older. Family traditions are something all the family can enjoy together for years and years.

Why Are Family Traditions Important?

Family traditions are important for giving your family a sense of identity. They also give your family to opportunity to form unique bonds and bring the entire family closer together. Family traditions often tell a unique story about your family. Everyone’s family is different, and every family has different traditions.

What Are Some Examples Of Family Traditions?

Although these are just a few examples of family traditions, they are some great ones. Every single family is completely unique, so every family’s traditions are going to be different. It’s possible to make a tradition out of anything, even something as simple as a weekly baking day, or a weekly trip to the cinema – anything you do routinely as a family can become a family tradition.

Below are some examples of family traditions to give you some ideas before you get started. Use these ideas to create your own twist on family traditions. Your kids will call upon these memories for years to come.

1. Yearly Camping Trip

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A yearly camping trip is a great family tradition that all the family can enjoy. There are so many activities that the whole family can enjoy while camping. Some examples are hiking, fishing, wildlife spotting and so much more. Not only that, but everyone can have fun when it comes to putting the tent up and doing the essential things like cooking.  It’s a great family tradition that the kids will just love.

2. Christmas Decorating

Credit: Flickr, December on the Red: Louisiana Boardwalk Giant Christmas Tree, Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau

Christmas is a magical time and the perfect time to bring in some family traditions.  A great tradition would be decorating the tree together. This is something that the children can grow up with and repeat year after year. A Christmas tree can have a lot of sentimental value within a home. What could be better than a tree that has a little piece of all the members of the family in it. This is a lovely tradition that can be repeated every Christmas.

Another Christmas tradition could be decorating Christmas cookies. The children will love getting involved with baking and decorating. The whole family can then enjoy eating the cookies as well as sharing them with the extended family during this magical family time.

3. Bedtime Bonding

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This is a great one for young children. There’s a lot of things that you can learn about your child by spending some time with them at bedtime. Ask them some questions about their day, read a story to them or maybe even sing to them. Whatever you choose to do, your child will feel peace and happiness every night as they go to sleep. This is a great family tradition to solidify the bond between you and your child.

4. Thanksgiving Football

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This is an idea that, if I’m completely honest, I got from the TV show Friends. On the show, Ross and Monica Geller who are brother and sister reminisce about their childhood and they they always had a family football game every year. The six friends then pursue their own game based on the Geller tradition. This is a great tradition as thanksgiving comes every year, so it’s a tradition that will be enjoyed year after year by young and old.

​How to Start Family Traditions

So now that we know what family traditions are, and have seen some examples of them, how do we actually create these family traditions? The following list highlights some of the important steps to take when it comes to creating your own traditions that your family can enjoy year after year.

• 1. Creating New Traditions

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It’s great to use traditions from your own past and pass them down to your own family as this creates an even more extended tradition. These kinds of traditions are ones that your family can reminisce upon, whether they’re old or young, and ones that are easily passed down through generations. A personal example of this I have is that, the week between Christmas and New Year, we always go to my nana’s house for a meal and end with a traditional English trifle. This is a trifle recipe that has been passed down my family through many generations and I hope that one day I get to be the person to serve up the trifle. It’s a simple tradition, but one that has been in the family for many decades and everyone in the family can reminisce about the years of eating this ‘famous’ trifle.

However, not all your family traditions should be ones brought from your own past. It’s important to create new traditions that are unique just to your family. Creating new traditions is simple. Think of an idea of something that you’d like to do with your family. Try that idea out and if your whole family enjoys it then hey presto – you’ve got yourself a new family tradition.

2. Keep Traditions Affordable

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When you start a new tradition, it’s important to keep cost in mind. A tradition is something that you’re going to want to repeat, so you need to be sure that you’re going to be able to afford that particular activity regularly. Sometimes it’s the simplest of traditions that can be the most important.

One of my favourite family traditions form when I was young is that we would always watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation as a family every Christmas Eve. This is a such a simple thing but meant so much to me. As soon as the movie was over, may dad would read The Night Before Christmas to us and then we would go to bed ready for Santa’s arrival. This simple tradition is what made my childhood and I’m sure my brother would agree with me. This just highlights that a family tradition does not need to be something expensive, but more so an activity that has sentimental value to your family.

3. Keep Your Traditions Going

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This might be the hardest step – keeping your family traditions going – especially as your children grow older. An easy way to keep family traditions going is to centre them around yearly holidays such as Christmas or Thanksgiving. This makes it easier for you to remember to keep them going. Everybody remembers when it’s Christmas time, so everyone will remember to participate in the Christmas family traditions.

By passing down traditions from your past as well as making new traditions, it might be easier to keep traditions going. I know personally I really want to keep my family’s traditions going for many years to come. That’s because I believe that it is unique to our family, and these are things that I’d like our family to continue to do. I’d love it if my children and grandchildren end up keeping our family traditions going.

​What Are Your Family Traditions?

We hope you enjoyed reading this article on how to create family traditions. Do you currently have any family traditions that you’d like to share with us? Or perhaps you’re going to try out some of the family traditions that we’ve suggested in this article? Leave us a comment in the section below, we would love to hear what family traditions you have planned!

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Related Article: ​How to Strengthen Family Bonds