Focus on...Enjoying the Holidays

These Are a Few of My favorite Things: Enjoying the Holidays

by Teresa Sabourin

One of the best features of the holiday season is that it gives us the opportunity to enact our favorite traditions. So much is written today about the stress of the holidays that it becomes easy to forget how we can actually relax and enjoy them. In the space given to me here, I want to share some favorite holiday rituals and traditions with you in the hope that they will stir some pleasant memories of your own.

As a family communication scholar, I study rituals as symbolic communication sequences that pay tribute to something sacred. One of the reasons that rituals and traditions are so important to families is that they help to create strong relational identities and understandings. Rituals also build on shared history for family members and at the same time give them a basis upon which to construct their futures.

For families, holiday traditions often express religious and cultural beliefs, as well as their personal values. With this in mind, I asked my students in Introduction to Family Studies to talk about their favorite holiday traditions. Specifically, they discussed why they love the holidays. From their responses, I want to share a few key lessons with you.

First, the best traditions are the simple ones. Whether we are talking about holiday foods, parties, religious activities, or gift giving, we all like best the little acts that bring us together with family and friends. One student, for example, said her favorite holiday tradition was breaking the wishbone from the turkey with her brother. Another said that since she was a child, she loved opening one gift on Christmas Eve. For me, it was waking up and smelling the tree each morning leading up to Christmas day. Others shared memories of preparing special holiday dishes or going to midnight services. None of these traditions take a lot of time or money. What they all involve is just being together and sharing a common history.

The second lesson that I took away from talking with my students about their favorite holiday traditions was to be consistent. Rituals can exist only if we repeat them faithfully. Thus, even through changing family structures and geographic distance, it was important to everyone to maintain some sense of the ritual. Families are dynamic and changing, but traditions are a way to provide a sense of stability. In a newly formed family, each member can share a tradition from his or her previous experience as a way to build a shared history.

The final lesson for enjoying the holidays balances lesson two--that is, be flexible. It might seem contradictory to suggest that you be both consistent and flexible, but both lessons are lived out to a matter of degree. Thus, if the tradition of being together for a holiday meal is going to prove very stressful for some members of the family, a compromise can be made. Perhaps family members can exchange video greetings or special gifts to express their unity as an alternative to gathering together in person. In essence, the family can negotiate on keeping the most enjoyable traditions in any given year and adapting those that are impractical or stressful to form new traditions.

In this short little study, I was reminded to concentrate on what was really important about the holidays: being with loved ones and enjoying the simple things of life. What are your favorite holiday traditions? This year take time to realize how they unite and stabilize both new and old family members, loved ones, and friends.