Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Holiday Traditions: How to choose your family tradition.




While at a parent meeting this past week, our teacher talked about how traditions are formed. My husband and I have spent lots of time talking about family traditions  in our family.  What do we want our family traditions to be?  How do we decide what Holiday traditions are important?  Do we have any weekly traditions?  Stay tuned for another blog about forming other yearly traditions.  Today I am going to talk about the Holiday’s and the most important things your kids are looking for this holiday season.

The Four Things Children Really Want for any holiday

* A relaxed and loving time with Family
* Realistic expectations about gifts
* An evenly paced holiday Season
* Reliable family traditions

After reading this list, I realized for my own family I want many of these same things and we had already implemented some of these; for example we go out of town for Christmas since we don’t have family locally and so we have started opening a few presents early for our kids so they can enjoy each item for several days before anything new is added.  We also as a family don’t do that many gifts for our kids since grandparents and aunts and uncles also want to give and we don’t need children overloaded.  I love Christmas and traditions and I have carefully selected the parties and events we will attend and have spread them out so there is no added stress this year.  Here are My Dr. Walker favorite Traditions:

* Nativity pageant – Love celebrating Jesus Gift
* Giving and donating to others – We choose different projects
* Nutcracker - My grandmother would take me every year and I still have my nutcracker from when I was little.
* Christmas carol singing – Love to sing, so do my girls
* Christmas cookie Decorating – Love Decorating even more than eating
* Rudolph Claymation – Love the Classic Films
* Wrapping Presents – Love to watch a Hallmark Christmas movie and wrap the gifts.
* Stocking gifts – We still do stockings and it is my favorite part of Christmas.