Establishing holiday traditions can be tricky when you and your partner have a baby or young child, as you may be facing:
The opportunity to continue (or end) traditions that each of you may have grown up with.
The opportunity to create new traditions all together! Sometimes, this is born out of intentional thought and planning. Other times, traditions can come after realizing something that happened on its own was quite enjoyable and worth repeating!
The opportunity to merge different traditions- in the case that you and your partner grew up with different belief systems and want to expose your child to both.
What actually is a tradition, technically?
Straight from Merriam Webster, a tradition is: an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (such as a religious practice or a social custom).
For this reason, it can be harder to break traditions if they’ve been established and if older generations in your families feel attached to them. Sometimes, pressure is placed on you to continue holiday traditions that mean a lot to your parents or grandparents, which takes time from being able to forge your own family traditions. It’s common to feel stuck between: Am I continuing things during the holidays because they feel meaningful and aligned with our values, or am I continuing this merely to please other people in my circle?
In order to help define and prioritize holiday traditions for your growing family, it helps to start with revisiting and defining your family values to begin with, period. Once you align as a nuclear family on your values, prioritize the holiday traditions (new or old) that speak closely to these values. This ensures that you are not over-extending yourself before you’ve had a chance to practice the rituals that fill your heart, soul, spirit, and mind.
A note on boundaries
This may have a ripple effect, leading to the need to set boundaries with extended family or friends. What these boundaries entail will vary by family and culture. Remember that setting boundaries, in general, is not inherently mean nor designed to create separation between you and those you love. Setting boundaries is part of cultivating loving and respectful relationships, and when honored and enforced, boundaries can bring people closer over time.
Traditions can be small things – small things that really add up!
You can think of traditions not just as the big stuff rooted in religion or spiritual practices but even as the tiny things – such as what you eat for a holiday meal if you travel because Aunty Jo wants to keep hosting, whether or not you bake something from scratch, or whether or not you partake in gift-giving customs. Tweaking what you participate in, even on this micro level, can add up in big ways; it is often the little to do’s that add up and can completely drain and overwhelm people, which detracts from the point of the winter holidays – joy, light, and love.
You can honor your capacity each year
Considering the intensive mental load that already exists in the period of new parenthood, give yourself permission to grow into holiday traditions, big and small, in a way that matches your capacity as the seasons come. Maybe you don’t push yourself to bake cookies from scratch this year, but you might have the energy next year. Maybe Aunt Jo is still hosting that big Christmas Eve dinner a flight away, but you want your children to wake up in their home on Christmas morning. You can say no, for now, and revisit in future seasons.
In sum, holiday traditions can be simply passed down from generation to generation and continue without pause, but they can also be intentionally evaluated, defined, and created new! Having young children of your own is an empowering time to reflect on your values and ensure the traditions you’re prioritizing are ones you most want to share with your children– and that you have the capacity to do without hitting burnout. What children most need to enjoy holiday traditions are parents and caregivers who feel connected and present, not hurried and stressed.