Are your winter holidays are more in tune with Chevy Chase in “Christmas Vacation” than Jimmy Stuart in “It’s a Wonderful Life”? Don’t worry. You’re not alone. The holidays are a chaotic time for many families. But for newly divorced parents or people living far away from their loved ones, the holidays can also be extremely stressful, lonely and isolating.
Greg Bobbitt, a 39-year-old program manager and single dad living in Portland, Oregon, agrees. A lover of all things holiday-related, especially those that center around family get-togethers, Bobbitt recently experienced his first Thanksgiving away from his five-year-old daughter.
“My first holiday away from her was exactly what I expected it to be: Sad, lonely and introspective,” Bobbitt says. “I actively avoided everyone and threw myself a pity party. Fortunately, it was Thanksgiving, so it was just one night.”
But Bobbitt, who separated from his wife just six months before that particular Thanksgiving and who is still friendly with his ex, is quick to point out that he has high hopes for future holidays.
“As a dad, it’s important to me that my daughter feels the same holiday sentiment that I had growing up: Family and friends coming together, food, glowing lights, music, community, generosity and gratitude, ” Bobbitt says. “I don’t want to force it down her throat, but I want her to have a foundation of happiness during the holidays.”
How do we give our children this “foundation of happiness” and create holiday memories they’ll cherish the rest of their lives? Start with the basics spend quality time together, set aside work and other non-family obligations for a couple days and focus on your loved ones’ needs then follow these suggestions to help make the holidays more memorable for your children:
Concentrate On The Senses
When you’re thinking about creating new holiday traditions for your children, remember to incorporate a few rituals that are pleasing to the senses. New research shows a direct link between the part of our brain that interprets our senses and the area in our brain that shelters our emotional memories. This explains why many people, when asked to name the favorite part of their childhood holidays, will talk about the food they tasted, the songs they heard, the fireworks they saw or the fresh-cut fir tree they smelled.
Asked to recall her childhood Christmas celebrations, Mia Neuse, an Oregon acupuncturist who grew up during the 1970s in Rhode Island, doesn’t remember religious rituals or gifts from Santa. She remembers the snow that fell outside her home, the fire in her family’s fireplace and the holiday music. “We would put on the same Christmas album each year and my dad would play his harmonica. It was nice,” Neuse says. “I still love Christmas music and caroling.”
How can you incorporate the senses into your holiday rituals? Maybe, like Neuse’s family, you play the same album every year. Maybe you light the same scented candles on Christmas morning or burn a sprig of rosemary in the fireplace for the Solstice. Many Jewish holidays include special foods matzo ball soup for Passover, latkes for Hanukkah that have religious significance and satiate the senses. Is your child a visual learner or an artist? Let them take charge of designing decorations for your windows or making cards to send to family members.
Whatever you do, make sure that your “sensory memory” ritual remains constant throughout the years to help plant this smell, sight, sound or taste into your child’s long-term memory bank. Then sit back and take comfort in the fact that, someday years later, your adult child will taste a certain food or hear a certain tune and be instantly transported to a happy holiday memory from his or her childhood a memory that you helped create.
Start A Unique Tradition
Some families carry the traditions of their elders on throughout the generations, going to the same lake every Fourth of July or throwing a spooky Halloween party for the entire block. There is something very special about passing these rituals on to your own children, but to really make the holidays memorable, come up with at least one thing that is unique to your family.
If you are a single parent facing the holidays without a partner, this is a great opportunity to sit down and reflect on what you can do with your children that is inline with your values and interests. Are you the type of parent who loves to go camping with your children? Find a way to incorporate the great outdoors into your holiday traditions take a Thanksgiving Day hike to work up an appetite, plan a Fourth of July camping excursion to a favorite lake, or go cross-country skiing to mark the New Year.
Some families are blending vastly different cultural traditions or holiday rituals. Take Neuse, the acupuncturist from Rhode Island, for instance. Like many not-particularly-religious, middle-class Americans, Neuse isn’t beholden to her family’s holiday traditions. In fact, after she married a man who grew up as a secular Jew in the USSR, Neuse didn’t count on celebrating holidays at all. “He never observed holidays as a child, so he didn’t have those expectations,” Neuse says of her husband, Arnon. The couple may have foregone holidays altogether if not for the birth of their daughter, Lilith, in 2004. Suddenly, holiday celebrations held greater significance for Neuse and her husband.
“We’re weird enough as it is,” Neuse jokes, pointing out that her now-nine-year-old daughter doesn’t watch television and that her mother carries gluten-free, vegan cookies around in a glass jar for snacking emergencies. “We wanted to give Lilith a connection to the greater world around her and it was important that she have these shared experiences with the community.”
The family now celebrates most of the major Christian holidays, even though they are not religious and one of them was raised in a Jewish family. “For us, the holidays are all about community and about connecting with our friends,” Neuse says. “But we also do our own thing, like on Thanksgiving we usually go out of town and explore a new place.”
The family also adds their own unique twist to the holidays by observing Japanese traditions they picked up living and working in Japan for several years before their marriage.
“I love the Japanese holidays,” Neuse says. “I especially like the fact that, in Japan, no one works on the holidays. Well, emergency services people still work, but everyone really takes time to relax and to celebrate with their family and with the community. I’d like to introduce Lilith to more of these types of holidays.”
Incorporating new traditions into your life doesn’t have to be a time-consuming or overwhelming thing. For instance, next year, Neuse plans to introduce her family to Setsubun, a Japanese tradition of welcoming spring into the home by throwing beans out the window and saying a Japanese phrase that, essentially, means “evil outside, happiness inside.”
“It’s easy to do and it’s sort of a nice thing to do, to welcome spring into the house,” Neuse says. “Especially here in Oregon, after our long, grey winters.”
Neuse’s hope is that, when her own daughter grows up, she will remember these unique rituals and remember how good it feels to slow down sometimes, to mark certain days as special and to celebrate with friends, neighbors, and loved ones.
And that’s what it really comes down to, isn’t it? By making the holidays memorable for your children, you are ensuring that they will have a good “foundation of happiness” to carry them through life’s rough times, connect them to their family’s values, and help them understand how good it feels to take a break from the everyday worries and celebrate life’s special occasions.
