The smell of bread baking every Friday morning, family reunions with water balloon fights, and customized wacky sweaters from grandma.
These are all family traditions some hold onto tightly through the generations, whether they like them or not.
But the beauty of having your own family is that you get to choose which family traditions you want to continue and nix the ones that don’t have value to you – or even make up entirely new traditions of your own like these 5 kid favorites!
You can probably attest from your own experiences that some family traditions were more of a bother than an anticipated event.
I mean, how many funky sock exchanges is enough?
Then there are the family traditions you can’t see yourself living without that add value and meaning to you and your family’s life.
Or maybe you don’t have any traditions and you want to pass some meaningful ones onto your children and your children’s children.
Whatever the case, you will appreciate these 5 fun, family traditions that will keep the family together no matter where they are.
- Sunday Dinners
The week can get chaotic very quickly and all the planned dinners can turn into grabbing fast food on the way to soccer practice.
Setting aside Sunday as a day the family sits down together for a meal is the much-needed break the whole crew needs – and will look forward to all week.
This tradition may even extend generations where you go to your grandmother’s for Sunday family dinner or rotate through other members of the family.
It can be elaborate with a meal of homemade everything, or an evening where you order pizza and talk about the upcoming week and finally ask dad how that new gym membership is going.
- Lakeside Fun
There are countless family memories by a lake – paddle boating with eighteen of your cousins, doing front flips off the dock, and fishing quietly with grandpa.
Lucia H. from Des Moines, Iowa told Café Mom what lake time with her family means to her:
“Our family has been going to the same lake resort in Minnesota for 40 years and I so treasure my memories of playing with my cousins on the beach, so now we go with my kids and they are getting the same magical week of lake time every year. It is worth every mosquito bite!”
If you don’t already have lake weeks as part of your family tradition, then now is the time to incorporate this expansive outdoor event into your memory box.
- Half-Birthday Bash
While your child’s birthday is usually an exciting time of year where the sugar runs freely and you are cleaning up tissue paper for a week, the half-birthday can be a much more intimate tradition.
This tradition works especially well for the kids who have birthdays that get lost in the bustle of major holidays, like for Ellie O from Jackson, Mississippi and her children.
Cafe Mom shares more:
“My birthday is December 23rd and my mom started a tradition of making a big fuss about my half birthday, so I’d have my party and get birthday gifts then, so it didn’t get blurred with Christmas. Now I have one kiddo with a December birthday and I do the same for them!”
- Yearly State Fair
The state fair is a grease-filled, roller-coaster riding, bucking bronco good time!
Yes, the rides all go in a circle and are grossly overpriced, and the games are near impossible to win at, but the kids love it.
The great thing is, it’s a family tradition where someone else picks the date and provides the entertainment.
All you have to do is show up – and bring extra clothes for when your preteen convinces you they want to go on the Gravitron that spins insanely fast while sticking you to the inside of sweaty vertical gurney – despite all the warnings from your own childhood memories.
- Family Reunions
So often in our hectic lifestyles, extended family gets forgotten until a holiday card comes in the mail or a new baby is born.
Showing your children that sticking close to family even when it’s not convenient or part of your daily routine with a family reunion could be just the thing your tradition menu needs.
This is assuming, of course, your family are fairly safe individuals who won’t corrupt your children in a weekend.
You could even combine ideas and have a weekend at a lake house for your family reunion, or a local pavilion where everyone brings a dish to pig out and play volleyball for the day.
Family traditions may seem Iike a nuisance at times, but having something consistent, safe, and fun your children can look forward to year after year will mean more than you realize.
You may even have a family tradition you were unaware of, like gathering around the television every Friday after your son’s football game, that’s already giving the kids memories they will hold onto for a lifetime.