Forging Your Own Family Traditions

...and the examining, evaluating & reflection it involves. As Neha Ruch writes; "Love and tradition that pass on aren’t often the things that photograph well.”

This Easter I had been mulling over ideas around tradition and having little traditions for my own family that the kids will remember in the years to come. I can sometimes feel this overwhelming pressure that I’m not making my children’s childhood ‘fun and memorable’ enough - particularly when it comes to certain times of the year like Christmas and Easter. I am so conscious that childhood is a one-off, that I can’t mess it up or I’ll be messing them up.

I’m conscious too that many of the traditions of my own childhood, that I myself cherish as familiar highlights of my own experience of growing up, were quite simple and more about rhythms and feelings than an over-curation by my parents. For example, Sundays had a very particular feel - with, often, a breakfast at my Granny’s house and a delicious roast at home, maybe a hurling match to go to in the evening or on the television. The feeling was always relaxed, and we always wore nice clothes as we always went to mass too. And mass brought particular feelings and a rhythm to the day too. It had to be considered in terms of making any other plans for the day, and I always found it to be a place of calm and familiarity. I miss mass from my personal Sunday tradition now and yet don’t find myself missing it enough to bring my children there. A lack of faith is just a small part of that particular story (was faith ever a massive part of the Irish devotion to the Catholic Church?), because I see my remaining affiliations to the church as primarily nostalgic ones and a real feeling of ownership over the faith, given that I grew up going to Catholic schools led by nuns who intertwined the rhythms of religion so deeply into our day-to-day that it seeped into my DNA - and for the better, in many respects. I do get a pang when I reflect on my children’s lack of a more religious experience in general (how we sang so much throughout our childhood, the ceremony of big religious events, the quiet and peace of the school prayer room, the beautiful religious iconography and stories, the lack of expectation going into religion class in contrast to every single other subject…) but I do not have the devotion or energy to impart such traditions to them.

Which makes me often ponder over whether I feel we are lacking in traditions because I am lazy or because… who cares anyway, a sense of tradition will take care of itself?

And are traditions necessarily a conscious under-taking to do certain things? Or are traditions rhythms you fall into because you are drawn to certain activities?

At Easter, we don’t do the Easter Bunny. From the beginning it felt like Easter Bunny was inflicted upon us - Easter Bunny and egg hunts, none of which featured in my childhood, none of which I was interested in featuring in my children’s childhoods. And yet it’s easy to get carried along and into traditions you haven’t chosen, which create unnecessary work and can feel uncomfortable when put alongside your own values as a family. (I find family life a constant standing back to see do I want this for my family or do I think I need to be doing what it can feel like everyone else is doing for theirs…). When our children were younger it felt easier just to go with the ‘Yes, Easter Bunny will get you an egg this year’ and ‘Yes, there will be some eggs for you to look for outside’. But as they’ve grown older and get cleverer with their questions, it gets more complicated…

Suddenly you’re making up an entire background story about an Easter Bunny you never invited into your Easter traditions - one which you’re trying to align with stories they hear from friends and at school. And I know I’m not on my own when it comes to a severe discomfort with the lying. It’s hard to lie about an elaborate story about a bunny I myself can’t get behind (never mind the American-ness of it all!). The tooth fairy the same. Yes, the tooth fairy visits our house, but we don’t dwell on her. She always leaves €2, she doesn’t leave notes, she’s pretty forgetful (it once took her a full school week to remember to collect my son’s tooth, for which no doubt we are going straight to parenting hell… but we are just so tired). I suppose for me creating traditions is one thing, ‘creating magic’ is something entirely different. And I don’t want my traditions muckied up in things that feel over the top or money or ‘stuff’-based - because that’s not in line with my values.

Christmas is somewhat different and a time when we definitely go for that bit of magic - a reflection of mine and Alan’s own childhood experiences of that time of year. Santie visits and brings presents - we leave him out his snacks, we write to him, we look to the sky on Christmas Eve to see if we can spy him - but, as parents, we try not to overdo it because magic always operates best in the imagination (ask any parent allergic to The Elf for all the right reasons). As adults we can feel a massively (and misplaced) duty to make our children’s years ‘magical’ when this can only really happen within their own minds when they have the scope to and environment within which they can relax and extrapolate those stories for themselves.

Then this morning - amidst all my thinking and criticising my lack of effort to better-build traditions into our family life - I came across this perfectly timed quote from a writer I admire, Neha Ruch: “For the mother keeping holidays simple. One of my earliest memories is my mom lightly patting my back to help me sleep after telling me her dad had died. Last night, with a cold, I settled next to my son, and he did the same for me because I do it for him. Love and tradition that pass on aren’t often the things that photograph well.”

I have to remember that the key to creating a nice childhood and nice family memories is to keep it simple. When I feel that I’m not doing enough for my children I need to just sit down and be with them. And that’s most probably enough. The memories and their understanding of how we did things as traditions will happen itself, over time.

Because our kids are 6, 9 and 10 now, this year we felt able to have a conversation that confirmed that Easter Bunny does not visit our particular house. He may come to their friends’ homes, we explained, but in our house, they each get an egg from Mammy and Daddy. And that’s that. The conversation was short, the reaction was practically zero - apart from an immediate briefing in relation to what egg they wished to receive. It all felt more authentic and relaxed and didn’t take from their Easter Sunday experience - no more than having some kind of an experience where they searched for eggs or got an egg from Easter Bunny had previously added to their Easter Sunday experiences in the past.

And keeping it all that little bit simpler has made it a very relaxing Easter - there’s been no fussing or extra stuff to buy or disappointment from the kids on the day. There’s alot to be said for letting go of a kind of performance around tradition and just chilling out - something which I need to remember in relation to other facets of our family life - like an upcoming First Holy Communion we are all really looking forward to celebrating with as little fuss as possible.

I’ll say this for parenting - it really forces you to work stuff out!