Think back to when you were a little girl. What do you remember most about the holiday season? How many specific gifts can you really remember? I remember one gift in particular...I was about 12. It was a bicycle: purple bike, banana seat, tall, curvy handlebars with the sparkly things from the handlebars – a very cool bike. But what I remember most was that mom and dad had hidden the bikes from my sister and me. After all the other presents were opened, mom and dad made up some excuse for Kathy and me to go into our utility room, and there we got the joy of discovering our fashionable, sparkly new bikes. You know, I don’t remember one other present from that Christmas. But it was the way my parents planned for us to discover the gifts and the surprise that had the lasting effect. It is the memories we make with family and the times that we spend together that are what truly have a lasting effect on us.
As we move into what usually proves to be one of the busiest seasons of the year, it is easy to get caught up in the frenzy that comes with shopping, wrapping, baking, hosting, and decorating. Sometimes we can become so busy that we lose the meaning and people in the midst of the all the activity. I want to slow down the pace long enough to challenge us to think about how this season can be different. How can we as women be deliberate and purposeful in our planning so that we can make meaningful memories for our family; memories that promote family togetherness and other-centered service; memories that point us to the faithfulness of our God? How can we use family traditions to facilitate these memories, not just during the holidays, but everyday?
Noel Piper in her book, Treasuring God in Our Traditions, gives us three definitions of traditions:
- A tradition is a planned habit with significance.
- A tradition is the handing down of information, beliefs, or worldview from one generation to another by word of mouth and by regular repetition of example, of ceremony, of celebration.
- For a Christian, tradition is laying up God’s words in our own hearts and passing His words to the next generation.
Traditions are one generation declaring to the next the faithfulness and the
wondrous works of the Lord. Recently, I was reading a book by where the author refers to family traditions as “we always.” I love that phrase! “We always” do breakfast in bed on birthdays. “We always” have a “Happy Birthday, Jesus” cake for Christmas dinner dessert. “We always” bake together as a family at Christmas. When your kids think back someday on your family, what will they remember fondly as the “we always?" Let’s focus on two categories where we can practice traditions or our “we always” with purpose in our families through what I call “Everyday traditions” and “Special Day Traditions.”
First, let’s consider “Everyday traditions.” You are all familiar with Deuteronomy 6: 5-7 where we are instructed to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and might and then to have these words on our heart and to teach them diligently to our children and talk of them when we sit in our house and when we walk by the way and when we lie down and when we rise up. Have you ever thought about the fact that your daily habits and routines can become, as Noel Piper defines it, “a habit with significance” where you can carry out the commands of Deuteronomy 6?
Noel challenges us in her book to think through our daily walking, rising, talking, and going to bed times, and ask the Lord to show us how we can establish habits or traditions with meaning. How can our daily traditions pass on and proclaim God’s Word and faithfulness from one generation to the next?
Here are some ideas to get you thinking:
- setting the example by having a regular quiet time (Will your family be able to say “we always” knew mom was having her quiet time and praying for us?)
- family devotions
- family nights
- meal times together
- tucking them in times
- date night with daddy
- having special family recipes or meals
- travel time habits – “We always” pray in the car before a trip. Maybe it is singing hymns as you travel? When I was little, “we always” counted windmills as we traveled to south Texas, knowing the more we saw, the closer we were to MamMa and Grandpa’s house.
- bath time – a reminder of how God washes our sins away
- making Sunday special (Karen Mains has a book by that title with helps)
- read aloud time
- praying together
- keeping a family journal or scrapbook
God also established “Special Day” traditions. Think about the ordinance of the Passover Feast for the Israelites in Exodus 12:42. It is a night to be observed for the LORD for having brought them out from the land of Egypt. This night is for the LORD, to be observed by all the sons of Israel throughout their generations. He also established the Feast of the Unleavened Bread: “Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance,” (Exodus 12:14). Besides the everyday remembrances, God gave special days for remembering.
Noel Piper shares a story in her book where a college friend had heard once too often, somebody pontificating that, “Every day should be Mother’s Day,” or “Every day should be as significant as Christmas.” Finally, the student exclaimed, “No! All days are NOT the same! God knows we need ‘especially.’” Noel says, “God appointed special days, such as the Passover, for His people and gave them ceremonies to set those days off from the others. The ceremony of a special day keeps it from slipping away like an ordinary day. We stop and recognize the specialness of an event in large part because of the traditions in which it’s wrapped… our ‘especially’ celebrations anchor us and our children in the harbor of our family, reflecting our true refuge: God.”
I suggest that you sit down with a calendar and think through the year and the holidays and special days that your family celebrates. Choose times that your family will celebrate and consider how you can add special meaning to these special days in your family. Hear me say this: I do NOT want you to feel guilty or to think of this as one more thing to add to your already-too-long “to do” list. It may be that the best thing you can do to make holidays more meaningful in your home is to simplify! Sometimes we need to “do more… better” and sometimes we need to “do less… better.”
Tomorrow: A list of practical ideas to jump start your thinking
