Creating New
Family Traditions
Note* I grew up Catholic so I'm going to refer to Christmas, but the sentiment applies to any holiday you celebrate:-)
Reconnect Our Family Energetically
As I was writing the first blog post in the Gifting Reimagined series, I wondered how our family could shake things up even more than normal. Since we have been living apart for the past 5 months, I wanted to do something to help us reconnect in a meaningful way once we were reunited over Christmas.
We normally take a family trip in lieu of physical gifts, but with travel off the table, I didn't want to succumb to the patriarchal pressure to just buy buy buy as our back up plan. Luckily, I felt zero need to “make up” for this perceived “lame” or “lost” year.
Most importantly, I wanted to get as far away from the subtle, but palpable concept that our worth is tied to the value or quantity of our gifts.
Each of us is priceless, and truly there’s no amount of money than can even come close to that value!
So I meditated and asked: How can we create an extra special, meaningful, and different Christmas this year for our family?
Two fun ideas immediately came to mind. I ran them by the family and braced myself for protests—surprisingly everyone agreed!
Secret Santa
This first idea is rather common for extended family relations, but we’d never done this for just our immediate family. I have teens who have jobs and cash, but you could still help younger children if you decide to do this as well.
Rather than the five of us each buying gifts for five people, I thought it would be fun to do a Secret Santa. I picked names out of a hat and assigned each person a giftee. No one but me and the gifter would know who their recipient would be. This means 5 gifts are created or bought instead of 25—a gift to our Earth as well!
We agreed to a limited budget to encourage each giver to get creative and personal with their gift—to think outside the proverbial box. Each person will do a presentation when they reveal themselves about why they chose their particular gift and what it means.
I’m thrilled to be able to focus on just my one person and looking forward to seeing the creativity from the rest of the fam!
Honoring
This next part is what I’m most excited about! While the idea appeared to me in my meditation, I’d first learned about it from my kids’ middle school. It’s called Honoring.
The idea is similar to the Secret Santa in that no one knows who is honoring whom (except me because I needed to be sure the Secret Santa and honoree were different).
The person doing the honoring does research on their assigned honoree. They can interview their person’s friends, colleagues, or extended family members to learn about stories that our immediately might not know. They can ask what character traits their friends appreciate as well as tap into their own experiences for appreciation.
The person doing the Honoring will then use all that information and write a speech, practice it, and present it at our family gathering. The speech can be funny, sincere or dramatic, but it must HONOR. The presenter can give small tokens or gag gifts, but the true gift is the speech aka the Honoring.
This is a sacred rite of passage at the middle school with limited bystanders, so I have not experienced it myself. I have heard, however, that it’s deeply moving not only for the person doing the honoring and the honoree, but for those fortunate enough to bear witness to the presentations. It sounds like it’s an energetic exchange at the Soul level and a beautiful experience for everyone involved.
I’m truly grateful that my children not only agreed to this non-traditional Christmas, but they embraced it knowing full well it will be hard to explain to their peers and they won’t have much to “show” afterward.
And that's it.
We will order a delicious vegan dinner from a local woman-owned business, expound upon the Blessing Over the Meal, do a few gratitude rounds, play board games, walk the dog on the beach and just enjoy being together.
Whatever holiday you celebrate, I hope this Gifting Reimagined series has reminded you that you have sovereignty to create meaningful holidays however YOU desire!
Daily #Goal
Every day I aspire to reach this level of gratitude. Since it has a holiday theme, I wanted to share here. Happiest of Holidays!!
This experience was literally one of the most stressful of my life! And that is saying a LOT given I’d already overcome years of infertility trying to get these amazing kids, survived cancer while completing grad school, and moved internationally three times in two years.