How to Start a Family Tradition That Actually Means Something
If you want your family to have traditions that feel like yours, don’t start with what you should do every year. Start with how you want it to feel.
There are approximately nine million lists on the internet of family traditions you could start.
Matching Christmas pajamas. Friday pizza night. Birthday breakfasts. Annual camping trips. Movie marathons. First-day-of-school photos.
And some of those are great ideas.
But before you add another recurring obligation to the family calendar, there’s a better question:
What are you hoping this tradition creates?
Because the thing itself isn’t really the tradition.
The matching pajamas are pajamas. The birthday plate is a plate. The cake is cake.
They become traditions when you’ve done them enough times that everyone recognizes them as:
This is something our family does.
So if your family doesn’t have many traditions yet, don’t go looking for 47 of them.
Start with how you want your family to feel.
Find the feeling you’re after below, then steal an idea—or use it to invent one that’s entirely your family’s.
If you want to create wonder + anticipation
Some traditions are really about having something to look forward to.
In our house, Christmas presents don’t go under the tree as they’re purchased. We wait until the kids are asleep on Christmas Eve.
The official policy has always been:
If you don’t believe, you don’t receive.
Even now that they’re teenagers, I still do it.
Partly because I know perfectly well some of them would peek.
But mostly because I love the surprise of Christmas morning—the tree that looked one way when you went to bed suddenly surrounded by presents when you wake up.
And apparently you don’t necessarily age out of this stuff.
We used to put candy-filled Easter eggs out before the kids woke up, even after they were teenagers. When we stopped, they were surprisingly disappointed.
Last year, I brought Easter eggs to a beach house and hid them because my teenagers specifically requested it.
Apparently the sense of childhood wonder remains very important.
So does candy.
THE CHRISTMAS MORNING REVEAL
Keep the presents hidden until Christmas Eve so the tree transforms overnight.
THE EASTER MORNING EGGS
Hide candy-filled eggs before everyone wakes up. Teenagers remain eligible. Possibly especially teenagers.
THE TRAVELING ELF
Have an elf appear each December and occasionally get into mischief. How ambitious his employment becomes is entirely up to you.
THE MYSTERY OUTING
Plan one family outing a year and don’t reveal where you’re going until everyone gets in the car.
THE BIRTHDAY WAKE-UP
Decorate the kitchen or bedroom door before the birthday person wakes up.
THE FIRST-MORNING BREAKFAST
Serve the same special breakfast on the first morning of every vacation.
The point isn’t to manufacture magic every Tuesday.
It’s to create something people know is coming—and still get excited about when it does.
And don’t assume your kids have outgrown a tradition before they have. Sometimes the teenager who no longer believes any of the mythology would still very much like to wake up and find chocolate scattered around the house.
If you want to create belonging
Matching family Christmas pajamas do this for us.
Are they groundbreaking? No.
Does everyone always look equally enthusiastic about wearing them? Also no.
But everybody gets a pair because everybody belongs to the group.
THE FAMILY PAJAMAS
Everyone gets a pair. Enthusiasm is not a prerequisite for membership.
THE BIRTHDAY PLATE
Use the same special plate for every person’s birthday—including when the person eating from it is 37.
THE SAME-SPOT PHOTO
Take one family photo in the same place every year and watch everybody change around it.
THE VACATION SHIRT
Make family shirts for an annual trip, reunion or event.
THE ORNAMENT PICK
Let each child choose one ornament every Christmas and save them all. When they eventually have a home of their own, send the collection with them so their first tree already has a little family history on it.
THE FIRST-NIGHT DINNER
Eat at the same place—or make the same meal—on the first night of every family trip.
These things don’t have to be impressive to outsiders.
In fact, some of the best ones probably won’t be.
They just need to eventually make someone say:
Wait. Aren’t we doing the thing?
That’s when you know you’ve got one.
If you want someone to feel celebrated
I decorate the kitchen for my kids’ birthdays.
Nothing elaborate is required. Decorations go up before they wake up. There’s usually a cake. Sometimes there’s a favorite breakfast. Sometimes Starbucks enters the situation, depending on the ambition level of the birthday department that morning.
But I always do something.
Because the point isn’t really the decorations.
The point is for them to walk into the kitchen and immediately know:
Somebody thought about me before I even got out of bed.
THE BIRTHDAY KITCHEN
Put up a few decorations before the birthday person wakes up. It doesn’t need to look professionally installed.
THE BIRTHDAY PLATE
Bring out the same ridiculous plate every year. There is no upper age limit.
THE FAVORITE BREAKFAST
Make it, buy it or pick it up on the way home from Starbucks. The feeling is the point.
THE BIRTHDAY-PERSON-PICKS DINNER
They choose. Everyone else temporarily suspends their restaurant opinions.
THE BIRTHDAY NOTE
Leave a handwritten note at their place at the table every year.
THE PERMANENT BIRTHDAY BANNER
Hang the same one every year until it’s practically a member of the family.
You don’t need all six.
Choose one or two you can imagine still doing when the person sitting at the birthday plate is 37.
If you want to pass down something that matters
My mother-in-law used to gather all the cousins for a nativity every Christmas Eve.
She did it year after year until she eventually became too old to keep doing it.
It wasn’t just something for the cousins to do. It was a way of sharing something that mattered to her with the next generation.
Traditions can do that remarkably well. They can carry beliefs, recipes, stories, skills and family history forward without anyone needing to announce that you’re currently creating a meaningful intergenerational experience.
You just do the thing again.
THE FAMILY RECIPE
Make the same recipe together every Thanksgiving or Christmas and eventually teach the younger people how to make it.
GRANDMA TEACHES THE DISH
Ask the person known for a particular pie, bread, sauce or casserole to teach someone younger how it’s actually made.
THE QUESTIONABLE RECIPE CARD
Make an old family recipe exactly as written—even if one of the measurements is inexplicably “a little bit.”
THE CHRISTMAS EVE READING
Read the same story, scripture or poem aloud every year.
THE THANKSGIVING STORY
Ask the oldest person at the table to tell everyone about one Thanksgiving they remember from childhood.
THE THING THAT COMES OUT EVERY YEAR
Use an inherited serving dish, ornament, tablecloth or other family object and tell the story of where it came from.
The activity doesn’t need to look important.
It becomes important because of what travels with it.
If you want to preserve a little of this part of life
When my kids were growing up, I had a scrapbook that came out at their birthday parties.
I asked guests to write something in it, with the idea that eventually I’d give it to each child when they turned 18.
I love traditions like this because they’re doing two things at once.
You’re living the day.
And you’re quietly leaving a little evidence that it happened.
THE BIRTHDAY SCRAPBOOK
Ask party guests to write a note each year and eventually give the collection to your child.
THE SAME FIVE QUESTIONS
Ask the same questions every birthday and save the answers. The changes will become the interesting part.
THE BIRTHDAY LETTER
Write one short letter every year and keep them together to give later.
THE FIRST-DAY PHOTO
Take the same first-day-of-school photo every year. No elaborate sign required.
THE CHRISTMAS CARD ALBUM
Save one family Christmas card each year instead of eventually throwing every copy away.
THE MEMORY BOX
On New Year’s Eve, have everyone write down one favorite memory from the year and keep the notes together.
You don’t have to preserve everything.
Please don’t preserve everything.
But twenty years from now, you may be very glad somebody saved a little.
If you want more connection
Some traditions exist mostly because they reliably put the same people in the same place.
That’s enough.
THE FIRST-SATURDAY PANCAKES
Have pancakes together on the first Saturday of every month.
THE ANNUAL BEACH OR LAKE DAY
Pick one summer weekend and put it on the calendar every year.
THE COUSINS’ DINNER
Get everyone together once in December before the holiday schedules become completely ridiculous.
THE SUNDAY DINNER
Make one meal the place people know they’re welcome to show up.
THE UNNECESSARY TROPHY
Hold the same family game tournament every year and award a trophy far more serious than the competition warrants.
THE VACATION NIGHT IN
Choose one night on every trip when everyone stays in, orders food and plays cards.
The tradition doesn’t need an elaborate premise.
Sometimes we keep making time to be together is the entire point.
Please don’t start all of these
This is where a list of family traditions can become dangerous.
You read it and suddenly think:
We should have matching pajamas and monthly pancakes and annual letters and a vacation photo and a birthday interview and a signature Thanksgiving recipe and perhaps our own family Olympics.
No.
Pick the feeling.
Then pick one thing that could create it.
If you want your children to feel celebrated on their birthdays, buy the ridiculous birthday plate.
If you want Christmas to have more anticipation, keep the presents hidden until everyone is asleep.
If you want a family recipe to survive another generation, ask Grandma to teach everybody how to make it this Thanksgiving.
That’s enough.
The meaning comes later, after your family has had time to attach its own memories to the thing.
And then let your traditions change
Starting a tradition does not mean signing a lifetime contract with it.
Our Christmas elf is a good example.
I love the elf. I do.
But at some point, he became a surprisingly demanding seasonal employee.
Apparently you’re not supposed to touch him or he loses his magic. My older kids enjoyed demonstrating to the younger kids that this was not, in fact, how elf magic worked. This eventually resulted in apology notes to the elf for failing to respect his boundaries.
There were incidents.
Meanwhile, somebody was expected to relocate this employee every night and apparently provide him with fresh activities, props and increasingly elaborate working conditions.
So we’ve restructured.
The elf now works from home.
He still reports for the Christmas season. He has no guaranteed travel schedule. If another member of the household would like to facilitate a relocation, management fully supports that initiative.
What he no longer has is a nightly performance quota.
Everybody’s happier.
We didn’t get rid of the tradition.
We kept the fun and eliminated the job.
Keep it. Change it. Retire it.
Every once in a while, it’s worth asking what a tradition is actually doing for your family.
KEEP IT if it still creates something you value.
It might take effort. That’s okay. Effort isn’t automatically the problem.
Decorating the kitchen before a birthday takes effort. Waiting until Christmas Eve to put out presents takes effort. My mother-in-law’s annual nativity certainly took effort.
Sometimes the effort is worth it.
CHANGE IT when the meaning still matters but the execution doesn’t work anymore.
The elf can work from home.
The elaborate Christmas dinner can become brunch.
The annual trip can become every other year.
Traditions are allowed to grow up with the family.
RETIRE IT when nobody particularly wants it anymore.
We used to go Black Friday shopping after Thanksgiving.
It was a thing we did.
Now I have approximately zero desire to fight crowds, find parking and wait in long lines for something I could buy several days later without any of the drama.
Some people genuinely love the excitement of Black Friday.
I don’t anymore.
Nothing went wrong.
I changed.
That’s enough.
One caveat: before you officially retire something, you might want to check with the rest of the family.
Otherwise you may find yourself at a beach house several years later, hiding Easter eggs for teenagers who would like to know why management ever discontinued this service in the first place.
Start one thing worth repeating
If your family doesn’t have many traditions, you aren’t behind.
Pick a feeling.
I belong here.
Something good is coming.
Today I’m being celebrated.
This matters to our family.
We make time for each other.
I want to remember this.
Then choose one small thing that might create it.
Do it once.
If your family likes it, do it again.
Eventually, somebody will notice when you don’t.
And years from now, the thing your kids remember probably won’t be the elaborate thing you thought you were supposed to create.
It might be the birthday plate.
The pajamas.
The box of ornaments that eventually leaves your house to decorate their own tree.
The scrapbook full of messages from people who showed up for their birthdays.
The cake you made for Santa because the man doesn’t always want cookies.
The Easter eggs you apparently had no authorization to discontinue.
Or waking up on Christmas morning and wondering how all those presents got there.
That’s the good stuff.
