How to Make Holiday Traditions Live on

I love the holidays–decorating, cooking, and family gatherings! To ensure our holiday traditions live on in the next generation, I’m trying to interest Miss T, who is nine, into helping with preparations, teaching her everything I know about food, entertaining, and design.

By nature, Miss T is helpful and always wants to learn. A veritable information sponge, she is focused and careful–the perfect candidate. For another child, this could be a boring chore, instead of a fun time working side by side with grandma.

Setting Up the “Lessons”

Here are tips that worked for me this past Thanksgiving:

• Give yourself enough time for holiday preparations because it’s hard to teach if you’re running behind. At Thanksgiving, Miss T arrived Wednesday afternoon and spent the night.
• Start with an overview of the menu, getting the child’s input on which dishes we should make when, to ensure everything is ready at the appointed time. This helps her to see the bigger picture and teaches her organizational skills.

• Have child-appropriate tools. For example, the Oxo swivel peeler is easy to use and quite safe for careful kids. I asked Miss T to bring her own knife, one I bought her at Christmas two years ago. It’s designed for her smaller hands and engineered for novice cooks.
• No matter how capable they may be, keep one eye on your work and one eye on the child–especially when they are handling a knife or working at the stove or oven.

Try these easy holiday decorating tips.

• Don’t let the child use electric appliances, the stove, or oven if they’ve never done it before. Save this for a time when you can give them your full attention and provide safety lessons.
• Give the child options. Let them do the part of the project they want and you do the rest. You’re trying to engage their interest; not make them your sous chef.
• If the child gets tired, set them free. Miss T will do cartwheels and handstands, just for fun. Or she can play my iPad games. She’ll return when she’s ready.

What a Child can Do

Here are some things that children, depending on their skill level, might do on their own:

• Chopping vegetables
• Making a salad
• Making cranberry sauce
• Assembling the green bean casserole (yes, we still make it)

Teamwork for a Complicated Project

To make a Thanksgiving apple pie, Miss T measured the ingredients for the dough; I ran the food processor. I used Kate McDermott’s book, Art of the Pie, for my recipe. We each rolled out half the dough.

For the filling, Miss T peeled the apples while I halved and cored them. Then she sliced the apples and measured the ingredients for the filing.

To assemble, I used my dough to line the pie plate; she and I cut out leaves from the hers. I expected to arrange the leaves on the pie myself, but watching me, Miss T asked, “Can I try that?”

At first, I was a little hesitant. I needn’t have worried. I showed her how to place the leaves evenly over the filling, dabbing the ends with water when overlapping them. Together, we covered the pie.

Holiday Traditions: The Themed Table

During our downtime, we set the table. Miss T is quite experienced, having set the table for our Friday night dinners since she was three.

I had purchased small pumpkins, squash, and Indian corn for the table centerpiece. We discussed which napkins and candlesticks would go best with the elegant china we were using, contrasted with the rustic centerpiece.

I gave her tips for making the centerpiece: look for colorful, unblemished fall produce with beautiful stems. Use bunches of grapes and small apples to fill up the spaces between the larger items. And finally, twine ivy over everything to add a rhythmic quality to the arrangement and to hold the disparate elements together, visually.

We determined who would sit where for the most convivial conversation and set the place cards accordingly. As her last table assignment, I had Miss T do a final check to make sure all the silverware were lined up straight, at right angles to the table; the napkins were just so; and the wine and water goblets sat precisely above the knife.

After the Dinner

The children have been taught at home to clear the table, so after dinner. Miss T and Little N took everyone’s dishes back to the kitchen carefully, one plate at a time.

One day, Miss T will realize that there’s quite a lot of remaining after-the-party work to be done, but for now, I just want her to enjoy the creative aspects. After the guests departed, grandpa hand-washed the dishes and grandma dried and put them away. No need to bring up that reality to her for now.

Unwrapping the Christmas Ornaments

“Can I come and help when you decorate the tree?’ Miss T asked. “Of course you can,” I most heartily agreed.

Our Christmas tree is complicated–there are hundreds of ornaments and there’s a certain way I decorate that may seem obsessive, to some. But for me, it’s my own art form.

So Miss T came on Saturday afternoon just for the unwrapping. We removed tissue from the ornaments and organized them into Costco cardboard trays by material category: wood, straw, ceramic, glass, paper, fancy blown glass, and plain balls.

There is an extra category of specialist ornaments. These are solutions to specific challenges:

• Ones that sit on the top of branches, such as clip-on birds, to fill in flat, open areas
• Long ornaments, like glass icicles, to bridge the space between two gaping vertical branches
• Lightweight ornaments, like Mexican straw stars, to fill in between the flimsier branches.

Passing on Family Stories

While we unwrap, I tell her stories. The clown ornaments are from when our family went to Efteling, a fairytale theme park in the Netherlands. The wooden Polish birds are among the first ornaments grandpa and I bought in New York the year we were married. The faded red roses came free on Christmas gift packages from Bonwit Teller in the 1970s. Grandpa would buy grandma sweaters that were always too large, even the size small, so they would have to be returned, but we’d get to keep the roses…. And so on….

I know know Miss T won’t remember all the stories. But last year, I made a book of ornaments to tell the origins of my favorite pieces. One day, all the ornaments will be dispersed and many will go to other homes. Hopefully, the book will remain in the family as a memento of our holiday traditions.

Holiday Tradition: Decorating the Tree

The next day, Miss T came at 9 a.m.–so excited was she to decorate the tree. We put on Christmas music to get into the holiday spirit.

We started by filling in any gaping holes first, using our large ornaments.

While she has free rein to decorate as she chooses, I do explain which ornaments work best–shiny instead of matte, ornaments that reflect light, rather than those that absorb light (ornaments made of wood, cloth, paper, or straw). And how to put plain glass balls behind the light-absorbing ornaments to make them pop.

Aside from a snack break and lunch, Miss T worked happily from 9 to 3:30–a very long day. When she grew tired before her pick-up time, I allowed her to watch videos (this is only for special occasions).

Thanks to her help, I finished the tree and put away all the ornament boxes that night; a task that usually takes two days.

During our upcoming Friday night family dinner, Little N and Miss T will decorate the kids’ tree in the family room to ensure that he is included in the festivities.

What the Child Learns from Holiday Traditions

Engaging Miss T in this way is a work in progress–it’s the first of, I hope, many sessions, depending on her continued interest and enthusiasm. Here’s what she learns:

• How to plan and execute a complicated project–a dinner party has a lot of moving parts. From reviewing a menu, to planning a cooking schedule, to setting the table–she is learning to organize and execute.
• Learning to be precise–setting the table instills in her a respect for precision.
• Gaining confidence–being able to accomplish big projects helps her to build confidence in her abilities and instills a willingness to try new things.
• Appreciating the aesthetics–whether it’s plating, setting the table, or decorating a Christmas tree, we put the same effort into incorporating art and design.
• Appreciation for tradition–by being a part of making the celebrations happen, I am hoping to give her an appreciation for family traditions and a desire to continue them when she’s grown up.

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