Simple Family Traditions to Plan for in the New Year

How were your holidays? Ours were filled with the joy of family traditions, through New Year’s Day.

Each year, we prepare the same Christmas Eve menu and I bake the same braided wreath bread for Christmas morning.

Our fancy dinner is on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day is a more casual affair with a charcuterie board lunch and seafood, such as Dungeness crab, for dinner.

Being Japanese, our holiday prep doesn’t end after Christmas. We pound mochi (rice cakes), roll sushi, and prepare other symbolic foods for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

A Calendar of Family Tradition Ideas

No doubt your family already has its own valued traditions. But here are some new ones you might want to adopt this year.

For a tradition to really take hold, it has to be continued faithfully from year to year; to the point where the family anticipates the activity and would be disappointed if it were to be discontinued. These traditions give grandkids something to look forward to and to count on each year.

Family traditions must be something the family truly wants to support, either because it’s fun, brings the family together, or enriches the family’s heritage in some way.

Family traditions create lasting memories that kids will treasure for years to come. You know you have a winner when your adult children say: “When we were kids, we used to always….” “I couldn’t wait each year until….”

Grandparents are in a good position to keep family traditions alive–and to start new traditions. I discovered during the pandemic, that you can even maintain some traditions long distance.

Spring Family Traditions

• Invite grandkids for an annual valentine cookie bake. Ask the school in advance if children can take cookies in for the class. Package cookies in clear cellophane bags for food safety.
• Host a family Valentine’s Day dinner to give everyone something to look forward to after the holidays. You don’t need a fancy menu, but dress up the table with Valentine decorations, have the kids make Valentine cards, and give each family member an inexpensive or homemade gift.
• We make cascarones every Easter. Kids love crushing these Mexican confetti eggs over people’s heads to bring them good luck. Show the grandkids how to make them from hollowed-out eggs and colored paper scraps. You can even craft these together long distance.

Summer Family Traditions

• Take the grandkids on a modest, overnight car trip out of town. It’s always exciting to be away from home, even if you don’t drive more than a few hours to your destination. Or, have the kids over and just pretend that you are away–even “visiting” another country.
• Make a “Grandma’s Summer Reading Program” for the grandkids. Take them to the library to borrow books. Award prizes for a certain number of books read over the summer.
• Plan a blow-out, end-of-school party at the beginning of summer, or an end-of-summer ice cream party before school starts. Or stage a more elaborate summer event with food and games.
• Start a summer camp for the grandkids. Here are some activities for a Camp Grandma program.

Fall Family Traditions

• For more than 20 years, our family held a Labor Day gift exchange. Why we started this family tradition is a long story. We’d do a secret drawing; the spending limit was a nominal $15. It was a treat to give and get a little gift off-season. We exchanged the gifts during our annual Labor Day family barbecue.

• Make a gratitude jar for Thanksgiving. Have everyone write what they are thankful for on slips of paper. Date all the sentiments to reminisce at Thanksgivings years later.
• Invite a willing grandchild for a sleepover Thanksgiving Eve to help with the next day’s dinner prep. It’s great bonding time to work together and you can share family stories as you work.
• If you make year-end donations to worthy causes, involve the grandkids in deciding which organizations you’ll be supporting. Discuss the various charities you are considering and have the grandkids vote. It will help them empathize with the needs of others and they may want to contribute some allowance money, too.
• When the days grow shorter, we have outdoor movie nights in our backyard. My son brings his projector and movie screen to stream movies. The kids huddle in coats and blankets, while drinking hot cocoa. Alternatively, host a grandparents’ movie night indoors.

Winter Family Traditions

• Do an annual cookie baking session with the grandkids. Make the doughs and icings in advance so the kids can get started rolling, baking, and decorating.

• Host a “gingerbread” house construction party for the family, long-distance by zoom or in person. Use graham crackers.
• Give the kids their own Christmas tree to decorate in your house; we use a small, artificial tree that belonged to my mother. This is especially great for little ones who aren’t yet able to decorate a big tree.
• Take the grandkids downtown to see the Christmas lights; go for dessert afterwards or have dessert at home.
• Read a special Christmas book or watch a favorite Christmas movie together every year.
• Take the grandkids shopping to buy toys with their own money for kids in need. Every member of our family participates in our local firefighters’ toy drive each year.
• Take the grandkids shopping to buy a gift with their own money for mom and dad. Brainstorm ideas together before you go so kids aren’t just wandering aimlessly in the store. A store like Target offers a variety of gift possibilities.

• Organize a family picture night at Christmastime, a tradition we began when my first-born was a baby. This activity ensures that we have group pictures of the whole family each year.
• Since Miss T was born, I’ve been buying her–and now her brother–a Christmas party outfit each year. They wear their party clothes to the Nutcracker ballet and for dinner Christmas Eve. I start searching for sales online around mid-November and I pin the affordable candidates to my private Pinterest board. Then, the kids log into my Pinterest account and choose from the images that I’ve predetermined will fit my budget and personal taste.
• At the end of the year, make a movie featuring photos and videos of the family’s year. Have a screening with popcorn and snacks.

Family Traditions for any Time of Year

• Set aside a day of the week for family dinner. Our night has been Friday, without fail, for 10 years, except during the height of the pandemic and occasionally, when other events are in conflict. This is our family bonding time and time to touch base each week. The meals aren’t fancy and sometimes, they’re just takeout burgers.
• Plan an annual outing with the grandkids. For example, consider a short hiking trip to view fall leaves, a spring wildflower nature walk, or an art museum trip.
• Visit a u-pick orchard and prepare your bounty together, such as gathering apples and making a pie.

• Have regular family game nights where all generations play together.
• Make each child feel special by taking them out individually, for a grandparent-to-grandchild date. It might be lunch or tea at a restaurant, a picnic in the park, or going to a performance of a play. You might tie the invitation to a special occasion, such as a child’s birthday or holiday event.

Here are other great family tradition ideas to start this year.

More about our New Year Traditions

I expected that when my mother passed away, we would discontinue the New Year food traditions, which are pretty exhausting to maintain, following on the heels of Thanksgiving and Christmas. But heritage dies hard, and even 10 years later, we continue to do what my Japanese immigrant grandparents did in Hawaii for the New Year more than a century ago.

While you can buy mochi (rice cakes), we make them in an electric mochi maker, which cooks the mochi rice and “pounds” the rice grains into a smooth mass. My grandparents would have used a wooden mallet to pound the rice in a wooden tub.

Here’s a video from Japan; no doubt my grandparents made mochi the same way.

Although we call them “rice cakes,” they aren’t sweet like cake–just bland rice–an acquired taste. Some mochi are kept plain for soup or to coat with kinako (roasted soybean powder mixed with sugar). Some we fill with anko (sweet red bean paste) as we shape the patties.

We also have soba noodle soup for New Year’s Eve, ozoni (mochi soup) for breakfast New Year’s Day, and a feast including sushi and nishime (a kind of one-pot dish with meat and vegetables simmered together).

We no longer prepare the rest of the more traditional New Year’s dishes. Instead, we enjoy a potluck where each family member cooks at least one dish–mostly Japanese, but occasionally Korean, Chinese, Thai, Filipino, or other Asian fare. I’m just left to make the sushi, which has eased my cooking responsibilities considerably.

What are your Family Traditions?

I’d love to know about your own family traditions. Please share with us below.

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