Keeping Family Tradition Alive-Part 1

Keeping family tradition alive is especially an uphill battle when you have tweens and teens in the house because they tend to want to do their own activities and resent being brow beaten into do anything that distract them from their preferred activities such as keeping up with facebook, watching favorite TV series, x-box games, chatting and etc.

I have a 13-year-old, and an 11-year-old. Putting up the Christmas tree had always been something both my children look forward to. Our tree is 14 years old, and 7 feet tall. It has moved with us from Colorado, Florida, Indonesia and Singapore. It has stood in all the 6 homes we lived in during those years. Our Christmas ornaments also bear the marks of history. Except for the colored balls, each has its own unique story which bring back lots of cherished memory of good friends we have cross path with in the past. Some ornaments are also reminders of difficult times passed through. Some ornaments are the kids' kindergarten projects. Each year, they are both delighted that I still kept them.

In the past, the moment I took out the boxes from the storage, my children could not wait to attack them. In fact, I had to restrained them so I could get the items organized to avoid breakage. Last year, my cleaner, thinking that I would appreciate her help, put up the tree for us while we went out and left the boxes sitting in the living room. It outraged my daughter. She thought it's sacrilegious that this cleaner were handling the precious ornaments. I calmed her down, and reminded her none were broken and that there would be more Christmases to come.

Yesterday was the first Advent Sunday and also the day my 13-year-old daughter returned from an 8-days overseas trip. I took out the boxes with all our Christmas decorations. They are now strewn all over the living room. I was hoping that this morning they would be eager to get started. Well, my daughter is busy catching up with friends online after 8 days without her hand phone or laptop. My son is busy making sure that his quota of game time is met. I was tempted to either brow beat them or do the decorating on my own. Then I thought, hm... let me see how long they will let the boxes sit around without doing anything.

It certainly remind me of the book On Strike For Christmas I read back in July.

I certainly would not want to engage them in any battle over keeping tradition. It does not do to get them to develop resistance. They have to want to keep the tradition, or otherwise it's a lost cause and every year, in the years to come, it will become an issue. We'll see how it turn out.