Holiday Rituals
Connecting the Past, to the Present
and the Future
By: Dr. Carolyn R. Kubiak
Less than 33% of families eat dinner
together. Over half of these families eat together while watching
TV. Researchers have discovered that modern day parents converse
with their children only 35 minutes per week. And yet the average
child watches 4 hours of television per day! The holidays are
upon us and they afford us a rich opportunity to replace these
poor habits. Take a moment and think back to your childhood. What
were those holiday rituals that are burned in your child’s eye?
Think about how those holiday rituals were handled or mishandled?
What contributes to whether they created pleasant, nostalgic
memories or unpleasant ones, and what memories are you passing on
to your children?
My own childhood memories of the
holidays were not fond ones. When I raised my own family, I
constructed holiday rituals that were small, intimate and quiet as
opposed to the large gatherings I grew up with. Both of my
children now seem to prefer large family gatherings. One of the
more informal rituals we had while the children were growing up,
was Saturday dinner out together. We rotated the choice of
restaurant so each of us would ensure that our favorite one would
eventually be included. We even developed criteria we had to
follow in choosing the restaurant, such as making sure that the
menu would include one specific dish that each person liked to
eat. But the real emphasis was not on the restaurant or even the
food. Dinner out was a way to stay connected to each other, to
stay on top of what was actually going on in each other's world.
To this day, my adult children and I enjoy the opportunity to eat
out together and just talk! On my last visit to Illinois to see
my grandsons, I was greeted at the airport with a list of where
they each wanted to go out to eat during grandma’s visit. And so
it goes from one generation on to the next.
Dr. Carolyn R.
Kubiak, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified
Clinical Sexologist, maintains a private practice in St.
Petersburg specializing in Couples’ Therapy.
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