Making time for Rituals

With Thanksgiving, Advent and then Christmas rapidly approaching, this is the time for rituals like no other time in our calander year. As an adult you are often the one responsible for doing all of the leg work to keep a ritual alive in your family. And while it can be hard to juggle, given that all of the regular damands remain or even increase during this holiday season, it is worth the effort. These family rituals will glue you all together forever as your children grow up an away.

Old rituals that were passed along to you are wonderful, they bring our own childhoods back to life. It can be so meaningful to share these same traditions every year with those you love. On the flip side, new rituals are really fun to create. Sometimes you thoughtfully bring them to life and sometimes they just create themselves. I've seen that in our family where things we just did became, for our children, important parts of our family ritual without my husband or I even realizing it!

Some our family rituals at this time are to light our advent wreath, make homemade eggnog, make special holiday cookies, eat cheese fondue on Christmas Eve and play with the creshe set throughout advent and the whole Christmas season. I would love to hear some of your families traditions and I'll save them up and send them out for everyone to see. Maybe you'll find one you want to try out, it is great to get new ideas to try from the lives of others.

Rituals clue as all into the fact that something bigger is going on around us. For our children ritutuals can be a comforting reminder that they belong, life is predictable, and has meaning. Rituals can give us a tangleble way to take action around the importance of our relationship with God or other people who matter to us. Taking time to set up and walk through our rituals can leave us with a feeling of accomplishment, we did it, we celebrated, we honored something that was meaningful. We as parents do most of the work to create ritual for our children but in truth we need it too and it gives back to us as much as it allows us to give to our children and family. Our rituals will connect us to what was in our past and reassures us that a part of us will carry on after we are gone. Our rituals can challenge us to be better in some way. Our rituals can allow us to get closer to others; bring us forgiveness and hope. Finally, our rituals can remind us of God's grace, truth and love.

So throw caution to the wind, bring on the season of ritual, and let us do it with in the spirit of connecting us to all that was before and all that will come after.

Christine D'Amico