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Alternative Holiday Traditions: How to Celebrate Intentionally {Episode 48}
90 Plays5 years ago
Have you ever stressed out over a holiday tradition and wondered why you're still celebrating that way? Or maybe it's easy for you to allow the agenda of family members and friends override your own holiday priorities? If so, this is the episode for you!
We talk about the pros and cons of changing up holiday traditions and celebrations, as well as 3 steps for making changes as painless as possible. This episode is all about finding what serves you and your family best and intentionally choosing that over what everyone else is doing.
Recommendations:
Aundi Kolber on IG
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Transcript
Introduction and Holiday Stress
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey guys, welcome back to Outnumbered the Podcast. This is episode 48 and this episode spawned from both Audrey's and my concern about this time of the year that so many moms are completely overwhelmed and stressed out by trying to plan fun, exciting things for their kids and family, trying to make amazing holiday traditions and memories, and yet they're just left with exhaustion, overwhelm, and stress. So if this is you or this sounds familiar, stay tuned. We're gonna talk all about alternative holiday traditions.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumber the Podcast. I'm Bonnie. And I'm Audrey. And we're homeschooling moms to a combined total of 18 children. We know firsthand that motherhood is full of crazy chaos and overwhelming obligations, but it should also be full of love and laughter. Regardless of where you are on your journey, come join us as we work together to find joy in the chaos of motherhood.
Rethinking Holiday Traditions
00:01:01
Speaker
Hey guys, so we are super excited to talk to you about alternative holiday traditions today and why we're talking about this. So just a quick little thought is that both Audrey and I have had conversations recently about how the holidays are a stressful time and how sometimes we do things a little bit differently than how we were raised or how our friends and family do them. So we're going to talk a little bit more about that today, but we're going to start off with a really cool quote from Audrey.
00:01:26
Speaker
Right. And I found this quote on Instagram from Andi Kolber. We can link her in the show notes. And it says, forgive yourself for the choices you made when you were trying to survive. I think that is a great quote and outlook to take into the holidays coming up and the stress and the
00:01:47
Speaker
the difficult situations we can navigate going into and through the holidays. So just have a little grace with ourselves at these times and choices we make and maybe times we yell at our kids when we're just going into and through these situations that aren't just our everyday situation.
00:02:07
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And that reminds me of our episode about survival times. And I was just thinking that when you have a survival time, new baby, job loss, whatever it may be, combined with an ordinarily stressful time like the holidays, sometimes you can just feel like it's meltdown time, right? But this episode is, we're sharing this with you in case you need to revamp your holidays and you just feel like things are not
00:02:31
Speaker
the right, you're not doing things the right way, or you're not comfortable with how you're doing everything. And if you are also in a survival time, this could be just what you need to simplify life. Instead of reading a review today, we are going to be giving a little bit of feedback on a thought-provoking review we had recently, so stay tuned for that at the end.
00:02:50
Speaker
All right, so we're going to give, um, talk about alternative holiday traditions and, um, we're going to, for me, this is kind of an easy topic and no brainer because since childhood I have had holiday traditions that are quite different from everybody around me.
00:03:09
Speaker
And so I'm kind of used to it. So I'm going to come into this episode with that perspective.
Challenges of Alternative Traditions
00:03:15
Speaker
And we're going to talk about the pros and cons of alternative holiday traditions and then give you some steps if you want to switch up your holiday traditions too.
00:03:25
Speaker
Yes, so just like all intentional parenting decisions, we as mothers and fathers can choose to do things differently if they aren't working for our families. And mixing up holiday traditions is a very sensitive subject because so many of us have very deeply ingrained memories of holidays, the smells, the sounds, the sights, everything, as well as most of them being related to some sort of religious view.
00:03:48
Speaker
So we realized that changing holiday traditions can be a little bit of a tricky thing, but hopefully we can offer you some suggestions to mix things up if they're just not working for your family. Right, exactly. So if you are raised with strong family traditions and you decide to mix it up, you're probably going to feel a little left out at those holiday times when you're doing something different. I mean, there's going to be that nostalgia and that feeling of
00:04:14
Speaker
Oh man, everybody else, you know, maybe we should have there, you know, there might be some self doubt too. Um, you might be misunderstood as to why you're not doing what everyone else is doing or why you've mixed up your holiday traditions. If it works for everybody else, what was the problem with it for you?
00:04:32
Speaker
And then your kids might also, like you might be completely convinced of it, but your kids might be considered rude or ignorant or weird by their peers, but also by adults too, like for example, if your kids don't
00:04:49
Speaker
believe in the tooth fairy, if you guys don't do that with your kids, then your kids might be considered ignorant or rude or whatever other people might think because your kids aren't holding the same set of beliefs or ideas as everybody else. So those are some cons that you might want to think about putting on one side of the scale. Yeah, this brings up a really interesting topic. I don't know why we're so, as a community and society, why we're so
00:05:20
Speaker
adamant about kids having the same experiences that every kid has. I really don't think that a kid believing in Santa Claus is the most important thing for that child. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying I don't think that that's something
00:05:36
Speaker
that's even close to as important as the child's education or the child's religious upbringing or moral upbringing. You know what I'm saying? But some people are so adamant that, no, that child must believe in this fictional character. I'm just saying that to give us all the opportunity to question some of the things that we've always done. Again, not saying one thing is right or one thing is wrong, but is it serving your family? And if it's not serving your family, change it up.
00:06:01
Speaker
You're in charge, you and your spouse are in charge. You guys can do whatever works best for you and your kids. Right, exactly. Our kids, we don't teach our kids about Santa Claus to believe in Santa. And so when we do go out at holiday times and there's somebody dressed up like Santa and they try to offer my kids something or
00:06:23
Speaker
You know, hold out, say, you want to come sit on my lap? My kids are like, who is this weird stranger? And why are they trying to give this to me? You know, just like my, that is considered rude from a kid to treat Santa that way. But my kids have no, they have no set of ideals with what Santa is or who Santa is. So yeah, they can look kind of rude when they're like, you know, bugger off, dude.
00:06:47
Speaker
Which is kind of funny because I'm pretty sure most one and two year olds feel the exact same way about Santa. Do not touch me. Have you ever seen a toddler or a baby smiling on Santa's lap or years of crying? Good time. So yeah, a few of the other cons or just things to be aware of when changing of traditions.
00:07:06
Speaker
is the potential for criticism from friends and family, like you mentioned, possible family strife due to differences in celebration. So if you have in-laws that strongly believe X, Y, and Z at Thanksgiving time or wherever, and you do A, B, and C, then that could cause some family drama. Well, we expected you to do this because this is what we've always done, that sort of thing. And then also,
00:07:31
Speaker
can be differences in your purpose for a holiday, right? And that can also cause some strife. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that in a minute.
Creating New Traditions
00:07:39
Speaker
Okay. So now we want to address some of the pros of changing up traditions and holidays. First of all, I think it's freedom from expectations. I talked about this a little bit in episode 45 about stress-free holidays. That's a really good one.
00:07:55
Speaker
too. You can go listen to that. But we don't have any expectation that we're going to buy gifts for ourselves or for our family at Christmas time. And so there's no, like it's freedom from all the kind of the stress or the expectation or the
00:08:16
Speaker
kind of the stress of figuring out the right gift that's going to make them happy. Like we don't have any of that. And it's like, it's so freeing to just enjoy spending time together over the holidays because we get to be together and there's no stress of, did I get the right gift or that kind of thing? Which also gives us a little more financial freedom because we're not buying each other gifts over the holidays or doing the traditional
00:08:41
Speaker
um, holiday things that other people do. Um, we do have a little more freedom and money to, you know, maybe go on a trip somewhere or maybe, um, decide on a family gift or a family experience, something that we can do together. Or maybe, you know, we just remodel the bathroom or something.
00:09:00
Speaker
But that money isn't automatically tagged. Well, this is going to be spent at Christmas time or on such and such a holiday because there's just not that there. So a little bit of financial freedom in there. Something we feel very strongly about is making intentional choices for the future. So we feel like we are the first generation starting a new tribe, not dishonoring our past ancestors and anything that they've done, but we feel like
00:09:27
Speaker
the tribe starts with us. And we get to make intentional choices for what that tribe is going to look like in the future. And that's really kind of a fun and powerful activity to think of it that way. And then you also have the opportunity if you're not, say, if you don't set up a Christmas tree, well, maybe you can start a new tradition. So for example, at our house, we don't put up holiday lights, but we've started this new tradition.
00:09:53
Speaker
So we make ourselves mugs of hot cocoa, travel mugs, and we all hop in the vehicle and we drive around and look at everybody else's Christmas lights and they're gorgeous and we enjoy it. And then we come home. Yeah. So just one example of a new holiday tradition we started.
00:10:07
Speaker
That's really fun. You still get into the enjoyment of what everybody else is doing, but you just no pressure to do it yourself, right? Right, exactly. In our town, I'm sure most towns, they have a decorating contest. After we don't go around before to see everything, we go around after the winners are announced and then we get to hit all the high spots, right?
00:10:27
Speaker
Yeah, totally, totally. Another few pros that I thought about were determining what your family focuses on for each holiday. So I don't know about you guys, but I've noticed that the focus that I wanted to have for certain holidays gets almost completely lost in the commercialization of the holiday and everybody else's parties and expectations. And it's a little frustrating when I'm like, well, no, this was supposed to be about this or whatever.
00:10:50
Speaker
and it just gets steamrolled by everything we're expected to do that has nothing to do with the real meaning or the meaning that I wanted my kids to get out of it, if that makes sense. You can also have greater control over what gifts come into your house or what activities occur if you're very intentional about your holiday celebrations. And you can eliminate any toxic traditions. And that might be, some people might think that's a harsh word to use, but I absolutely believe that
00:11:16
Speaker
We are expected to celebrate traditions around almost every holiday that are kind of toxic for me and my family, like bucket loads of candy at Halloween. I'm sorry, but I am not a fan of that. I'm not saying we don't like our sugar, but just take a step back and think, is there something that just drives me crazy or that is just not serving my kids? How can we find a way around
Practical Steps for Change
00:11:40
Speaker
that?
00:11:40
Speaker
OK, so now if you've decided to change up your holiday traditions, no matter what holiday it is, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Halloween, Valentine's Day, birthdays, whatever holiday you're going to be switching up, here's some steps that we've come up with for getting that process started. Yeah. So like I mentioned, talking about the meaning or the purpose behind a holiday, that's step number one, determine what you want your purpose of that holiday to be or what the underlying meaning should be.
00:12:11
Speaker
Is it a religious reason? Is it increasing family connectedness? Is it finding out?
00:12:19
Speaker
What your kids really need from you and spending more one-on-one time. Is it something completely different serving the community? It can be anything you decide fits well with that tradition. Or you can choose not to celebrate it at all. That is totally okay. That is completely within your right. That might sound a little bit drastic, but you're in charge of your family. You can do whatever feels good for you guys. But that number one decision is to determine what do I want to get out of this holiday?
00:12:44
Speaker
Right, exactly. And then you look at what is your current or expected traditions that got you started down this process in the first place? Why am I not enjoying this holiday? Or why? What am I not enjoying about this? What is not fitting our purpose? And so like maybe
00:13:02
Speaker
Bonnie and I are great list makers, make a list of pros and cons, things we love, things that have us gritting our teeth and biting our fingernails and spending too much money and are at odds with our true purpose.
00:13:15
Speaker
Number three is to sit down with your spouse and determine how to gently and kindly eliminate what you don't want and include what you do want in your holidays. And I say sit down with your spouse at this point because obviously you have to be on the same team to incorporate new traditions, but actually you and your spouse can be a part of every single one of these steps, obviously, and probably should be. But I like to, I'm the kind of person that likes to run with an idea and then I'm like, oh yeah, I should check with you.
00:13:37
Speaker
Hey honey, do you mind if we do this differently? But this is the crucial part where you take your meaning and you figure out what's not working for you and then you sit down, you create new traditions and it can be wonderful and so eye-opening and really exciting and involve your kids too and say, hey guys, dad and I aren't really a fan of
00:13:56
Speaker
how we've been doing this. What are your thoughts on? And maybe even have some suggestions there for them so it doesn't feel like you're just taking everything fun away. But that you're saying, what are your thoughts on this? Would you like to look into this? Or rather, take your purpose and say, how can we make ex-holiday feel more loving or service-oriented or whatever your meaning is?
00:14:16
Speaker
Yes. So be aware and sensitive to the fact that spouses and adult children, other close family members can have their own deeply held beliefs and memories. And so it's awesome, my husband and I have found to present a united front to the kids to discuss stuff beforehand and then
00:14:38
Speaker
you know, just like that conversation you were role-playing. Talk about it before, get it all the details worked out and then present a united front to the kids. That works best. Great point, yeah. And then you might have to compromise with some things that weren't exactly on your list, but your husband just really, really is attached to, you know, ice skating on January 1st and he's not going to give that up or whatever, you know, fill in the blank. And so that's going to continue to be a part of your tradition.
00:15:08
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's wonderful. Compromise is really what marriage is all about, right? And you can both take things that mean a lot to you and create this whole new culture that your kids will grow up and think is how life is supposed to be lived, and that's what's wonderful about it. I also think that when we change the traditions that we are doing to better serve our family, we're communicating to our kids, they also don't have to just
00:15:32
Speaker
follow along with the status quo, right? They don't have to see a tradition that everyone else is doing and saying, well, I guess this is what we're gonna do. So when they grow up and become an adult, they are also free to make those hard choices that will eventually serve themselves and their own families better. I think that's so powerful.
00:15:48
Speaker
Yes, exactly. That's a beautiful lesson that we can show them through this exercise. And then always, you know our tagline, lower your expectations. Just because you've thrown out one tradition or one idea or one holiday, you're going to be doing differently. Don't be careful not to revamp your traditions to such a point that you end up making more work
00:16:11
Speaker
for yourself or more expense or more whatever that ends up being against your purposes that you came up with and you end up hating it more than what you had before. So just keep your purpose, your vision in view through the whole process all the way to the end.
00:16:31
Speaker
Right. And so at this point, we wanted to share with you guys a few things that we have done differently or have considered doing differently just to kind of put a bug in your ear. And again, I just want to preface this by saying none of this is intended to make anyone feel badly for how they celebrate a tradition or a holiday, but rather to get your mind thinking. Are all these traditions serving our family? And if so, great. Let's keep them up. We love them. My kids love them.
00:16:54
Speaker
they're worth the work, or no, this one has caused me a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety, we're gonna change it. So that's why we're sharing what we have. All right, so I've mentioned that we don't celebrate Christmas in the traditional way that many families do.
Personal Family Traditions and Values
00:17:12
Speaker
And so I was going to share the reasons why and then some things that we do differently. So we don't celebrate Christmas in the traditional manner with Santa and Christmas trees and presents and all that because we believe that at its core, Christmas is about
00:17:28
Speaker
Christ and His birth. And so to keep our focus on that, we decided to dispense with everything else that isn't about Christ and His birth. And then after we came to that conclusion and decided that
00:17:43
Speaker
presents and Christmas trees and all that wasn't what that meant for us. Then we decided that we would try to live a life that was more focused on celebrating the birth of Christ every day instead of just one day of the year. So that's something we try to keep in mind through the whole year. And that's just what works for our family.
00:18:04
Speaker
So some things that we do instead is we love to do things that other people don't take advantage of because they're at home celebrating Christmas with their families in their traditional way that works for them. So one really awesome example is that my husband and I met on Christmas day on the ski slopes. We had planned it. Yeah, we had planned it ahead because we had actually been writing corresponding.
00:18:32
Speaker
by email way back when email was a brand new thing.
00:18:37
Speaker
And so we planned to meet in person on Christmas Day. And the fun thing about skiing on Christmas Day is you have the place to yourself. It's really fun to go skiing on Christmas Day, because there's not lines. You ski from the top to the bottom, and you hop right back on the lift, and you go up again. And it's just really fun. Yeah, way more bang for your buck skiing on Christmas Day. So that's kind of been
00:19:04
Speaker
a fun thing that we like to do is find things that other people don't do on Christmas Day because they're at home with their families doing the things that they love to do. Another example of things that we like to do alternative holiday things is we like to go serve a meal at a homeless shelter on Thanksgiving or Christmas or
00:19:23
Speaker
New Year's Day or one of these things that families traditionally gather together. And we like to go serve at that point because a lot of people aren't exactly thinking of the homeless on that day. And so we'll go and like we don't have the whole tradition of a holiday dinner together on say Christmas Day. So we just have a nice time filling in for other people so they can be home with their families on those days.
00:19:50
Speaker
Oh, that's awesome. Such beautiful traditions. I love them. And I want to ski on Christmas now. Let's do it. Okay, so I have a couple of questions for you. Okay. From someone who has always celebrated Christmas and most of the holidays the way I've been, quote unquote, expected to, and not always happy with the decision. But so my question is about extended family. Do you have extended family members who celebrate traditional Christmas? And how do you, are you involved in that celebration at all?
00:20:19
Speaker
Yes, we do have extended family members that celebrate Christmas.
00:20:25
Speaker
And we just aren't included in those. And so that's where like up in the cons section earlier, I mentioned that you can feel a little bit left out. But we just, two things we do is that we have this mentality that the tribe starts with us. And so we've created our own things, activities, fun things that we do instead. And they go do their things that they do instead. And then we get together other times of the year.
00:20:51
Speaker
Okay, so my other question is, has there been any pushback from that? Did you guys celebrate this way, or I guess not celebrate this way from the beginning of your relationship, or has there been any bad feelings from extended family as you changed things up? Right. No, we did. We have done this from the beginning of our marriage, and so we haven't experienced having to go through that, hey, we're not going to participate this year in your activities, but we just have been the weird ones from the beginning.
00:21:24
Speaker
Actually, as we've had more kids, family members have jokingly but probably seriously mentioned that they're kind of glad that they don't have to buy 11 people Christmas presents. Amen. Tell me about it. Yeah, seriously. We're like, well, you can just give us the money. We'll just take the cash.
00:21:49
Speaker
Well, I love that. And thank you for sharing that. So our personal scenario has been that we were both raised in very traditionally celebratory Christian homes. We celebrate Christmas with the tree and the presents and everything else. But little by little over the years, I have definitely really started to understand some of the principles that we talked about today that
00:22:08
Speaker
some of these traditions are not great for my family or at least for the purposes that I'm trying to teach them during these times of year. And so we have just been kind of dabbling here and there in changing up traditions. But we also live extremely close to all our family. I mean, not all of my husband's siblings live here, but both our sets of parents live very close and lots of siblings.
00:22:32
Speaker
There is that struggle to think, well, I want to be involved in family activities, but I don't want to feel pressured to do things that I'm not comfortable with. My personal experience is that we're in the thick of deciding what works best for us and what does not. We still haven't fully decided what we're doing this year, but I know that we are not doing
00:22:54
Speaker
bunch of gifts for everyone. So tune in later. I will keep you guys in touch, keep you guys in the know of what we end up doing and how that works out. But what I have loved is as I've made choices, changes to our choices, my kids have been really, really open to that. The first couple of times I did something differently, I thought, oh no, they're going to hate this, especially my older ones that had many years of
00:23:15
Speaker
tradition memories of traditions and they've been very open to it especially if I come across very positive like instead of this this year We're gonna try this especially if it draws us closer to the meaning that we all know is the most important.
Evaluating Joy in Traditions
00:23:27
Speaker
So Anyway, just share that to say that we don't pretend have all the answers some some things might work at this phase of life and might work differently later on but just want to encourage you guys to
00:23:38
Speaker
Look at your own traditions and decide what works well, what does not, and how you can better serve your family by changing up the choices that you have the control to make. Yeah, I'm confident that you guys can come up with some alternative holiday traditions that bring joy to your family because there is so much potential for joy in
00:23:56
Speaker
you know, every holiday situation, no matter what you decide to do. So yeah, what we've done, we've decided that Valentine's Day is our big holiday. So we make cards, we all get together as family and we make big cards and we send them off and we have some other traditions that we have fun doing around Valentine's Day. So we just kind of, you know, it's not like our kids miss out on every holiday, we just chose a different one to make our quote unquote, big one.
00:24:25
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. And I also love that you mentioned focusing on the things that bring you joy. And that sounds silly because most people are probably thinking, oh, all our traditions bring you joy. But let's be honest, not all traditions bring us joy. There is much about the traditions that I've done over the years that do not bring me much joy at all. In fact, the work is not outweighed by the joy. So just a little bug in your ear to evaluate what your family's doing and decide whether it's all serving you the best way it can.
00:24:56
Speaker
Okay, now we, as mentioned at the beginning of the episode, we wanted to give a little bit of feedback about a review we got recently.
Listener Feedback and Recommendations
00:25:02
Speaker
We are so grateful for every review, and this one is no exception. This one was entitled Interesting Listen by Stitch Doc, and she had some extremely kind things to say about us and some thanks to us for giving
00:25:15
Speaker
you these episodes, which we are grateful for. Thank you so much. And then she had some interesting comments on one of our recent episodes, Raising Boys. And so we just wanted to say that, first of all, we are so grateful for everyone who shares their opinion, whether it's the same as ours or differing. So I'm so grateful for that. But I also wanted to say that in that episode, we were simply stating our own concerns for our children in the future, some of the things that we believe our boys will be facing.
00:25:42
Speaker
And in no way were we trying to minimize struggles that other people have in different walks of life. Some much, much greater than ours. I will be the first to admit that I live a very comfortable life and I'm so grateful for that. But that's what we were doing, was just stating our own concerns for our own children.
00:26:01
Speaker
Right, right, exactly. I think in a lot of our episodes, we say things that are intended to provoke thought in other people, like even this episode, alternative holiday traditions that could be offensive to somebody who really loves and appreciates their holidays the way they do it. And that's fine. What we're trying to do in a lot of our episodes is
00:26:22
Speaker
have people think about examining an idea from a different perspective. So maybe it's not exactly the way that you think, but getting you thinking about some of these things that we're talking about is our goal. So yeah, we say some things intended to provoke thought and we love it when we hear that you're thinking about what we've talked about.
00:26:46
Speaker
Yeah, so thank you so much for all of your reviews and keep leaving them. We love you guys so much. We have some recommendations for this episode on alternative holiday traditions. A good place to start is we talk about her all the time and we had the privilege to interview her in episode 46, Miranda Anderson's podcast, the Live Free Creative podcast. Listen to her episode about the magical minimalistic holiday. It's another alternative way to think about
00:27:13
Speaker
celebrating holidays, which is really fun. And then we also are linking to Andi Colbert's Instagram profile, a great one to follow. She's releasing a book called Try Softer. And the thing that we really love about following her is the amount of grace for yourself that she introduces into the conversation. Yes. And if there's a time to have grace with yourself, it's at the holiday season. So thanks so much for listening, guys.
00:27:42
Speaker
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you've enjoyed this episode, we'd be so grateful if you'd leave us a written review on iTunes. If you have any questions or ideas for future episodes, you can reach us at OutnumberThePodcast at gmail.com and find us on Instagram at OutnumberThePodcast. See you next week.