Family rituals are routines and traditions that honor what is very notable to the family (Rothenbuhler, 1998). Rituals include family traditions, such as the specific ways we celebrate holidays, birthdays, vacations, weddings, and graduations, or even our weekly family dinners and everyday bedtime rituals for children.
Rituals are valuable when family members perceive them as current and meaningful (Braithwaite, 2022). A few years ago, my friend kris was concerned that his family was losing their tradition of decorating the family Christmas tree together. Kris purchased their live tree the day after Thanksgiving so they could decorate their tree over the weekend, as they always did. Now that the children were young adults, they were busy and involved with their friends and activities. Kris and his partner, Kim, could not get the kids to commit time to decorating their tree. It was now mid-December, and the poor tree was still sitting in the garage, undecorated and losing its needles. No one seemed to notice or care.
In my research on family rituals, my colleagues and I discovered that to be accomplished, rituals must remain relevant and change as needed. As my friend Kris was learning, what the family did in the past may not work in the present and/or the future. As his children were reaching adulthood,manny family traditions seemed less critically important to them. In addition, some older family members were no longer able to take part likewise. Kris knew the day was coming when the children would be moving out and forming their own families.While every family experiences change differently, taking an inventory of your own family rituals is important to make choices about which rituals to keep, adapt, dump, and when to create new family rituals (Braithwaite, 2022).
Adapting Family Rituals
As you take inventory of your own family rituals, it would not be surprising to see a need to adapt or even delete at least some of your family’s rituals. To retain or grow their meaningfulness, rituals need to be remembered fondly by the family of the past, relevant to the current family, and have the potential to meet the needs of the family in the future (Braithwaite, Baxter & Harper, 1998).
when a ritual is not working well in the present or anticipated future, the family may first try to adapt the old ritual. Sometimes this is a rather simple fix. For example, Kris and I talked about the possibility of moving the tree decorating to Christmas Eve, when he expected all the children to be home. However, Kris realized that soon these young adults would be creating their own lives, including membership in multiple families. It became clear that their longstanding Christmas tree decorating tradition was not workable.A second family found they needed to adapt what they eat and drink at their gatherings, due to some family members eating only gluten-free foods and others no longer drinking alcohol. A third family realized they would no longer fit into the old family cabin for their annual vacation. All these families realized they needed major adaptations of their current rituals.
There are times when simple adaptations are not possible. For my own family, once two of the three adult children had married and moved out of state, gathering everyone in person at Christmas was rarely possible. Rather than hang onto old rituals that no longer work for the family, creating new family rituals might be the best option.
Creating New Family Rituals
If you and your family members conclude that the family needs new rituals, it is importa