The Book of New Family Traditions (24 page)

In today’s world, when everyone creates new connections and decides who belongs in their extended family, is there a bond you need to mark and celebrate?

Sarah Stengle’s Half-Baked Party

I’ve always been a fan of the free spirits who go way outside the box to create rituals that celebrate the authentic and messy lives they actually live. The greeting card companies have gotten better at including some more unusual occasions in the mix, but I get a thrill from a holiday or special occasion celebrated by so few people that there will never be a commercial card for it. We live in a DIY (do-it-yourself) world, and that’s happening more these days, I think. Here’s a good example: May it free you to nurture the kids you’ve got rather than someone else’s idea of who your children should be.

Not every kid marches to the beat of the same drummer, and that includes Sarah’s daughter Sophie, who went off after sophomore year to take some college classes in art. After that, she couldn’t bear high school and wanted to bust out, get her GED, and move on to college as soon as possible. Having left home herself at sixteen to tour Europe, Sarah, a book designer, understood the girl’s impatience. So, halfway through her junior year, the girl dropped out of high school, with her mom’s blessing. Later, she secured the GED and was accepted into college (Academy of Arts in San Francisco, where she had previously done the summer program). But even before that, when she dropped out of school, the family decided to throw a playful party, alluding to the fact that Sarah was leaving high school half-way through.

“We have a long tradition of playing with our food, having cupcake baking parties, and doing our Peeps of Destruction ritual at Easter (see Easter traditions in Chapter 4),” says Sarah, who has two teen girls. “For the half-baked party, we made dough for chocolate chip cookies but only cooked half of it. The half that we left uncooked didn’t include any eggs [experts say cookie dough with raw eggs should be avoided, in case the eggs have salmonella or other bacteria], so people could eat both cookies and unbaked dough.”

Sarah admits that some parents she spoke to thought she was nuts to celebrate such an occasion. The party crowd included extended family and Sophie’s friends. “We didn’t want the fact that she was stopping high school to seem apologetic. This wasn’t a failure but a decision,” says Sarah. ‘We wanted to celebrate this personal transition, but with humor.”

House Blessings

The place where we live is immensely important to our well-being, and the idea of blessing one’s dwelling is an ancient one. Before sharing some really creative ways families have blessed their homes, including when moving from one house to another, does anyone remember that sweet blessing from the movie
It’s a Wonderful Life?
Mary Bailey (played by Donna Reed) says this when a family moves into a new home in the development the Baileys have helped make possible. She stands on the threshold with these objects in her hand, and passes them along to the new homeowners:

“Bread, that this house may never know hunger. Salt, that life may always have flavor. And wine, that joy and prosperity may reign forever.”

Thanking the House

When Karly Randolph Pitman’s family left a house where they had lived for a long time, she said they felt compelled to ritually thank the house. “We found a place in the bowels of the house near the furnace, where we all signed our names. At one point, I remember literally hugging the walls of my bedroom and thanking my house in the room where I gave birth to my son.”

Good-Bye to the Old House, Hello to the New

Mary Ann Paulukonis had to leave a house in South Dakota in 1992 that the family had built and lived in with their children for twelve years. The now-grown kids came home for the last weekend there and Mary Ann designed a brief ceremony. “We went on a house tour, telling stories in every room and then blessing the room with thanks to God for all that happened there,” recalls Mary Ann. “Then we went out to the driveway, remembered shoveling, guests arriving and all of that, and lit some forgotten sparklers our son found in a closet. There were tears and laughter mixed throughout. We concluded by eating ice cream and everybody said they felt better, more ready to move on.”

Seven months later, after moving to a new house, the kids came to visit. “We did a new house blessing in the same spirit, ” says Mary Ann, “and concluded by going to a local dairy farm for fresh ice cream, symbolizing a union of the old with the new.”

Ritual Dedication of a Remodeled Kitchen

This comes from Elisabeth Fuchs of France, who e-mailed it to me after reading my monthly Ritual
Newsletter.
She said the renovation had taken weeks and disrupted the family of six a great deal.

“After the last kitchen cabinets were put in, we invited family members, including my parents and grandmother, to the inauguration of our new kitchen. Everybody gathered in front of the closed kitchen door. Ahead of time, I taped a red ribbon horizontally across the door frame. My husband, our four kids, and I each had a pair of scissors, and we all cut at the same time.”

The family then entered the kitchen, in a sort of parade line, each bringing back a tool or appliance that was special to them. “Our three-year-old daughter had her breakfast mug, our eight-year-old daughter the cookie box, and so on. Everybody came in and admired the kitchen, we got some lovely gifts (unexpected), and sat down for a buffet-style meal.” All present were invited to sign their names on the calico tablecloth with markers: Elisabeth later embroidered over the signatures so they would stand out and last as a keepsake of the day.

Milestones and Coming of Age

The major recurring theme of human life is change, and rites of passage help us to celebrate and fully experience each major change as it happens. By staging meaningful rites of passage for our children, starting at a young age, we teach them how to flexibly and creatively welcome change all their lives.

It has been said that modern societies have largely lost the ability to create deeply meaningful coming-of-age ceremonies. But I see many families and religious communities struggling to make workable contemporary rites of passage and often succeeding. And I think families can produce enormously powerful rites of their own.

Rites of Passage

Change is both scary and exciting. Our kids want to be “big,” but they’re frightened of that unknown place. Modest rituals can help them make the leap, and feel celebrated. Some children have a rough time with these transitions, but don’t push or make them feel they’ve failed; celebrate that they’re trying—and consult your pediatrician for advice.

Bye-Bye Pacifiers

To get her daughter to give up her “sissies,” Andrea Majewski told the girl that if she left the pacifiers in a special box for the Easter bunny, she’d get extra treats. The box was set out on Easter eve, and next morning, sitting next to the Easter basket was the same box. The pacifiers were gone, but the box was full of special candy and a note from the Easter bunny about how grown up the girl was. The girl was thrilled, and her little brother was eager to follow this magical ritual a few years later.

Big Boy Day/ Big Girl Day

Experts say the best way to improve our kids’ behavior is to “catch” them being good, and praise them immediately. If you’re trying to help them grow out of a behavior like thumb sucking or needing a pacifier, talk about how once they get through an entire day without doing that, they’ll be celebrated as “Big Boy (or Girl) of the Day” after supper. The celebration could include a treat food, a special crown, or a privilege like extra story time. If there’s a “big kid” activity they’ve been wanting to try such as a sport or helping you cook, pin that experience to a full week without the baby habit.

Bottles to Cups

Have the child help pick out a special “big girl” or “big boy” plastic cup, perhaps one illustrated with a favorite character. Tell him or her that new babies are being born in the world who really need their bottles. If there are no baby siblings, have them pretend to use a bottle to feed a doll or stuffed animal “baby.” Pack up all the old bottles in a box and leave them inside the front door at bedtime: Help them invent a little good-bye song for the bottles. The next morning, serve the child’s favorite drink in the new cup, with a fancy straw.

Tooth-Fairy Visits

According to the children’s book
Throw Your Tooth on the Roof,
there have been prescribed rituals for disposal of baby teeth for ages, in countries all over the world. Some of the oldest rituals, like throwing the tooth over the roof, into the woods, or simply as far away as possible, had to do with superstitions about evil beings who might take a tooth and bewitch the child who lost it.

Two Fun Tooth-Fairy Resources

The website/blog called
ToothFairy.org
includes many fanciful posts about the tooth fairy and good information about the importance of brushing. There is an online shop here that sells tooth fairy themed books and other items.

Another site,
OfficeOfTheToothFairy.com
sells kits with very official looking “Certificates of Record” to write down all the important details-which tooth was lost, under what circumstances, and so on, with a tiny envelope attached to each certificate stamped with the words “Official Tooth-Fairy Deposit.” (Obviously, you could use this as an idea to make your own official paperwork.)

The ritual of the tooth fairy is well established in this country, and many of us who grew up with the tooth fairy like to pass this tradition along to our kids. My son was given a sweet but simple tooth-fairy pillow as a toddler, which included a small pocket on the front into which he could insert the lost tooth before stowing the pillow next to him on the bed. When he awoke, there was a quarter or a dollar (depending on the tooth) in the pocket, and the tooth was gone.

There are lots of charming variations: Some families have the kids put their tooth in a jam jar or glass filled with water. When they awake, the tooth is gone, but the water has turned a pretty color and is full of sparkles, with some coins resting at the bottom. (This seems to be based on a Swedish ritual, according to
Throw Your Tooth on the Roof.)

Confirmation Ritual

For many Christian families, this is a very special occasion, and there are myriad ways to celebrate. The nature of the ceremony will be much influenced by the family’s church and that isn’t what this book is for. But just to get families thinking about how to carry the celebration home, here is one family’s idea.

Wanda Stahl bought a gift box at Target, eight inches by eight inches, with an elastic ribbon and a butterfly on the top for her daughter’s confirmation. She called it a “Blessing Box” and cut up pastel-colored card stock with decorative edged scissors into a pile of pretty blank cards, putting them next to the box on the coffee table in the living room. When everyone got back to the house after church, “I asked folks to write a blessing, prayer, scripture, good wish, etc., for Caitlin on a piece of the paper and put it in her box,” says Wanda. “Later, I encouraged my daughter to use it for future remembrances or symbols of her faith journey, such as poems, Bible and inspirational quotes, and stones.”

Braces

This has become an ever more common experience and often happens in those key middle school years when kids can be so self-conscious. In one sense, it’s a transformative ritual and comes with a sense that sometimes a person has to go through unpleasant and uncomfortable trials to emerge as a better, older, more mature person.

Certainly, feel free to include those topics in your “Before” and “After” twin rituals, or just keep it playful. Many a mother has planned a “soft foods dinner” for after the braces are first applied, or subsequently tightened.

Laurel Van Ham used to schedule braces appointments right before lunch at her daughter’s school, so that after she got them tightened, they could spend time relaxing at a pretty park. Meg Miller’s braces ritual was to create a “time capsule” full of treats for after the braces would be removed—filled with sticky candy like taffy, gum, and Starbursts. And on days when the braces were tightened, she scheduled a ritual treat of soft ice cream.

Pierced Ears

How tribal does this feel? Here’s a ritual in which one’s body is pierced, allowing the wearing of a new type of ornament.

I will never forget that when I turned sixteen, my mother went with me to the doctor and we both got our ears pierced. (I had one of those cautious moms: We would not be doing this at the mall earring shop!)

Many families raising girls have to confront this decision eventually: At what age can their daughter get her ears pierced? I have one friend who made it contingent on her daughter’s studying Latin, but usually it’s more a personal decision about maturity.