"Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.”

– Michael J. Fox

The final day of school before the winter break is always fun. There are special events, classroom celebrations, and far too many treats–it feels festive. The best feeling, though, is that the winter holiday is upon us. That means different things to different people: sleeping in, trips abroad to sunny places, trips abroad to snowy places, sleeping in, trips to visit family and friends, gifts, and more (sleeping in). 

Students in upper elementary, middle, and high school were recently asked (via email) what holidays they celebrate and their favorite part of those celebrations. There are many different holidays celebrated by AAS students and their families. Regardless of what they celebrate, their favorite parts of the celebrations are consistent–time with family. Whether they are 9, 13, 16, 18 years old or every age in between, what your children treasure most in the holidays is time with you–traditions that bring the family together were especially special to them. Meals together took the top spot, but there were many traditions that students mentioned. 

One of our favorite holiday traditions is doing puzzles. We don’t do puzzles any other time of the year, but for some reason come December we set up a puzzle table. We go through many puzzles during the month. Sometimes sitting for a few minutes to get a couple pieces in place, other times spending a good amount of time trying to get a section done. The puzzles are always new, but somehow there are always pieces missing. Our best theory is that one of our dogs selectively eats 1-2 pieces of each puzzle without our knowledge. Pretty smart dogs (which is odd because they don’t show that smarts in anything else they do). 

Because the students were asked about their holiday celebrations through email, our younger students did not get a chance to tell us about their favorite holiday moments. So, this morning I asked them as they came into school. 

A few of their responses were:

“Technically, we (family) have to be together. We don’t do anything. Technically we just have to be together.”

“Nothing.”

“Anything.”

“Make cookies together.”

“Watch movies together.”

Like everything else, people have studied the effect of family traditions on well being. The results overwhelmingly demonstrate that traditions that bring families together play a critical role in developing good mental health, family bonds, belonging, and a lot more. One of the nifty things about traditions, is they can be simple and inexpensive (e.g. puzzles). It is also never too late to begin a new tradition.

However you spend the winter holiday, I hope it is filled “technically together as a family.”

“My family is like a perfectly imperfect puzzle - each piece is wonderfully weird.”

– Anonymous