Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach parenting and family relationships, bonding all through the lens
of self-government and in this video we're going to talk about creating family traditions that last.
I was raised in a family that was big on family traditions and I mean, big and they had a huge
impact on me. In this video I'm going to talk about family traditions and what kinds of things
truly had a lasting effect and what I'm seeing now generations later and also going to talk
about five things that happen to a family when you've got some really great family traditions.
My grandparents were family tradition fanatics and then of course my mother
became a family tradition fanatic and guess what happened to me? I love family traditions too so
then my children now are starting to do the same family traditions. Years ago, my grandfather came
up with this idea for a family tradition based on a nursery rhyme called little Jack Horner.
So it goes little Jack Horner sat in the corner eating his Christmas pie, he stuck in his thumb and
pulled out his a plum and said what a good boy am I. Well my grandfather loved nursery rhymes. I think
he learned to love them from his mother, okay, and so we're talking going back to the 20's and 30's now
so he decided that he wanted to have a tradition that he was going to create for his family
based upon this nursery rhyme. So he took a big old wash tub and he put gifts in it and tied strings
on him and then he put a name on every string and he popped them through some wrapping paper
and taped that wrapping paper down and then on Christmas Eve at our big Christmas party,
he brought out this big wash tub and he said this is our Christmas pie ,whoa. We were so excited.
All the grandchildren looking at this Christmas pie with strings coming out and our names on
the strings and he would say let's see what kind of a surprise is in our Christmas pie. Maybe it's
a plum or maybe it's something else and we got so excited so we all gather around the Christmas pie
at a certain time on Christmas Eve now every year because of grandpa and we all say the
nursery rhyme wants to practice and then we say it again and when it gets to the part where it says
he pulled out a plum, every single person pulls on that string and we get a surprise just for us.
It is the first gift of Christmas that happens for us on Christmas Eve in our Christmas pie.
My mother who's now the grandmother does Christmas pie every single Christmas Eve, we have a Christmas
pie which we call little Jack Horner. Now guess what? My oldest daughter, she's having a baby
and we are having Christmas Eve at our house and guess what we have to do on Christmas Eve?
Little Jack Horner. We have to have a Christmas pie, it just wouldn't be Christmas Eve without it. Now
my daughter has already said that when she goes to her in-laws for Christmas Eve when
she can't be with us, she said I think I want to bring a Christmas pie because how could she
have Christmas Eve without her Christmas pie? Well obviously she could but that just tells you how
dear to our hearts Christmas pie is but there are many other traditions. We also have kettle
gifts that happen on Christmas Eve after we bang our kettle, we put our pot, our pan under the tree
and Santa in his time continuum on his way back to the north pole brings us an extra gift that we can
wake up in the morning and play with. These were all special traditions that were created by my
grandparents and my parents. So, my mother created the kettle gifts with a friend of hers because
she kept hiding presents for Christmas and she would find them after Christmas and didn't know
how to give them to us so she thought that would be the best idea and of course in our family, I
have always done kettle gifts and my daughter now does them for her family as well. What a beautiful
thing traditions are. They truly transform us, they bring excitement to our lives, they turn us into
different people. So I would like to talk to you about some of the five key ways that traditions
transform us and why we want to keep good traditions alive. Before I talk about these five
reasons we want to definitely remember traditions in our family and come up with new and exciting
traditions that might stand the test of time, I would like to invite you to leave a comment. So
comment below about what types of traditions are meaningful to your family. You might give people an
idea they hadn't thought of yet and I can't wait to read the traditions that you have for certain
holidays. Maybe it's a food that you like or maybe it's a game that you play or a place that you go,
share it with me. I would love to see what you're doing for fun in your family. It's so important
that we protect our family culture and tradition is one of the things that protects our family
culture. In fact traditions are things that set us apart from every other family around. Most families
eat dinner but do they do it on the floor once a week like some families do, right? Most families do
fun things together but is there a certain day of the week that is designated for their family
activity time no matter what? Well then you have a tradition. Is there something that mom or dad
always do on the first day of school every year, that's a tradition. Is there a certain word that
dad says every Sunday afternoon when he's sitting down to dinner, that's a tradition. These are the
things that make our family cultures special. So even though we might think there's some oddities
that are in our family, just remember those little odd moments or things that other families don't do,
even though they might make us a little awkward also make us very, very special. Family traditions
give us bonding to the people around us now and the people forever. Think, my grandfather who's been
gone now for quite some time, there are loads of families now, grandchildren and great grandchildren
who are now doing Christmas pie every single year because of him. They are bonded and connected to
him and his legacy and their children are bonding to them and creating a new legacy for their family.
This connection is deep and strong, it helps us connect not only to the people and the
fun memories but also to their wisdom and their ways we can learn from their examples and the
way they live their lives if we've also learned to love their traditions. Their traditions make them
real people to us so then when we want to learn wisdom and we look back at maybe their journals,
we are ready to accept the wisdom they have to share with us. And I've got to say in this day
and age, we absolutely are not looking at the wisdom from the past as much as we ought to.
Our children need that historical wisdom, those values in order to weather these days which are so
full of new ideas that nobody knows who they are anymore. Another thing that family traditions do
is they help us love family time. We look forward to family time when we know that there's something
special just about that time that nobody else in the world will ever have. Maybe it's a quirky song
like my great grandmother used to sing every time we saw her or maybe it's a specific treat that
grandma always has on hand. I had one grandmother who always had butter cookies, it was just a
tradition. All the grandchildren would come over and she would open a big tin of butter cookies
and we could all have as many butter cookies as we wanted, that was grandma's way of creating a memory
about her for us. So we loved to go see grandma because she was going to give us butter cookies. We
love to go see great grandma because she was gonna sing about Nicki the pom-pom man. Who knows what
that song is or where it came from but it was from her era and it still stands the test of time today.
Family traditions give us something to talk about. Do you think about that? When you're
talking with people about your family and about your life, when you can talk about traditions, this
is exciting, it's interesting, it's personal information that you can share with anybody.
It's like shining a light to the world saying well this is what our family does for Christmas or this
is what we do at Easter time. This is something that we can talk about with other people and it
expresses our uniqueness but also helps them know us just a little bit better. So when we have family
traditions which create a unique family culture, they also help us create bonding with people who
are outside that culture because we have something new and interesting to share. Family traditions
establish identity. So when we are connecting to people from the past then and now, what that
really means is that we are determining who we are. Who you come from always makes a difference
in who you become. Now I know for some people maybe they think that's bad news because they
don't necessarily like everything about the people that they came from, but try as you might, those
people stick with you, they become part of you, those experiences become who you are. Now luckily
you can always create new traditions especially if some of those traditions were not healthy or
good for your future family. But remember that even if you create new traditions, still part of you is
hooked to some of those old things that happen in your family, it's your identity. So this is why you
want to be very deliberate about the traditions that you share with your children or that you
create for your children. Make traditions that are going to help them be proud of who they are,
that are going to love who they are, that are going to know this is who my family is, this is what we
believe, this is what we stand for. Those actually are the key components to a person's identity.
Family traditions make family the best part of life and don't we need that in society today?
I don't know why families have gotten such a bad rap. I feel like there's this force trying to
turn people against their families, trying to call families obstacles, things that need to be overcome
when in reality, the majority of families are still the safest place for a child to be raised.
Those are still the people who love you more than anything, who will stand by you and support you
when the things in life are falling apart. So when you create traditions for your family
that create lasting memories, the message that drives home is that family's the best place.
Those people are great. They care about me. I need to care about them. It gives us something
greater than ourselves to care about. Isn't there enough selfishness for you? I know there is for
me in the world. I see selfishness everywhere people are always talking about
what they want, what they got, what somebody did to them, that's all selfish talk. What about family?
Family teaches us to care about a larger group of people, to bond to other people, to sometimes
even sacrifice and inconvenience ourselves, to help somebody else out because we love them, that is a
message the world absolutely needs and it starts in the family and when you create traditions,
you create an environment where a person gets the opportunity to think that family is best. So, while
you're thinking about what traditions you want to create for your family, you might want to look in
the description below this video. Below this video, there is a link that says teachselfgov.com/toolkit,
that is a link to my Calm Parenting Toolkit and I would like to give it to you
for free. If you really want to create a tradition in your family that can stand the test of time,
create a tradition of calmness. It starts with you and if you know you're struggling with it or some
other people in your family are struggling with it, get the tools you need to establish
a habit and a tradition of calmness at your house so that the bonding can happen more
freely and people truly can remember the very best about family instead of some of those
moments that have been hard to get through. Click on that link now and get the 10 lesson
mini course, the Calm Parenting Toolkit. It will change your life, I promise. I'll see you there.