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Phase: Family · Topic: Family Activities · Type: Seasonal - Winter · Reading time: ~6 min

When researchers at Emory University asked children to answer 20 questions about their family history — things like where their grandparents grew up, how their parents met, the hardships the family had overcome — what they found upended a lot of assumptions about what makes children emotionally healthy. The children who scored highest on this "Do You Know?" scale had stronger self-esteem, a greater sense of control over their lives, and were more resilient under stress. Psychologist Marshall Duke called it the single best predictor of children's emotional wellbeing they had ever measured.

None of it required a large gift budget. All of it came from time spent together, and from stories.

That finding matters for how families think about the holiday season — and about which parts of it are actually worth the effort.

The Trap Most Families Fall Into First

December has a way of turning into a project management exercise. The gifts, the events, the cards, the school performances, the visiting relatives, the coordinated pyjamas. Parents who wanted to create magic for their children often arrive at January feeling hollowed out, having spent enormous amounts of money and energy on an experience their children will barely remember.

A mom of six described this precisely in an essay: she had spent years trying to orchestrate the perfect Christmas — ideal gifts, matching stockings — until one year she asked her children what their favourite part of the season had been. Every one of them talked about the same thing: a cold evening walk through a light display. Not a single present came up.

This is not an argument for austerity or for cancelling the gifts. It's an observation that the traditions families build around shared experience and repetition tend to outlast the things they buy. And the good news is that the most powerful traditions are often the simplest to start.

What Actually Makes a Tradition Stick

Research published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research found that family rituals improve holiday enjoyment specifically because they amplify family closeness — not because of the activity itself, but because of the meaning and predictability that surrounds it. The same finding comes from child development specialist Bradford Wiles at Kansas State University, who noted in December 2024 that family traditions protect children against risk factors linked to poor academic outcomes and substance use later in life. The protective effect is real, and it doesn't require the tradition to be elaborate.

What it does require is repetition. A tradition is not a one-off activity; it is an activity that recurs and accumulates meaning over time. The first year you bake the same shortbread, it's pleasant. The third year, your child asks about it in October. The tenth year, the smell of it baking becomes the holidays for them.

This is also why the specific form matters less than many parents assume. The research on family rituals consistently finds that enacting the ritual is more important than what the ritual is. Your tradition can be grandly elaborate or quietly simple; it just needs to happen again.

For the same reason that routines create security for children year-round, holiday traditions work — they make the world predictable and safe at a time of year that can also be overstimulating and disorienting for small children. If you're curious about how everyday predictability shapes a child's sense of security, the science behind family routines makes a useful companion read to this one.

Five Traditions Worth Starting (That Don't Require Much Setup)

These are not ideas that require craft supplies, advance booking, or a lot of money. They are chosen specifically because they are low-friction enough to actually repeat.

The annual story meal. At one meal during the holiday season, each person at the table — including children old enough to talk — shares a story about a family member who isn't present, or an event from a previous holiday they remember. This is directly connected to the Emory research: the more children know about their family's history, the stronger their emotional foundations. You don't need to frame it formally; just start the conversation yourself, and it tends to catch.

The walk that belongs to you. Choose a walk or drive that you do only during this season. It can be through a neighbourhood with good lights, around a particular block, to a specific café that's only open in winter. The activity is almost irrelevant. What matters is that it happens annually, at roughly the same point in the season, and that over time it accumulates small callbacks — "remember when it snowed during this walk" — that become the texture of the tradition.

One homemade thing. This doesn't mean hours of baking. It can be one batch of anything — a family biscuit recipe, a simple decoration, a card everyone signs. The act of making something together is the point. Children who participate in creating something for the holidays show higher engagement with the traditions around it, and it's one of the few activities that works across a wide age range simultaneously.

The give-before-you-receive ritual. Before any gifts are opened, have each family member identify something to donate or give — a toy to pass on, a donation to a cause they care about, a handwritten note to someone outside the family. Framed lightly and without pressure, this shifts the emotional centre of gift-giving from anticipation to generosity. For families interested in making this more active, volunteering together as a family offers structured ideas for doing this across different ages.

Annual ornaments or markers. Each year, add one object to a collection that marks that year — an ornament with the year and each child's name, a photo tucked into a small frame, a note written and sealed. Over time this becomes a physical archive of the family's history. When children are older, pulling out these objects becomes an act of storytelling in itself.

Worth knowing: Children's Minnesota recommends involving children directly in deciding which traditions to keep and which to start. Giving children a voice in the process — even a young child's input — increases their investment in the tradition and their sense that the family's culture belongs to them too.

What to Do About the Traditions You've Inherited That No Longer Serve You

Not every tradition you grew up with needs to continue. Some are carried forward out of habit, obligation, or the path of least resistance, rather than because they genuinely add to your family's experience of the season. A useful filter: if a tradition is causing more resentment or stress than joy in the adults responsible for running it, it is probably not producing the warmth in children that the research describes.

Cornell Cooperative Extension's parenting guidance suggests asking honestly which traditions your family actually loves, and putting more emphasis on those — rather than trying to do everything. Simplifying to two or three well-executed traditions will usually produce more meaningful memories than attempting seven and burning out by the 20th.

This is not a small thing. Parental stress during the holiday season is real, and children pick it up. A calm, present parent in the middle of a simple tradition is more valuable to a child's experience of the season than an exhausted one in the middle of a perfect one. If you're finding the broader pace of family life unsustainable, creating a calmer home environment addresses some of the structural causes.

The Traditions That Travel Well

One practical consideration that most holiday tradition advice skips: some traditions are tied to a specific home or place, which means they can be disrupted by moving, divorce, or changes in who is present at the holidays. The most durable traditions tend to be portable — they attach to the people, not the location.

A story shared at dinner can happen anywhere. A walk can follow whatever neighbourhood you're in. A ritual of naming gratitude around a meal table travels to relatives' homes, holiday rentals, or a table for three after a family change. If your family's circumstances are shifting this year, choosing traditions that are location-independent isn't giving up on something; it's building something more resilient.

Starting This Year

The question people often ask is: is it too late to start a tradition that will matter? The answer is that it's never too late — but it also doesn't need to start big. Choose one thing from this list, or invent one that fits your family specifically, and do it this year. Write it down somewhere so you remember it. Do it again next year, slightly adjusted.

The traditions children carry into their adult lives rarely started with fanfare. They started small, and were repeated until they became the answer to "what does this time of year feel like to you?" That feeling is what families are actually trying to build.