Celebrating Festivals with Older Children

Festivals with young children can be a magical experience. They are still starry eyed and so connected with all that we cannot see that creating these experiences for them is a gift from our own hearts in keeping the world good and beautiful.

But how do we keep that magic alive as our children grow?

It is important to meet children where they are, and if we let go of our own need to see the festivals through the eyes of our young children, we can see so many opportunities to allow festivals and traditions to expand as they age.

In my experience, this has meant growing space for them to take more active roles in planning and participating in each tradition, and sometimes changing our activities to meet their abilities or interests and allowing the space for them to begin to individualize the experience.

Our yearly tree cutting tradition, where we all bundled up, piled into a wagon to be taken to acres of trees where my husband and I made the final decision has slowly evolved to walking into the smaller fields of the farm where the less groomed trees are, the children choosing and cutting down the tree and as the image above shows, carrying the tree without any help! My son proudly stated that next year he might even be the one driving us to the farm (be-still my heart, how did we get here so quickly?!?).

For Nickolau, the little gifts have shifted from my own handmade creations to simple tools or supplies needed to create their own gifts as well as an ornament to prepare for when they have their own tree (in addition to the yummy chocolate treats of course!).

Festival traditions throughout the year in our family have had me shift from pilot to co-pilot, sole artist to co-creator, as my children take on more integral roles in keeping celebrations and traditions alive. It is a process of welcoming my children into an individualization process of something I initially created so they can being to feel part of the tradition instead of just participants. It means creating space for their creative input and letting them choose what they’d like to add. And maybe this invitation will plant the seed so they too might carry some of these traditions, or create their own traditions, into their adulthood.

It doesn’t mean that all our traditions have changed. We still enjoy walking around the neighbourhood looking at Christmas lights on Christmas Eve, I’m still called on by my children to stay up really late at Summer Solstice, even though they might now stay up later than I do, ha, and they still love the comfort of hearing the simple songs and verses that carry us through the year, even if maybe I’m the only one singing or humming the tunes right now.

What it does mean is we are all holding the reins of keeping the traditions alive in this new terrain of growing adolescents.

Until next time,
Marina