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Teens and Holiday Traditions

by Barbara Cooke

During the Holidays, Family Rules!
Despite their preoccupation with best friends, boyfriends, and girlfriends most of the year, teens think family "rules" during the holidays. In fact, comforting traditions and rituals often become more important as children head through adolescence and toward independence.

Memories of Hanukkah candles and Christmas lights lure teens back to the days of innocence and wonderment -- and family. While it's sometimes necessary to change certain aspects of family traditions as children grow, most teens get a warm sense of belonging from the familiar rituals of their youth. During the rest of the year, they may scorn many things as "babyish" or prefer partying with friends, but according to the teens I spoke to, home with the family is what's important this time of year.

Teens Discuss Holiday Rituals
The teens I spoke with recently consider family traditions and togetherness a must during the holidays:

  • Several weeks before Christmas, explains Allison, 16, "My whole family goes together to the shopping mall where they have this huge Christmas tree with hundreds of tags with names of kids from a local charity hanging on the branches. Each tag has the name of a child, his or her clothes size, and a list of gifts he or she wants for Christmas." explains Alison, 16.

    "We each grab two tags and always make sure to get the names of older kids -- you know teenagers -- everyone seems to grab the little kids' tags first. Then we go shopping, buy them stuff, wrap them, and bring the packages back to the tree. It's a cool feeling to know we're helping someone have a good Christmas, even if we never see these kids."

  • Every year since she can remember, Jenny, 14, and her two older brothers take turns picking out the colors of the candles and placing them in the menorah. Then they each get a gift to open for each of the eight nights of Hanukkah. Their mom makes latkes (potato pancakes) on the first night and they spin dreidels.

    "Now that I'm in high school and my brothers are in college, we don't do a lot together anymore, but this is fun," Jenny says. "There's something about being the one to pick out the candles and then lighting them and watching them burn that so reminds me of when I was little. And we love to open a small gift each night. One year we just got a big gift at the beginning and it wasn't fun the rest of the nights."

  • Andy and his twin brother Cori, 15, celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas in their family, and they have traditions with both their father and mother's relatives. "We all get together at my dad's sister's house on the first night of Hanukkah and have latkes and light candles and get our gifts," says Andy

    On Christmas Eve, we go to my mom's parents' farm and finish decorating the tree and then help frost cookies. When we wake up in the morning we open all our presents. All my cousins come from around the state and it's so much fun. I can't wait until I have kids and we do that."

  • Joey has to be dragged out of bed to go to church most weekends, but he loves to attend services on Christmas Eve. "Midnight Mass is magical, and I don't use that word too often," he says sheepishly. "Now that I'm 18 and going to college next year, I know that I'll be thinking about going to our church at Christmas time. My mom brought me there when I was a baby, and I've been there every year since. We all get dressed up and sit together for a change. It's fun."

  • Driving 40 miles from Indiana into downtown Chicago to look at the holiday windows is a tradition that 17-year-old Nicole's family has done with two other families since she was a little girl. "We dress warmly and drive down in a few cars and spend the day looking at the window scenes on State Street and lights along Michigan Avenue," Nicole says. "Then we all eat under the huge tree in the Walnut Room at Marshall Fields," she exclaims. "This year my boyfriend came along with my family. I'd never go without them -- that's what the holidays are all about!"

    • More on: Christmas

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