How to Create New Family Holiday Traditions

The holidays are all about traditions. Maybe you always have to make Grandma's cornbread stuffing at Thanksgiving. Or perhaps your family always tops the Christmas tree with an angel, rather than a star. Those traditions that you perform year after year are a thread that binds your family closer together.

But if your family dynamics have changed - for example, you are newlyweds celebrating your first holiday season together; you have become a blended family; or because of divorce your children will be celebrating the holidays in two places - why not consider creating some new holiday traditions to better connect your changing family? Following are some ideas for holiday traditions that your family might want to call their own.

For Thanksgiving, purchase a new (or used) plain white fabric tablecloth. Place some permanent laundry markers around the table, but out of the reach of littler hands! In the middle of the tablecloth, write Thanksgiving 200_ (fill in the year). Have everyone write about something they are thankful for. Tuck the tablecloth away after Thanksgiving, and buy a new one every year. Bring out cloths from past years to read together. It is fun to remember who was there on a given year, and the visible changes will move you. The writings of a departed grandparent as well as the childish scribbles of your grown offspring will be cherished, and the tablecloths will likely become family heirlooms.

Serve others together. Nothing binds a family more than the realization of how blessed they are to have each other. Start a holiday tradition of serving others in need. Serve food to the homeless on Thanksgiving Day. Shop for gifts for children in foster care, or who have a parent in prison. Go caroling together in a pediatric ward of your local hospital. Send a package to troops overseas.