Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Nov/87

Contributor - Thelma Mooy

Title - Family Traditions and Activities

Topic - Women, Family

I find traditions and activities an important part of family life. Ideally, they should begin when the children are very young. Traditions give a family a sense of identity, security, and stability. Young children will quickly come to know that their family does certain things at certain times and they can count on these happenings from year to year. one of our favourite times is definitely Christmas.

When my husband and I came over from Holland, a very wonderful family from Hope Reformed Church included us in their Christmas Eve celebrations and over the years we became very close friends and continued to celebrate Christmas Eve together. Christmas Day was then celebrated at our house with them. As both our families started growing and growing up, we started pulling each other's name out of a hat at Thanksgiving. The rule was that you would make a home-made gift for the person whose name you pulled out of the hat - a gift stemming from our Dutch background. This had to be accompanied by a fitting poem. Some beautiful gifts were made over the years and some very funny poems!

As our families grew even more with sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren, we all decided to celebrate within our own families - because or a lack of room! We then started inviting the occasional guest who had nowhere to go on Christmas. Some continue to celebrate with us.

Another family tradition for our children is their "date" with Dad in December. He takes them out one by one to a restaurant of their choice, re-caps the year with them, gives some friendly sometimes stern! - advice, and then he takes them shopping to select a gift for themselves. This tradition stops as they get married which is the case for our oldest daughter.

New Year's Eve is also very special. We play games, talk about the previous year, our expectations for the new year, and eat all kinds of goodies - many of them Dutch ones like oliebollen, appel flappen, and croquetten. Easter time was also fun for the kids when they were small. The Saturday evening was set aside for egg-colouring.

Birthdays are special times too. When the children were small, they would come into our bedroom very early, pile on our bed, and open their presents. We would sing for the birthday person and he/she would chose the dinner for that night.

Meal-times - especially supper were good times too. Apart from the good food and small talk, we have also had meaningful family devotions when our two older children were in their early teens. We studied and memorized the Book of Proverbs. I can highly recommend it - it is so practical.

Four years ago, we started another family activity. My husband, who had coached our son's soccer team for years, now started coaching our church's soccer team. Our whole family is involved in this father and son activity. Our son-in-law is the goalie and our daughters, grand-daughter and myself cheer them on. Most of the other team's families show up for the game and we all have a wonderful time together. Win or lose, after the game we go to McDonald's so the guys can rehash the game and talk about what they should (or shouldn't) have done.

These are and were some of the things we do and did with our family. Both my husband and I are very family-oriented. We believe in building strong families. It is a parent's responsibility to teach their children first of all love God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength and to create for their family a home where children feel loved, secure and where Jesus Christ reigns supreme.

Now I am not saying that our family is perfect - far from it - we have had our share of trials, but we can overcome ail these because of our strong family bonds and most of all because of our best Friend and Saviour, Who is the Head of our family!

Please click the "Back" button of your browser to return to previous page.