Family New Year
Holidays are definitely part of a healthy human tribe, be it a family or a neighborhood or a nation.
New Years is not centered as a family holiday. You can either lean in to not celebrating it, you can just do it as adults (it’s good for kids to know their parents have a life beyond them) or you can find a way to make it work.
Just adults. Put the kids to bed, go out. If you do this, make sure over the years you have a way to onboard the older children into the holiday experience. By celebrating it yourself, you are making it high status and exciting for them.
Leaning in. We know from experience that it can certainly be fun to conspicuously go to bed absurdly early, making a point of ignoring the holiday. Kids like being rebels with parental approval, even if it means non celebration.
Here’s a couple of ideas if you do want to do something.
Noche Vieja and Other Ethnic Customs
A family we know spent a lot of time in Spain. Most years, schedules permitting, they invite people over for Noche Vieja (Spanish New Year’s Eve). The advantage is that Spanish midnight is afternoon over here. Several families are there, we have some homemade Spanish tapas, play some Spanish games, then at Spanish midnight the Spanish TV shows the clock striking the bell 12 times and everyone downs a grape with each strike. If you get all 12 down without problem you have good luck for sure! Then everyone air kisses. It’s a lot of fun.
We always think someone is going to choke but no one ever does. We still review the Heimlich before we go over, just in case. Sad, we know.
Of course you could something like this anyway, but it works best if you have a family connection to the area. Time spent there, ancestors, maybe a book you read as a family or in your home school.
(The same concept works well for other Christmas season holidays that aren’t very American, like St. Nick’s Day, the 12 Days of Christmas, or King’s Day/Feast of the Epiphany. If you have some religious or ethnic connection to any of these in any way, it is fun for the family and sets you apart while still making your children feel that sense of wonder and far horizons).
Pomegranates
We don’t know why pomegranates have an association with the holiday season, but they do. This year every one got a pomegranate in their stocking but no one wanted to eat them alone. A couple of nights ago we finally sat down to eat our pomegranates. The youngest started sharing her grains and then we all did. One of the young scholars said, “be sure to give everyone 12 each!” If you are familiar with the legend of Hades and Persephone, this means more or less that we will all be together all the next year. Through the years we all will be together ...
It was such a charming idea that we decided to do it again tonight and make it a feature of the waning year every year.
If you do this, wear clothes that can be washed and tablecloths ditto! Cut the ends of the pomegranates off then do small slices where you see the white partition layers, then break the pomegranate into sections by hand. It is not necessary to have a pomegranate for each person to do this. Make sure everyone is aware of the legend.
May your new year be bright.