How to Start a New Father's Day Tradition

Father's Day has some wonderful, time-honored traditions that everyone seems to follow. These traditions include making Dad breakfast in bed, giving him gifts and getting together with family. While you may enjoy these traditions and find them comforting, you're not limited by them. You can also start your own, new Father's Day traditions.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Ask your father what kinds of activities he would enjoy on Father's Day. After all, Father's Day is all about Dad. When thinking up new traditions, you should always keep his preferences in mind.

2. Think of what kinds of activities the rest of the family enjoys. Since the entire family participates in Father's Day activities, it's important to come up with ideas that everyone will appreciate. Father's Day won't be any fun if someone isn't having a good time.

3. Add a new Father's Day activity to your traditional celebrations each year. If your family enjoys it, keep it as a new tradition. If it doesn't work for you, you don't have to use it again.

4. Start a list of potential Father's Day activities to try. Have every family member add something to the list about a month before Father's Day. Once everyone has contributed something to the list, get the family together to vote on which activity you'll try that year.

5. Make something old new again. Ask your elderly relatives how they used to celebrate Father's Day when they were children. Add one of their old-fashioned traditions to your celebration this year.

Tips & Warnings

• When thinking of a new tradition to start for Father's Day, keep the entire family in mind. It's important to make sure everyone can be included in your activities, in order to keep up the spirit of togetherness. This means making sure your activities are appropriate for the ages and abilities of all of your family members.
• Your new tradition doesn't have to be an activity. It can be an event (such as going to church together or having Grandpa over for lunch) or a project (such as making a scrapbook or slideshow of pictures of Dad taken during the past year). Your new tradition could also be something silly, such as seeing who can get Dad the ugliest tie each year. (You might even consider having a contest based around something like this, with funny prizes being awarded to the winners.)

[mysteriousmuse]

on 6/15/2009 Great ideas. Good article!