Time serves as balm at Christmas

Though the pandemic has made a change to many of our rituals, the holidays are still hectic. People are on mental missions to figure out what to get and how to get it safely.

Maybe dashing from store to store or website to website searching for the right gifts, sending Christmas cards to relatives and friends, and gearing up for the end of another year. Somewhere in between all of the busy-ness of these holidays that are cramped by the craziness of our times, it’s important to make the most of the time with your family.

As many folks do, I love the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Much like making deposits in the Bailey Building and Loan, we make deposits in the emotional “bank” each of our family and friends holds in his or her heart. The currency for these deposits, though, is time, much more so than money.

The Ghost of Christmas Past made sure to point out to Ebenezer Scrooge that Mr. Fezziwig’s Christmas party cost him relatively little, but the happiness it spread was immense. “The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune,” acknowledges Scrooge.

This year, many folks have cancelled or altered family Christmas get-togethers. But there are many inexpensive, yet meaningful activities to do with your family during the holidays. The importance is spending time with each other, not spending money on each other.

Family bonding time has been described as “the time a family spends together meaningfully … the designated time a family plans to interact with each other doing meaningful group activities or a fun project.”

Creating a strong bond with your family helps to ensure a happier and healthier family, and the holidays are a great opportunity to bond together as a family. You can choose from a long list of holiday activities to build the bonds of family. Things like caroling, serving at a soup kitchen, making homemade gifts or decorations, visiting nursing homes, enjoying hot chocolate and s’mores by the fire or fireplace, baking and decorating cookies, watching holiday movies or attending worship services as a family. Find something your family enjoy doing together and make it a tradition, if it’s not already. And just as importantly, don’t assume it’s time to stop traditions just because your children are in their teens.

I have a friend whose family adopted an Elf on the Shelf when his children were toddlers. He insists his children still secretly enjoyed searching for the elf each morning well into their teens.

“It’s almost like they get a dopamine burst every time they find it,” he says. “They get smiles as big as rocking chair rockers!”

The holidays are something of a gopher pitch giving us a chance to swing for the fences of family bonding. But bonding is an every-season-of-the-year thing. It’s important that parents ingrain opportunities for bonding throughout the year. There are plenty of options for year-around family bonding such as eating meals together, having game nights, attending a sports game or participating in an activity together such as bowling or seeing a movie. Other ways include parent participation in children’s extracurricular activities, praising them for their participation, which also is an excellent way to help build their confidence as well strengthen the bond. Reading to children daily is recommended and is an excellent way to bond.

The Journal of Marriage and Family states that the benefits of family bonding include greater emotional bonds to family members, children seeing love and affection displayed in a healthy way, children having better academic performance, children experiencing fewer behavioral problems and reducing the children’s risk of substance abuse.

Likewise, the American Academy of Pediatrics reports that family relationships provide children with a critical sense of being valued and with a vital network of historical linkages and social support.

The family unit is vital to helping children develop positive interpersonal relationship and instills discipline and internalized codes of conduct. By not setting aside time for family bonding, your family could face consequences such as poor family relationships, feelings of being unloved, unsafe, insignificant or unimportant. Researchers warn that these feelings will carry over to subsequent generations and new households as these children become adults and start their own families.

Creating family bonds is wonderfully inexpensive and more wonderfully profitable in terms of relationship growth and child development. It’s a fantastic return on investment. So make family bonding time something you and yours do all year long.