Creating Family Traditions

Making Chinese New Year exciting for the kids

One of the things we enjoy doing a lot is creating family traditions and routines to make Chinese New Year a memorable affair for the kids.

We do this by doing the same thing every year. We take the kids to have a haircut, then we go to the same places to buy new year clothes, we do spring cleaning and get the kids to do the decoration and clean the porch, we buy the same Chinese New Year cookies. We travel back to hometown and stay at the same place.

Boring? In contrary, it is far from boring. By doing the same things every year, we have created a routine that the kids have come to anticipate and love.

I've read in forums of how people hate Chinese New Year because they hate visiting relatives, they hate their in-laws. They hate this and that and then they take off for a holiday to escape all of this. I feel sad reading it because there is much to love. I loved Chinese New Year as a child and I hope to make my children love and look forward to it year after year. It is not hard to do that. All you have to do is create a routine that you can revisit every year and that is how family traditions are created. By you!

Happy Chinese New Year 2016!