So for Stephen’s birthday I bought an airplane ticket for David to come and be with him for the weekend. I kept this gift as a surprise, telling my husband we would attend a professional basketball game that was scheduled on his birthday, and sometime during the game I would give him a very special gift.
About halftime, his beloved brother arrived, announcing, “Surprise, I’m your birthday present,” to the amazement of my husband.
For the next twenty-four hours these two had the most wonderful celebration—laughing, playing, and talking nonstop. I just stayed out of their way. I have never seen such pure fun as they generated together.
When David left, it was as if he took all the stress with him, and my husband was completely renewed.
Birthdays can be a wonderful time to express love and affirm family members—to celebrate the fact that they’re here and part of your family. And traditions around birthdays can be very renewing.
In our own family, birthdays are tremendously important. Over the years we haven’t really had birthdays, we’ve had birth weeks. For the entire week we would try to focus on letting our children know how special they are to us. We would have rooms decorated with signs and balloons, presents at breakfast, a “friend” party, a special dinner out with Mom and Dad, and dinner with the extended family, complete with the person’s favorite meal, favorite cake, and compliments:
“I love Cynthia because she is so spontaneous. She’ll go to a movie with you at the drop of a hat.”
“Maria is so well read that whenever you need a quote, you just have to call her up and ask her, and she’ll come up with four or five excellent things to choose from.”
“One of the things I like about Stephen is that he’s not only a good athlete but he’s happy when he helps other people become good athletes. He’s always willing to spend the time to show you how to improve or teach you some fundamental.”
Colleen (daughter):
To tell you the truth, that was one bummer about getting married. I woke up on my first birthday after I was married, and there were no balloons. The house wasn’t even decorated! There were no birthday posters. I told my husband I missed my mom’s decorations, so the next year—and every year since—he’s gone all out to make my birthday nice.
I’ve even known of extended family members who have gone out of their way to make sure that birthdays are recognized and celebrated.
Two single sisters shared this experience:
Our nieces and nephews (three, five, eleven, and fourteen) all love our birthday traditions. On the Saturday morning of their birthday week, we pick them up to go shopping. No parents, no siblings—just the birthday child and us. They receive the same amount of money to spend and get to choose where to shop. They can take as short or as long an amount of time as they like. Then we go out to lunch to a grown-up restaurant—not McDonald’s or fast food but a real restaurant! They order whatever they want, and they even get a dessert.
We’ve often been surprised at the careful way they make their decisions concerning what to buy and what to order. They show amazing maturity and take it all very seriously—even the three-year-old. Last year she picked out four outfits, then said, “Only two. Only need two.” We hadn’t said a word to her about limiting herself. And it was hard for her to decide, but she did it.
We’ve been doing this for thirteen years now. Our nieces and nephews start talking about it weeks before their birthday. They call it their “Aunt Toni and Aunt Barbie Day.” And they love it almost as much as we do!
To celebrate a birthday is to celebrate the person. It’s a wonderful opportunity to express love and affirmation and make huge deposits into the Emotional Bank Account.
Holidays
A single woman in her thirties shared this experience:
I recently bought my own home with the idea of having my entire family come over for Thanksgiving. I bought a ten-seat table and ten chairs to go around it. Now everyone who comes over says, “You’re single. Why do you need this table?” And I tell them, “You don’t know what this table represents. It represents our whole family being together. My mom can’t cook anymore. My brother is divorced. My sister can’t do it at her house. But being together like this is so important to me. I want to do it here.”
Probably more than almost anything else, people remember and love family traditions around important holidays. They often come together from long distances and long separations. There’s food. There’s fun. There’s laughter. There’s sharing. And often there’s a unifying theme or purpose.
There are many different traditions around each of the holidays. There are Thanksgiving turkeys, New Year’s Day football games, and Easter egg hunts. There’s Christmas caroling, talent sharing, and going to parades. There are traditions around the kind of food that’s served, traditions that come from particular countries or cultures, traditions that have been passed down through the generations, and new traditions that are developed when people marry. And all of these things give a sense of stability and identity to the family.
The point is that holidays provide an ideal time to build traditions. They happen every year. It’s easy to create a sense of anticipation and fun as well as meaning and camaraderie around them.
In our own family we’ve developed some fairly unique traditions around holidays.
Catherine (daughter):
I remember doing a special Valentine’s Day tradition with my dad every year. We would make valentines and attach long strings to them. Then we’d go and put them on people’s porches, ring the doorbell, and run and hide behind the bushes or around the corner of the house.
When people opened the door, they would be thrilled to receive a valentine. But when they bent down to pick it up, we would jerk it a few inches away. They would stumble a little. They would look at it in astonishment and try again. We’d pull the string a little farther. Finally, they would grab it, and we would come out laughing.
After a while the people in our neighborhood caught on. The first time the valentine moved, they’d say, “Oh, that’s Steve Covey. What’s he up to now?” But they looked forward to it. And I always loved it. We had so much fun!
Dad also has the tradition of sending flowers and chocolates to all his daughters on Valentine’s Day—even now that we’re married. And it’s the greatest because we get these beautiful roses on Valentine’s Day. We sometimes think they’re from our husbands, but they’re from Dad. It makes us feel special because we have two expressions of love. We get two bunches of flowers, and it’s really fun to try to guess who they’re from and what Dad will send this year.
This tradition started when I was very young. I remember getting chocolates from Dad on Valentine’s Day when I was about ten years old and how special it made me feel. It was my own box of chocolates that no one else could touch.
Dad also sends us flowers on Mother’s Day.
David (son):
Mom was well known among my friends for her involvement in Saint Patrick’s Day each March. She would dress up in her green leprechaun outfit and appear uninvited in each of her children’s classrooms. She would engage the whole class in singing Irish songs and telling stories with an Irish lilt in her voice. Then each child was given a shamrock cookie, and she would pinch the boys and girls who weren’t wearing green. This tradition has continued into the next generation, and the grandchildren have increased self-esteem because they know that their Mére Mére knows who they are and makes an effort to be part of their lives.
Jenny (daughter):
The Covey house was a “must do” on everyone’s list at Halloween. Mom and Dad would invite the trick-or-treaters into the house to sit down, visit, get warm, and have hot cider and doughnuts. But first they would have to perform some sort of talent—sing, dance, rap, recite a poem. Even college students at the local university heard about it and came for a warm drink.
One particular year a bunch of junior high school boys whom my mom described as “hoodlums” came trick-or-treating. They almost died when they learned they would have to perform a talent. Wanting the cider and doughnuts, though, they forced themselves to do something. The next year the same group of “hoodlums” came—this time prepared and excited about performing a song they had memorized and rehearsed in advance, with hand gestures included.
In the fall of 1996, after living in our home for thirty years, we moved to a new house. Our new neighbors all told us we would get only about 30 trick-or-treaters because we were too far off the beaten track. But we knew better. Mom served about 175—most of them former neighborhood kids, new high school friends, families, newly-marrieds, and lots of university students. They all came to perform, visit, drink hot cider, and eat doughnuts. By this time all the older kids’ friends were married, but they still came with their little children to trick-or-treat at our house. It was tradition.