Family traditions come in all shapes and sizes and are treasured by family members throughout several decades. There is a feeling of comfort and warmth that can come over a person when they are participating in something that they know is important and a feeling of pride when a parent or grandparent can pass down a tradition to his children or grandchildren.

Photography
Family traditions can also involve capturing important moments in film. Keeping a scrapbook, or lining pictures along the wall of your child for every age so that you can see how they have grown or by taking out the photo albums every birthday in order to reminisce.

One family went so far as to religiously photograph themselves every year on the same date, in order to see how they progressed and aged. This started in 1976 with mom and dad, and included pictures of their children from the year they were born through 2006. The results of this family tradition are astounding as it is a chance for them to stop time and see how they changed over time. It is also a great idea for all families who want to start a tradition of chronicling their lives with film.

Some parents will take yearly Christmas pictures of their children, leaving the most recent one on the wall for the entire year. Every year, the new picture would go in the frame on top of the previous year’s picture, giving parents a collection of holiday portraits of their children. Some might do collages of their child in a big frame from birth through the first year, a picture from every month, showing how their baby had changed and grown throughout the first year alone. Photography is a great way to involve tradition in your family.

Holidays
Family traditions can be something little or big and take place as various times of the year. Holidays are a popular time that people abide by family traditions whether it is Easter, Thanksgiving or Christmas.

As a kid, Christmas was a holiday that held a lot of tradition in my family. Every year my mom and I would go to my aunt and uncles house on Christmas Eve to spend the night. Dinner would be something light and easy, normally sandwiches and chips. In the evening my mom, aunt, uncle, cousins and myself would play games like Pictionary and Charades for hours. Before bed we would go outside and look for a flashing red light in the sky, which my uncle swore to us kids was Rudolph’s nose.

On Christmas day all the kids would wait at the top of the stairs for the adults to call us down so that we could see what Santa brought. My uncle the chef always made the turkey, and I always made the gravy. My aunt would have the “Gray Family Applesauce Bread” for all to take home, and lots of fudge lying around for a treat. We always HAD to have my grandmothers chocolate pecan pie, so much so that we had to call her for the recipe when she became too ill to make the trip.

Easter in your family might have consisted of re-hiding the Easter eggs a dozen times so that the children can search them out repeatedly every year. In the fall some families hold traditional pumpkin carving contests, letting a friend or neighbor judge. Traditions make people happy, they make people feel comfortable and help them leave their problems at the door for one day, or at least for a few hours.

Vacations
Some families have the tradition of a yearly holiday away from it all just for them. They use this time to reconnect and get to know each other again. This time may be a vacation to a family amusement park, Hawaii, or to grandma’s house. They may even include a yearly, quick trip over spring break to a nearby beach or mountain resort that the family likes to go back to every year. These family traditions are what the kids will remember as they grow up, go off to college and begin families of their own.

Family traditions are an important part of any family. Whether the traditions are small, like the chocolate pecan pie, or grand like the trips to the beach, they are a great way for a family to bond, and pass down the importance of relationships and togetherness. It is never too late to start a family tradition of your own.

By Molly Gold

What Mom wouldn’t want to know the best secrets to create a fun-filled holiday season without wearing herself out? The life of a mom during the holidays is beyond hectic, with many women finding themselves hosting one winter holiday and traveling to another. The hectic pace of having it all leaves Moms scrambling for everything from presents for teachers to a well-stocked fridge before the relatives arrive. To help families enjoy the five weeks spanning the Winter Holidays with all their charm and wonder, Moms need to plan ahead. Check out Mickey’s Holiday Planning Guide and Calendar on www.MickeyDVD.com for scheduling solutions for a Happy Holiday Season.

Tackle the November Trio — get ahead of the game now!
Three important tasks must be accomplished by December 4 to allow room for holiday fanfare.

1. Write holiday cards now.
   Purchase cards, reproduce a family photo, write your holiday letter, address envelopes, and assemble. Thanksgiving weekend, let your children help stamp and apply return address labels and then drop them in the mail with plenty of time for your loved ones to enjoy.

2. Review your Gift List and tackle it now.
   You will save time and money with preseason sales. Take it one step further and shop online. You can finish it all in one sitting and relax while gifts are shipped prewrapped!

3. Take inventory of your holiday décor now.
   The stores are stocked to fill in the gaps so you are ready to go when the time comes.

Apply the Rule of One
One holiday social event per weekend, that is. And when you accept an invitation, contact your babysitter immediately so you won’t find yourself scrambling. We tend to over schedule during the holidays and then wonder why the season feels more like a treadmill than a celebration. With her planner in hand, Mom can carefully commit everyone’s time, leaving room for winter sports, the usual tour of weekend birthdays, commitments at your place of worship, and just plain hang-time to enjoy the warmth of your own home and family. While you are scheduling, review all school holiday performances and events with your partner so if needed, time off can be requested now and sitters for younger siblings can be arranged. If simultaneous events occur, have each partner take one event so everyone is covered with an adoring adult.

Family Traditions
Winter holidays just can’t commence without a huge batch of your family’s favorite cookies to start the season off right. This year it might be Daisy’s Sugar Cookies (visit “Just for Mom” at www.MickeyDVD.com for a great recipe). Maybe you decorate your home Thanksgiving weekend, or maybe you believe in Santa and visit him at the mall every year Christmas week. You need to schedule these celebrations to make sure they occur, just as they do every year, while you zoom through the fun. Offer your children the rituals you cherished as a child. Tell them why these rituals are special and together, start some of your own. You can create a Family Traditions Book where you record each activity with its history and then add to it through the years. Your children will grow to love this routine and you will offer a legacy for their children to cherish someday as well.

Act from the Heart
Teach your children the significance of their affections by encouraging personalized, handmade gifts for their favorite friends and teachers. Offer your child a choice between activities such as baking cookies or decorating candle votives. Check out some of Mickey’s craft ideas and resources at “Just for Mom” on www.MickeyDVD.com and schedule family time. Be careful not to curb your child’s creativity with a drive for perfect presentation. Remember the lesson here is showing the value of heartfelt gestures for gift-giving occasions. Go one step further and have your children sort through their toys and offer items outgrown or less favored to local charities. Throw away anything broken and help your children deliver their gifts to their charity of choice.

Entertain Early
Remember flu season? It’s back just in time for the holidays. Murphy’s law dictates that on the very day you have your annual open house for 75 friends and neighbors, someone under your roof will have a fever. So what’s a mother’s best defense? Entertain early in the holiday season and be prepared ahead of time so you can handle last-minute challenges such as this. Have your event before the season gets the best of you. Then you can enjoy the preparations to welcome loved ones to your home. By minimizing last-minute party tasks, you will build in time to handle the unexpected bumps life always hands us. And if you have to reschedule the entire event, remember it’s not the end of the world.

About the Author:
By Molly Gold, nationally known scheduling expert and creator of The Go Mom Planner. Molly has been featured on Good Morning America and her articles have been featured in Better Homes and Gardens, Woman’s Day and numerous other women’s magazines. For fun games, activities and family fun visit MickeyDVD.com.

By Susie Cortright

Celebrate this season of renewal, abundance and love with some new family traditions. Here are seven ideas:

1. Create a kindness wreath for your front door. Begin with a small, plain wreath. A week or two before Easter, distribute 10 or more ribbons in bright spring colors to each family member. Whenever someone reaches out to another in kindness during the week, another ribbon is tied onto the wreath.

2. Fill a wicker basket with handmade cards featuring cheerful messages and perhaps a small gift or two. Leave the basket anonymously on a friend’s doorstep, along with a request that they empty the basket and do the same for someone else.

3. Sit down with your children and each create a special collage or drawing that depicts what Easter means to each of you. The artwork can become a permanent part of your family’s Easter decorations. Before they go into storage at the end of the season, scan them or take a photograph so you can record the artwork in your family journal or scrapbook album.

4. Videotape (or audiotape) young children singing a fun seasonal song. These renditions of “Little Bunny Foo Foo” and “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” will be treasured for years to come. Make copies and send the tapes to family and friends whom you can’t be with on Easter.

5. When it’s time for your annual Easter get together, present each guest with a 6×6 or 8×8 sheet of cardstock and ask them to handwrite a message especially for the Easter holiday – perhaps ways that they are feeling joy, gratitude, or hopefulness. Snap a photo of each guest and create a simple (and quick) mini scrapbook album as a keepsake, featuring one page for each guest – with their photo and Easter message.

6. Make a Garden Journal. Cover an ordinary dime-store composition book or journal with spring patterned papers or magazine clippings of your favorite flowers. Now record the process of creating your family garden this year. Make sure to include pictures of each of you working in the soil. Don’t forget the journaling – and lots of flower pressings.

7. Buy or make handmade Easter greeting cards and send them to friends and family. Make a point to send out at least seven cards this season to people with whom you’d like to create a deeper friendship.

May these ideas for Easter family traditions spark more ideas that you can use throughout the year to celebrate the beauty that comes to us through friends and family.

About The Author
Susie Cortright is the founder of Momscape.com as well as Momscape’s Online Scrapbooking Magazine and Momscape’s Organic Living Channel – all of which celebrate the simple splendor in our everyday lives. Visit her site today to subscribe to her free weekly newsletters featuring fresh new ideas and inspiration.

by Deborah Felker

My personal search for the perfect Irish baby name began many years ago, when my husband and I found out we were going to be blessed with another daughter. We knew we wanted an Irish name for our baby girl so we would always remember the spiritual connection that we shared.

After all, it was from this bond that she was conceived. In those early days and nights of endless romance and passion, practically all we ever listened to was Enya and Riverdance!

My husband and I knew we were soul mates who shared a strong “Celtic heartbeat”. Like so many other happy couples expecting a baby, we knew we had been blessed to find each other in a sea of lost souls.

It wasn’t long before we had formed a bond that we knew was eternal. And now that bond would become even more unbreakable…with the impending birth of our baby girl, Shannon.

“Shannon” is an example of a popular Irish name which is derived from a place, rather than a legendary character or historical person. The names “Tara” and “Kerry” are other examples. “Shannon” is the name of the longest river in Ireland.

The Irish have always held “the Shannon” in a special place of honor both as a source of life and a symbol of ancient wisdom. In fact, the accepted meaning of the name Shannon today is “wise one”.

So this Irish baby name seems to be fitting after all, since our daughter became part of the lifeblood of our home, just as the river is the lifeblood of the Irish countryside.

Our children fill our lives with warmth, laughter, and love; and they provide us with never ending opportunities to gain and pass on wisdom.

If you are filled with the Irish spirit like me, whether you have Celtic ancestors or not, there is no better way to pass on that legacy than to give your wee ones a Celtic or Irish baby name. But all too often, when you go looking for that special Irish baby name, you only find yourself frustrated by the lack of practical information.

On Fantasy-Ireland, you’ll not only find both popular and unique Irish baby names, you’ll also discover what they mean, how to spell them, how to say them, and more.

Irish Baby Naming Customs
There are many old Irish customs you can incorporate that will honor your Celtic spirit and pass on your Irish heritage to your children. If you have spent any time looking into Irish genealogy, you have probably noticed how often names recur within families. The reason for this is that there was a customary way of choosing baby names in Ireland that left very little room for the creativity we enjoy today.

Irish Customs for naming boys:
The oldest son was named after his father’s father. The second son was named after his mother’s father. The third son would be given his father’s name. The fourth son was named after his father’s oldest brother.

Irish Customs for naming girls:
The oldest daughter was named after her mother’s mother. The second daughter would be named after her father’s mother. The third daughter was given her mother’s name. The fourth daughter was named after her mother’s oldest sister.

Choosing a Creative Irish Baby Name
If you would like to carry on some Irish family names, but prefer to be more creative, perhaps you could trace your own family tree for Irish names that you find most appealing. Or you could name your child after a famous historical figure. Another option would be to choose the name of a legendary character in Celtic mythology.

The Evolution of Irish Baby Names
Prior to the medieval times, there were over 10,000 different names being used in Celtic territories. Many of these names were derived from combining one or two word elements which each had distinct meanings. Names would often be created using the words for lucky colors, plants, and animals.

Or names would be created using words for moral or physical qualities such as strength and beauty. For example, the name Muiriol is derived from the word “muir”, meaning “sea”, and the word “gel”, meaning “bright and shining”.

Just as our modern English language is drastically different than Shakespeare’s English, modern Irish is very different from ancient Gaelic. Irish baby names usually have many different forms, as well as an English version or two, which is often easier to pronounce and to spell.

Alternate spellings often emerged as a result of strict and oppressive English laws, which forbid the use of the Irish native language. Throughout those dark years in Ireland, it was illegal to speak Irish, so people were forced to use English versions of their names, even if the name lost it’s true meaning as a result.

Continue your cherished Celtic legacy by choosing the perfect Irish baby name for your child. Discover the meanings and stories behind the most popular and unique baby names of Ireland.

About the Author:
Deborah Felker is the creator and editor of Fantasy-Ireland.com, featuring the Top 30 Most Popular Irish Boy Names, the Top 30 Most Unique Irish Baby Boy Names, the Top 35 Most Popular Irish Girl Names, and the Top 35 Most Unique Irish Girl Names. Whether you want to use a popular name for your baby, or avoid one, Fantasy-Ireland.com is your best resource!