Holiday Bonus Episode 5: Rethink Your Holidays – Keep Joy, Drop Obligation

It’s Okay to Let a Tradition (or a To-Do) Go

Take a bird’s-eye view of your holiday traditions for a minute. Some of them mean so much to you that you’d never give them up, and you’re allowed to keep those exactly as they are. But some of what your family does every year is happening purely out of obligation — because it’s always been done — and it’s worth asking honestly whether it’s still bringing anyone joy, or whether it’s quietly become something everyone’s dredging through without remembering who it’s even for anymore.

Ask your family what actually counts as a tradition

Interestingly, some things you don’t even register as a tradition might be exactly that to someone else in your house. Ask your kids what their favorite part of the holiday is, past presents, and you might be surprised. In our house, Christmas morning always includes monkey bread — something I just think of as “the thing I make that day,” but to my kids, it’s something they look forward to all year. You won’t know which small habits carry that kind of weight until you ask.

Some traditions are allowed to end

Not everything has to be carried forward. If something has run its course, you can be grateful it existed and still decide not to force it onto the next Christmas, or the next generation. The moment something shifts from joy to obligation is worth noticing — that’s your cue to reevaluate, not to grit your teeth through it indefinitely.

Or you can evolve it instead of ending it

A tradition doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing — it can just change shape as your family does. We were once gifted a 24-door Advent box, pre-filled and assigned by kid, that taught my four kids patience around whose turn it was. When it became mine to fill, I adapted it: interlocking puzzle pieces dropped into each door so every kid got a small win, plus one item that belonged just to them. As they outgrew that, it became a running game of Scrabble, a new letter revealed behind each door. As they got older and left for college, it shifted again to FaceTime calls each night of Advent — until coordinating schedules turned even that into an obligation, and this year I didn’t pull it out at all.

That’s not a failure of the tradition. It’s the tradition doing exactly what traditions are supposed to do: bending to fit whichever season of family life you’re actually in. My sister, whose kids have been out of the house longer than mine, found a version that fits her family now — she mailed each kid (and my mom) a small pre-filled Advent calendar and started a group text where everyone shared what they opened each day. I loved it enough that I’m planning ahead to try something similar next year, and I’ve already dropped myself a note to start that planning by Halloween, because I know I won’t remember otherwise.

Close the loop on your pending list

If you built a pending list earlier this season, pull it back up now, even if you haven’t looked at it since you wrote it. Cross off what actually got done — you’ll likely find more done than you expected, since writing something down tends to keep it working quietly in the background even when you’re not staring at the list. That’s worth a real moment of noticing; it’s a genuine hit of proof that you accomplished things this season.

Then look at what’s left. Some of it deserves to move forward to next year — that’s not failure, that’s a decision you made on purpose, freeing up energy for now. And some of it deserves to just be thrown away: if there’s no pull left to do it and no joy left in the idea, let it go. Sometimes something was only ever meant to exist for a season, and that season in your family has passed. Getting that list down to nothing — whether by finishing it, deferring it, or releasing it — is its own small, satisfying close to the year.

Your practical, actionable step

Ask one person in your family what their favorite, maybe-unexpected part of the holidays is. Then pull up your pending list and sort everything on it into three piles: done, deferred to next year, or released for good.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.