It’s almost that time of year again.
You know what we’re talking about.
The most wonderful time of the year:
The Winter Holidays!
If you live in the U.S., whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas or have different cultural traditions during midwinter, you’re part of the winter holiday season for one simple reason:
Holiday-themed decorations and activities, and everything related to them, are literally everywhere.
From the mammoth 82-foot Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center in New York City, to the downtown loop in Chicago – which is breathtaking during the holidays – to small towns nationwide that go all out and decorate their Main Streets like fantasy postcards, holiday activities completely dominate the weeks from Thanksgiving to New Years’ Day.
Schools organize special events. Employers host parties and give workers time off to spend with their families. People travel from near and far to visit relatives, friends, and loved ones to participate in longstanding holiday rituals and traditions.
That’s what this article is about: the routines, rituals, and traditions associated with the holidays. Specifically, we’ll focus on the importance of the routines and rituals families practice at this important time, what they mean, and how they help teens.
Are Routines and Rituals the Same Thing?
While routines and rituals are similar, they’re not the same. Both routines and rituals are activities that two or more family members repeat regularly over the course of a year and throughout the duration of their lives. Routines and rituals are defined by sameness: families do the same thing – or almost the same thing – at the same time and expect the same or a similar outcome every time. Routines and rituals are consistent, comforting, and predictable.
However, once you look past those common elements, it’s easy to see how routines and rituals are different and help families and teens in different ways. The similarities are significant, and the differences appear in how families communicate, the nature of commitment, and the type of continuity associated with the routines and rituals.
Evidence from a comprehensive meta-analysis on over 50 studies on family routines and rituals identifies the following distinctions in communication, commitment, and continuity between routines and rituals:
Communication:
- Routines:
- Communication during routines is functional and instrumental. The purpose is to relay information efficiently, in order to accomplish a specific task or goal. For example, a family dinner routine may include communication like, “I’ll get dessert while you clear the table.”
- Rituals:
- Communication during rituals is meaningful and symbolic. It does more than accomplish simple tasks or relay information efficiently. A common ritual around Thanksgiving is for each family member to say, one at a time, exactly what they want to give thanks for. Rituals like this help children create a sense of identity and promote continuity of values across generations.
Commitment:
- Routines
- Routines require a short commitment with a finite end point. For example, if a dinner routine includes kids clearing the table, once they’re done, they’re done, think no more of it, and move on to whatever’s next.
- Rituals:
- Commitment to a ritual involves more than the actions/behaviors connected to the ritual itself. It creates a living bridge to the past, to ancestors who created the rituals originally, sets expectations for the future, and implies continuing the rituals in the years to come. In addition, there’s an emotional commitment involved: families use rituals to experience positive memories, celebrate the present moment, and look forward to the future.
Continuity:
- Routines:
- Routines create continuity by default: the repetition does it. Family continuity is derived from the fact that family routines, by definition, always involve two or more family members.
- Rituals:
- Rituals create continuity because families invest in them. Parents imbue them with deep emotion and communicate that emotion to their children. They emphasize the rituals with values and priorities specific to that family and that culture. This process enhances the emotional resonance of family values over time, while simultaneously defining and solidifying family culture and norms for future generations.
We can look at the information above in two ways:
Routines keep life running smoothly, while rituals give life meaning.
If a routine is disrupted, it’s inconvenient, but if a ritual is disrupted, it creates significant emotional distress and can impar family cohesion.
We advocate keeping up family holiday rituals for this very reason: they promote overall family cohesion and harmony. But don’t take our word for it or rely on the study above. There’s more research on the value of family holiday rituals, which we’ll share now.
The Benefits of Family Rituals for Teens: Research Report
In the recent publication “How do Adolescents Benefit from Family Rituals? Links to Social Connectedness, Depression and Anxiety” a team of researchers examined the impact of family rituals on teen mental health.
Here’s how they frame the purpose of their research:
“Adolescence is a sensitive period for the development of depressive-anxious symptomatology. The practice of family rituals and perceived social connectedness have been indicated as protective factors for adolescents´ adjustment, however the existing empirical research is still scarce.”
The study authors review previous research on the topic of family rituals and teen mental health. earlier peer-reviewed studies show consistent family rituals and routines, such as regular mealtimes, are positively associated with:
- Feeling supported
- Developing a commitment to learning
- Forming positive values
- Developing effective social skills
- Creating a positive identity
- Reporting lower levels of anxiety
- Developing fewer emotional and behavioral problems
On the other hand, peer-reviewed studies show that the absence of or low investment in regular family rituals and routines is positively associated with:
- Depression
- Risky behavior
- Substance misuse
- Suicidality
- Antisocial behavior
- Violent behavior
- Problems at school
- Problems with eating/eating disorders
- Increased use of mental health services
These results suggested that regular family routines and rituals such as family meals can:
- Help adolescents cope with daily stress
- Function as a protective factor for mental health
- Provides a sense of connectedness to family
- Promote a sense of connectedness to the worlds
- Create a structure that reduces stress and increases wellbeing
- Improve self-esteem
- Help teens form a positive identity based in family values, aligned with personal values
That’s a summary of the research and major findings that occurred before this recent study. It’s clear routines and rituals can help teens, but how exactly do they improve teen mental health?
Before we answer that question with results from the study, let’s take a deeper look into family rituals and routines.
Regular Family and Rituals: Form and Function
We discussed the primary differences between family routines and rituals above, with an emphasis on the contrasting components of communication, commitment, and continuity. To give meaning and perspective to those distinctions, we’ll share relevant details from that meta-analysis, which was published in 2002. In that study, the authors took time to elucidate helpful facts about routines and rituals that can help us understand the previous research, and prepare us to better understand and apply the results of the latest research.
Here’s how that group of experts answered salient questions about family routines and rituals.
What We Need to Know About Family Routines
What are some common family routines?
- Common family routines include shared, repeated activities around meals, bedtime, household chores, communicating with grandparents/relatives living elsewhere, watching TV, going to sports events, and weekend outings.
Do routines change over time?
- Yes, based on developmental stages. Routines increase in frequency during early childhood and school years, and change in character when children become adults. The middle generation adults with children – generally assume leadership roles when their parents reach retirement age.
Are regular routines good for families?
- Studies connect regular family routines with family harmony, parenting competence, child health/wellbeing, and increased academic achievement/performance.
What’s the relationship between family structure and family routines?
- Consistent family routines reduce stress in families with one parent and facilitate healthy adjustment in children with divorced parents.
What We Need to Know About Family Rituals
What kind of rituals do families practice that are important to them, and strengthen their bonds?
- Rituals that are important include things like:
- Sunday dinners
- Going to church
- Family reunions
- Holiday traditions
Are family rituals affected by culture?
- During rituals – as opposed to typical daily/evening meals – conversations take on a symbolic nature that reflect cultural values specific to each family.
With this enhanced understanding of family routines and rituals in mind, we’ll now address the question we pose above: exactly how do they improve teen mental health?
Family Holiday Rituals and Teen Mental Health: What’s the Link?
This study examined the relationships between family ritual meaning, social connectedness, anxiety, and depression among adolescents. The researchers analyzed data collected from a total of 248 participants between 15 and 20 years old, with an average age of 17.
To determine the impact of family rituals on anxiety, depression, and social connectedness, study participants completed the following assessments:
- Family Ritual Questionnaire
- Social Connectedness Scale (Revised)
- Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale
Results showed that family ritual meaning was:
- Positively related to social connectedness
- Negatively related to depression
Social connectedness was negatively associated with:
- Anxiety
- Depression
These results show us how family rituals help teen mental health. In families where rituals had meaning, the presence of family rituals themselves increased a sense connectedness and decreased symptoms of depression, but did not directly decrease symptoms of anxiety. However, among adolescents for whom meaningful family rituals increased a sense of social connectedness, the presence of connectedness was associated with decreased symptoms of both anxiety and depression.
Therefore, the study sheds light on one way family rituals help teens:
They increase an overall sense of social connectedness.
That’s an important finding, which families can use to improve and protect the mental health of teens, but improve family life overall.
Creating Routines and Rituals
Parents reading this may think, “Great, one more thing to add to my to-do list: establish family holiday routines and create meaningful rituals.” And we get it. Parents have enough on their plate already.
But we have a relevant insight:
It’s very likely you already have a series of routines in place that function as they should.
Think about your week. The things you and your teen cooperate on to make every day work are the routines we refer to above. They’re efficient, they’re short, and they’re practical. But research shows they help teens. That means that as a parent, you can work to keep those routines consistent, and understand that though they feel superficial in the moment, in the big picture, they’re associated with a range of positive benefits for mental health and overall wellbeing.
The same is true for your holiday rituals. Whether they feel like formal rituals or not, the fact that they occur yearly, on specific days, and have specific actions and behaviors associated with them, elevates them from the routine to the ritual, and helps them move from the mundane to the meaningful. They add depth and emotion to those days, and increase a sense of belonging to family and connection to the world as a whole.
Here’s how the study authors characterize the importance of family rituals and routines:
“Our results [suggest] that family rituals may have benefits that spread beyond the family to the other relationships in different contexts, serving a doubly protective capacity. Investment in rituals can provide adolescents with a set of skills that are essential for building relationships outside of the family realm. When adolescents successfully establish a sense of connection with their peers and the overall social world, they are also less prone to developing depression and anxiety symptoms.”
It’s encouraging to learn that things most of us do by default – our daily routines and yearly rituals – are protective of and beneficial for family harmony and the healthy development of our teens. For parents thinking of skipping the family holiday rituals this year, we recommend rethinking that. Those annual holiday rituals play an instrumental role in the overall health and wellness of teens, and may be more beneficial than most parents realize.
