A mom struggles to find the holidays fun with teens and is worried she’s losing the holiday spirit. Jessica offers ways to make the holidays magical with teens, so that everyone can have fun.
Ask Jessica is an advice column for women in midlife. We cover all things related to midlife from changing bodies to career transitions to parenting teens to sandwich generation challenges to shifts in marital or life partnerships and everything in between. My hope is that in sharing these questions and answers I can women as we face the midlife journey together. Got a question or challenge you would like me to address? Fill out this form to submit your issue! Want to see the answers to other questions, check out our archive here.
Ways to Make the Holidays Magical with Teens
HEY JESSICA: I could really use some help getting into the holiday spirit. In years past, I have loved making the holidays really magical for my kids. We used to make cookies, go ice skating, go see light shows, and curl up on the couch to watch cheesy Christmas movies with hot cocoa. But now they’re teens who are both a bit “too cool” for such things, plus their lives are so busy that I feel like the opportunities for family fun are much more limited and this reality has left me feeling sad and uninspired. Do you have ideas for how I can turn my mood around or ways that I could still make the season magical for my family without risking the teenage eyerolls that would really put me over the edge? ~Grinch Be Gone
DEAR GRINCH BE GONE:
There’s no doubt about it, the magic of the holidays definitely shifts once kids get older. In our household, where we celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas, I have definitely noticed a shift in their excitement, not only about the holidays, but even about making wish lists. As my 14-year-old said this year, “it’s way less fun making a wish list that doesn’t include looking at Lego sets.”
But I hope you noticed that I said the magic shifts, not that it ends. What I have come to realize over the past few years, as my kids have gotten older, is that instead of creating the magic *for* them, now the joy is in creating the magic *with* them (which, added bonus, also means less behind the scenes work for you). Here are some of the ways that my family has made this shift:
- First, we have brainstormed holiday-themed family activities to do together (this helps to reduce the eyerolls) and then prioritize them given their busy schedules, so that everyone gets at least one activity that they really love included.
- It has now become an annual tradition that the boys help me to put our holiday lights up around the house.
- We have moved from little kids Christmas movies to more mature ones (e.g., Die Hard, Gremlins, Love Actually), although we still always watch Elf and A Muppet Christmas Carol.
- Holiday Happy Hours. We have taken them to a nicer restaurant’s bar area for Happy Hour holiday appetizers and mocktails. They love being in this more grownup environment and trying lots of different little dishes.
- I have started teaching them how to make some of our traditional holiday foods. From our two favorite unconventional latke recipes (sweet potato and Indian-spiced) to roasting a turkey to eggs benedict (our traditional Christmas morning breakfast), I have started having them help with these meals. They find this meaningful because these are foods that mean a lot to them and they want to keep these traditions going.
Now, I can’t promise that there won’t be teenage eyerolls or attitude (I mean, that would be a Christmas miracle), but I have felt that finding ways to make the traditions more appropriate for their age and interests (and their desire to be seen as mature), while also including them more in the planning and execution, has been a nice way to keep the magic going, just in a different way.
One final thought: watching our kids grow up and grow more independent is one of the great pleasures of parenting, but it is also one of the great heartbreaks. And the holidays are a time when those shifts can be much more apparent and poignant. So, one of the things that I have told myself is that it is OK to feel all of those contradictory feelings and that if that means I need to shed a few tears because my kids no longer care about advent calendars or continuing to use the menorahs they made in preschool, that is totally appropriate. But it is also important to remember that just because things change, doesn’t mean there isn’t new magic to be found.