Family Celebrations Ideas for Strong Family Culture

To build a strong family culture, you need to reinforce and honor the things that matter most to your family. The practice of celebrating as a family is a key way to do this. Celebrations create space to connect as a family and engage joyfully. First, you need to identify your areas of opportunity and then you can begin to brainstorm ideas.

Let’s unpack some of these key areas for opportunity, so you can begin to add your own ideas and implement how you uniquely celebrate as a family. Start your journey to a strong family culture now!

4 Categories for Family Celebrations Ideas

As you seek out types of family celebrations to add to your unique family culture, these basic categories can help you begin to organize your ideas and not miss key opportunities of what to celebrate. Consider using a family meeting to help you plan these priorities through your year. 

Life Milestones Family Celebrations Ideas

The key moments in each family member’s life are often a common starting point for family celebrations and traditions. If you already use some of these strategies, look for ways you can go deeper in these celebrations to connect them more closely to your family culture.

• Anniversaries: These could be dates tied to anniversaries of wedding, day of salvation, baptism, sobriety etc. Set traditions that make it clear why these anniversaries matter to your family, such as a time to reshare the story about the milestone.
• Career Change: Pause to celebrate big career moments like promotion, a new job, retirement, etc. Add a special way you honor the individual like an engraved stone of remembrance.
• Family Firsts: Pick specific “first” moments your family celebrates like a first solo drive, first donation of the year, first steps, etc.
• Skills Achieved: Set goals for your family and celebrate individual skills your family members accomplish and develop.

Generosity Family Celebrations Ideas

How your family gives is a key reflection of its culture and values, so adding family celebrations specific to your giving habits reinforces the role of being generous in your family culture.

• Goals Achieved: Determine specific goals your family wants to achieve and create special celebrations for these. (Amounts hit, impact created, etc.)
• Set an Initiative: Kick off the causes or initiatives your family wants to support with a celebration. Dream together and honor how your family is going to be involved. 
• Talents Recognition: Beyond finances, make sure your family has space to honor and celebrate ways your family members are giving back through skills and service. Maybe it is making monthly space for the family to share updates and ask for prayer.
• Make It Fun: Create opportunities around generosity that bring fun and joy to your family like a secret giving campaign, random acts of generosity, hospitality for someone in need, etc. Celebration isn’t just about what you achieve but it can be creating joy together.

Legacy Family Celebrations Ideas

Our core belief is that legacy is what you live now. You shouldn’t have to wait until eulogies to see if you made an impact, so using celebrations that recognize building legacies will help your family catch a glimpse of the vision of what you are achieving together.

• Person of Honor: Create a day of celebration for someone in your family where you listen to their stories and advice.
• Live It Out: Set specific times as a family to celebrate how you are accomplishing your vision as a family, recognizing individual contributions, and sharing hopes for the future. (Need help accomplishing your vision? Check out our guide here.)
• Get Multi-Generational: If possible, have a day where as many generations of your family can be together. Share your key family stories, do the fun activities or traditions your family loves, and enjoy the time together.
• Overcomers: Celebrate with your family milestones or struggles they have overcome. Identify the lessons learned.

Everyday Moments Family Celebrations Ideas

“Celebration” can have the connotation of elaborate or lavish, but some of the best traditions to add to your family come from the simple, everyday moments you can honor. As you think about this category, look for the opportunities for celebrating as a family in small ways. It can be as simple as a routine for compliments, but take advantage of those moments!

• Encouragement: Implement celebration routines related to how and what you will encourage family members for, such as ways they have been kind, achievements in their current stage of life, ways they are living out the mission, etc.
• Sabbath Practices: A Sabbath time isn’t just rest, so it can include celebration by making space to talk about what God has done and to reconnect with family.
• Make It Fun: This is your chance to get creative! What is something fun that is unique to your family’s culture that you could make a celebration? It could be fun things like who found the lost item of the week, a survived the week celebration, hall of fame celebration for funniest/worst moments of the day, victory dance for winning a game etc. Look for a unique way to bring people together.

What Will Your Family Celebrations Be?

Now that you have these categories, it’s time to start brainstorming how you will celebrate as a family. Use the ideas to get you started, but pay attention to how it supports your family culture. What do you want to be known for as a family? What will reinforce core values and concepts to your family? Choose the ideas and be willing to keep testing and learning together.

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It takes work to build a strong family, so let us help you! We have a guided 7-session study that will walk you through the fundamentals that hundreds of other families have all completed. You will learn how to create your family’s own blueprint to success and the tools to begin implementing it. Learn more about the study here.