Two weeks ago I unpacked one of my ugliest and most prized possessions – a glass globe painted red and yellow with crusty glitter glue. My younger stepson made it last year. That silly little glass globe was the first thing he ever truly gave me. In a lot of ways that smudgy little ornament is like my stepfamily. It was made with a lot of good intention and doesn’t look quite finished.

Creating a holiday tradition as a stepfamily is one way to draw people together and build a shared history. If you want to have a tradition, you need to plan it. Finding time to make a holiday memory as a stepfamily can be challenging. In a joint custody situation like ours holidays rotate. With them waking up at our house on Christmas morning one year and their mom’s the next year, we wanted to find a holiday tradition we could perpetuate and occur irregardless of “whose” Christmas it was.

At first, it seemed like there was little time to squeeze a new tradition into the line-up. Our holiday scheduling plate was already crammed. A traditional Christmas Eve dinner at my sister-in-law’s house locked out an evening. On Christmas morning one year we opened presents at our house and had breakfast, then Grandma rolled in with her gifts followed by a boatload of cousins and a mega-feast. All of this timed so that the kids could get to their mom’s house by 6.

With so many time constraints, finding time for a new activity wasn’t going to happen when the holiday was only 24 hours long. So for us – finding time before the holiday whirlwind to build some new traditions took on a priority.

In our stepfamily, we adopted ornament-making as a tradition. It can be flexibly scheduled any time during the month of December. Our original intent was to use the ornaments as gifts, but we kept them all for our tree the first year. Finally the second year - we started to give a few away.

The simple steps required to paint glass ornaments gave us a new way to experience each other. My younger stepson is very talented artistically and I was impressed the first time he showed me, his sister and his dad how to put paint inside a glass globe and swirl it, then decorate the outside with glitter. I got to see a side of him I’d never seen before. 

Ornament-making may not be your forte, but there are plenty of other ways to build holiday traditions. You can go caroling, take a drive to see shimmering lights, see a holiday performance, go to church, wrap gifts, go out for a special holiday lunch and shopping, volunteer together to help the needy, or bake cookies. The key thing is to do something together and interact with each other – not necessarily produce a fabulous product.

When making your plans for the holidays, children’s feelings need to be factored into the equation. Talk to the kids about what you want to do, and find out if it’s something they will enjoy. The holidays stir up memories for them just like they do for adults – and unfortunately some of those memories may provoke feelings of loss. Some stepfamily members may grieve the loss of holiday traditions, so parents and stepparents should talk to their children about their feelings.

It may be important to continue some old traditions as families merge and to share what different stepfamily members value. For example, in my family an advent wreath is lit at Sunday dinner to represent the coming of the Christ child and talk about the Christmas story in the month leading up to the big day. To my husband’s children, this was a completely alien concept - but one no one minded showing up. And they got to keep a tradition that was foreign to me – opening a single gift on Christmas Eve.

The important thing about building a new stepfamily holiday tradition is that we are all trying to make new memories together. That’s why a red and yellow ornament with glitter glue smudges is my favorite – it shows what we are becoming. Our holidays and traditions may not be neatly packaged, but they belong to us - our stepfamily.

Dawn Miller writes a column on life in blended families at thestepfamilylife.com. 
Visit Dawn's blog for a daily dose of life in the blender.
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