Family Traditions

It goes without saying that the family is very important as a unit in our society. Nothing else but family can be an emotional centre of peo­ple's lives and a transmitter of culture. Understanding between all mem­bers of the family and consideration for others are very important in family relationships. Tenderness, warm-heartedness and respect must always be present in the family to make it friendly. I do think family traditions help its members respect and support one another.

A lot of activities can help members of a family to be on friendly terms: discussing all the family plans, going on trips together, visiting museums, theatres, exhibitions and exchanging opinions about them, sharing joys and sorrows.

If to speak about my family, I can say I enjoy our honest and open relationships. I like it when parents trust their children, give them free­dom, rely on them and respect them. In my opinion these things make family relations warm and pleasant.

Unfortunately, we can't spend much time together during a week. My parents have to work a lot to earn money for our family. But in the evening they try to spend as much time as possible with my sister and me. Everybody in our family likes having tea when we can speak about our working day, share impressions and good news, discuss our chal­lenges and make plans for the coming day. It's one of our family tradi­tions. To my mind, it helps us learn more about one another and makes our family united.

Every member of our family looks forward to the weekend. We enjoy going to the cinema and cafes together. In winter we often ski and skate. In other seasons we enjoy riding bikes, going to theme parks or visiting famous sights of our country. We visit our extended family and often help them in the garden. It's also our family tradition to spend summer holidays together either at the seaside or in the country, which I enjoy very much.

We have other family traditions. Our family see the New Year at home. We cook a lot of delicious food for the night meal which usually starts at 10 p.m. A goose or chicken stuffed with apples is our traditional New Year dish. We sing songs, play games and give presents to one another.

We have a family tradition to celebrate birthdays of each member of the family. On these days we usually have parties. Friends and relatives come with presents and flowers. Our last family birthday was mother's birthday. We wanted to make it a special day since it was her 38th birth­day. We had selected a nice present for her and my father and I had done all the cooking. The table was nicely laid up. The party was fantastic. All the guests seemed to enjoy themselves a lot.

As you can see, consideration for others is very important in our fam­ily relationships. We have our family traditions which make our life more exciting and interesting, help to understand one another better, to express our emotions and feelings. Our parents feel great affection for us and try to bring us up in a proper way. They devote their free time to us and this makes our home the happiest place for me.