The Christmas holidays are steeped in familiar, old traditions. Decorating our homes, trimming tree, exchanging gifts, hanging mistletoe and many other traditions are staples of season. And while these old traditions can create warm memories, you may be missing out on something special. This Christmas season, take some time to consider creating your own special family tradition. Perhaps a glimpse into my own family's unique tradition will inspire you to discover one as well.

My Family's Personal Christmas Tradition

Many years ago, my mother became addicted to garage-saleing. She would wake up bright and early every Friday and Saturday morning (year-round), retrieve newspaper from driveway, and circle all of garage sales near her neighborhood that were listed in classified section. Then, with a group of 2-3 lifelong friends, she would begin her quest for that perfect 'gift' that someone else was discarding. She rarely paid more than 50 cents for an item. The gifts were usually slighlty worn, even a little broken. (In fact, many times a perfect item would end up broken by time she got it home. She was a little clumsy). But by end of each shopping trip, she would arrive home with 10-20 items, that she would proudly display to my father. He, of course, would usually groan, because he always knew that she would be asking him to mend broken pieces, or re-paint an old item. Needless to say, by end of a year, my mother had managed to accumulate hundreds of 'special gifts', but had spent very little money doing so.

For Bill's fellow councilors, this seemingly inconsiderate practice was very disruptive. At first, since Bill was known to be an extremely busy professional, they were prepared to assume that he had been unavoidably delayed. But when history repeated itself meeting after meeting, they began to wonder..

Then one day, sleepy little town was overtaken by a crisis, and mayor asked his councilors to attend an emergency session - at 7 following morning. And you guessed it - Bill turned up at 7:10 precisely.

This seemed to confirm mayor's suspicion's that something more than unavoidable circumstances lay behind Bill's habitual latecoming. After meeting he called over offending councilman for a private chat.

To mayor's surprise, Bill accepted rebuke with good grace. Punctuality had never been his strongest point, he pleaded, and it had never dawned on him that his bad habit was upsetting everybody so. But from this point, he assured mayor, he was a reformed man...

The day of next council gathering came around, and sure enough, Bill was among first to arrive.

"What's matter Bill?" jeered one of his colleagues. "Is your watch half an hour fast?"

"Surely, you were locked out of your house!" added a second, in a somewhat derisive tone.

Right until end of his term of office, Bill was never on time for a council meeting again.

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This is a story that actually happened, although I have changed some of details.

Three or four decades ago, an educational psychologist by name of Haim Ginott caused quite a stir when he suggested to parents and teachers that they try a new way of communicating with children. He urged them to unlearn language of rejection - blaming and shaming, ridiculing and belittling, threatening and bribing - and to learn a new language of acceptance.

In his bestselling books, Ginott repeatedly wrote about need for "congruent communication." By this, he meant that way we communicate should be congruent, or consistent, with our objective.

What a pity that so much of our communication isn't!

We see this clearly from our story. Had his colleagues given Bill some badly needed encouragement in breaking a difficult habit, everybody would have come out a winner. But instead of drawing him near, they pushed him away.