Portrait of a Holiday: a Tie, Some Talk, and a Family Walk

PORTRAIT OF A HOLIDAY: A TIE, SOME TALK, AND A FAMILY WALK -- So you'd love for this to be the year that your holiday family celebration looks, and feels, like a Norman Rockwell painting...for the first time ever? Resolve that you'll make the holiday a time to truly enjoy your family--and then realize that doing so takes focus and compromise, says Temple clinical psychologist Herb Rappaport, author of The Family Gathering Survival Plan. "It is difficult to change behavior, particularly when it's part of our personal and family histories. But holidays give us extended opportunities to talk, play, solve problems and venture into new terrain with those we cherish," says Rappaport. His nuts-and-bolts ideas for strengthening the family holiday experience? Turn off the cell phones, computers and pagers, take a group walk, maybe even wear a tie to the dinner table if you don't normally do so, and resolve to make it a day for connecting with one another. "Formal attire seems to have the capacity to set the occasion apart, as holidays are intended to do," he says. "And something as simple as creating a tradition of a family walk can force people into conversation.