5 Ways to Bring Family Together this Summer
5 Ways to Add Meaning to Your Family Reunion
My friend Aliza is planning a 70th birthday party for her mother at a lakeside cabin in Western Michigan. It took weeks to choose a date and wrangle the 30 RSVPs from her mother’s nearest and dearest, many of whom haven’t seen or spent much time with one another in years. But on a Saturday this August, they’ll drive in from all over the Midwest to celebrate Deirdre.
Once Aliza squared away the logistics, she realized she had a full day to fill with her mother’s people. “My brother has a boat,” she told me over the phone. “There will be a cake. But besides the cake and singing, what should I do with them?”
So often, when we get together for family reunions or barbecues or milestone birthdays, there's a lot of joy and milling around and chit chat, but it doesn’t always turn into something more. Aliza worried that the gathering would feel warm but scattered. Now that the group was on board, how might she gather them?
I gave her five ideas.
1) Design for connection (and do it early and often).
Often in extended families, everyone feels like they “should” know everyone, yet often we don’t. Design an activity that gives people social permission to connect and create a shared context. (It can be light touch or super involved, depending on your M.O.) One family I know hosts a modified bingo where the clues start conversations: “Find the person who got lost on a trip to the mall,” or “Find the person who keeps everything-bagel seasoning in their purse,” or “This person is the best dancer in the family.” The clues are the key here: funny but not mean, endearing, interesting, and, in some cases, competitive or subjective to get people talking.
I know of a woman who designs an annual scavenger hunt tailored to the specific group of people signed up to play. For a family reunion built around a person's birthday, their life could be the orienting context for the game. Because Deirdre swam competitively in high school, someone from the team might swim out to the buoy and back to fetch an item. She grew up navigating the woods with her brother, so maybe there’s a trail (or disorganized basement!) navigating challenge. As she’s a trivia geek, the teams have to solve a logic or crossword puzzle. When you set the context, the activities become a form of meaning, bonding, and honoring the beloved.
2) Use your invitation to prime and orient.
If Aliza wants these 30 guests to be game for doing something, she’ll want to prime them ahead of time. How do you make sure everyone doesn’t show up at different moments? Tell them the contours of the day ahead of time (2:00 kickoff / 2:30 Deirdre’s favorite yard games / 4:00 chip and dip taste test).
Want to get folks into a playful spirit? Be fun and easeful in your writing. If every gathering is a temporary world with its own social contract, your invitation is the first place guests get a peek at what’s brewing. Their RSVP then becomes the place where they sign on the dotted line. Yes, I’m up for your scavenger hunt, Aliza.
3) Make space for storytelling.
When the gathering is around a person’s milestone event, toasts can be a great vessel for stories. Try this: instead of toasting the person, toast to a value they embody, and tell a story about when you saw that value in action. As a friend told me years ago: when we toast to a person, we can’t all want to be that person. When we toast to a value or quality, we can all aspire to carry more of that value or quality in our own lives, too.
Toasts aren’t the only way to tell stories. I recently learned of a family who co-created a “Desert Island Disc” night where everyone shared a song that meant something to them, and they listened to each one together. At another family reunion I recently learned about, on the second evening, the adults in the room offer a “family update” of what they’ve been up to, along with the births, deaths, weddings, and losses that marked the year. They’re finding a way to unlock deeper meaning, context, and connection while also letting people choose what they want to share. And it works because it’s real.
4) Tap into your guests’ talents and energies and vibes.
Every family has inside jokes and private memes, friendly feuds and not-so-secret talents that you can use to make the afternoon feel more special. If Uncle Baz and Auntie Carmen have a long-standing rivalry over egg salad recipes, it might be time to make it official and have a family-wide cook-off. I recently learned of a family whose elder generation staged a neighborhood dance recital on their back deck when they were children, and now the Gen Z’ers — their own kids — want to revive it. I know of another family that has created a “Family Talent Share” that will double as the weekend’s programming: one cousin will lead the group on a favorite hike, while others will run a family genealogy hour and sandcastle-building.
5) Use gifts as collective mechanisms.
A collective mechanism is a structure (designed or emergent) that helps a group coordinate in relevant and appropriate ways for the good of the group to achieve an outcome. Good collective mechanisms are simple enough to let everyone participate in the ways they’d like. Around the holidays, many cultures use gifts as collective mechanisms, but you can do this any time of the year.
These gifts can be tangible or metaphorical. At one family’s reunion, a white elephant format was used to pass along heirlooms and family antiques (instead of purchased gifts). For a mother’s 90th birthday party, her hosting daughter asked each guest to “share a meaningful gift” her mother has given them over the years.
You can do this too.
You may be thinking, wow, this is a lot of work. Look, if you already love the way your family convenes, keep going—you’re lucky! (But also perhaps pay attention to whether what you love is also working for new in-laws or the next generation.)
Sometimes when we think of the word “structure,” we assume it’ll be constricting or add unnecessary formality. But particularly when you have a larger, disparate group of people that don’t all know each other, adding a touch of thoughtful structure in the right context can help the group find itself – and each other.
As always,
Priya
p.s. Thank you all for sharing your incredible examples of how you’ve added a touch of structure to family reunions to help them take off. Read them all here and add your own!
ICYMI
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