4 fun New Year’s traditions made for the social media age
OPINION: Most of us have traditions to bring in the New Year. Here are a few fun ideas that are perfect for the age of social media.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
It’s amazing how our phones have changed the way we do pretty much everything. I feel like as a culture, we now record every single thing and then share all of those things that we recorded on the off chance somebody else might see it and enjoy it, learn from it, or whatever. Well, that means the way we do traditions has also changed. New Year’s is right around the corner and that means people are loading up on resolutions and preparing that New Year’s Day menu. Where you’re from — in the country or the world — can determine what your folks will be eating. Me? I grew up on collard greens and black-eyed peas for New Year’s Day and I neither know why nor have I attempted to look up why we do that. Why? Because it’s tradition!
The social media age has given us plenty of new tools for creating and crafting new traditions we can return to every year — and we might as well lean in. Here are some fun traditions to start and continue with your family and friends for years to come (or at least until the aliens get out of the drones flying around the country and take us away).
Make an annual TikTok New Year’s dance video
It’s possible that this first bullet will age terribly since it’s possible that TikTok might cease to exist in America a few weeks from this writing, but let’s act like it will still be around. The whole family can get together, with the assistance of the young people who actually know what’s cool and hip, and bust out a TikTok dance video where the young people teach the not-as-young people a new cool dance, and you do it. You can watch it over the years and see how much better (or worse) we all get at dancing and fun viral meme videos! It’s something the little kids can anticipate and then share with their own families.
Record your New Year’s resolutions
This is kind of a no-brainer and maybe everybody does it, but instead of just keeping our resolutions to ourselves, we can record them individually on January 1st and revisit them on December 31st every year to see if we remember them and/or have followed through. In a similar fashion, each person can also say where they hope to be in a year and see if that’s happened. It’s a way of always keeping our hopes and dreams alive and sharing them with our families.
Record mutual messages of inspiration to help carry each other through the year
One fun thing families can do is take one another’s phones and privately record messages and videos for the recipient to watch or listen to that might help carry them through the year. People can share them with the group if they want or keep them private, but they will always have a video or message of encouragement. This can be done every year as a way of sharing love and caring as we all get ready to enter a new year.
Join the New Year’s Day family picture challenge
Yeah, everybody takes pictures all day but setting up a scheduled, promised annual family picture based on some challenge moving around social media gives you the chance to view the family in the same way every year over time as you collectively enter the new year. Families grow and change quickly, and New Year’s Day is as good a time as any to document that.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).
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