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Rituals and traditions

Happier Holidays with Club Soda Paying attention to when Rituals and traditions

On a regular day, many of us know exactly when we’ll start drinking. We have a drink when the work of the day finishes, and we make the transition to a different kind of time. The holiday season can give us added impetus, as surely if there’s ever a time of year we deserve a treat, it’s in the holidays, right? Plus of course there’s the lure of everything we know about the traditions and rituals of the holiday season.

But if you really think about it, most of what we do over the holiday season happens by accident rather than design.

Whatever your beliefs, it’s a season that often becomes less about the symbolism of the festival and more about personal, family or societal traditions. The things you do over Thanksgiving and Christmas are shaped by routines built up over previous years, depending on what your family has always done, the people you like to spend this time of year with, or even where you work. Perhaps you have a pattern of when and where you shop, or what you do on Boxing Day and whose home you visit for drinks.

Club Soda co-founder, Laura Willoughby MBE, says:

I found I hid a lot of my drinking behind ‘tradition’. It is festive, loving and fun to pop over to see a friend you have not seen for a while for a quick drink or 10. However, in reality, all it did was create excuses to drink more.

I remember one Club Soda member confessing to me that she continually invited people over for drinks from early December as a gesture of generosity. But in reality, it was an excuse to have lots of alcohol in the house and an opportunity to drink to excess, often.

But maybe it’s time to shake up some of those patterns, especially the ones that get you into trouble with drinking. This year, why not create some new traditions?

We may have convinced ourselves that we can only manage someone’s company or a certain event if we drink. What a load of old tosh.

We may worry that it might look like we are shunning hospitality and kindness if we refuse the sparkling wine. Should we feel obliged to do something that is bad for us?

Or maybe, you just see the availability of something free hard to resist, like free drinks at the work Christmas party. But alcohol is never free. Too often, we pay the price with a hangover, guilt and regret.

This holiday season you need to delve deep and discover whether all of your ‘traditions’ are real or convenient self-myths. You need to be hard on yourself and consciously question your drinking routines, so that you have all the evidence you need to challenge your inner critic when it rears its head.

So where to start? We want to share with you some ideas for new holiday season traditions.

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