By Allan Shedlin
Grampsy and Founder, Daddying Film Festival & Forum (D3F)
Eighteen years ago, The New York Times News Service distributed worldwide a holiday piece I wrote. It was updated four years ago as our holiday post for the Daddying blog. As I reread it, I was reminded of two things:
First, our holiday traditions have a timeless quality.
Second, I remembered a pre-holiday session at a Washington, DC-area nursery school as part of a monthly program I conducted for three years for fathers/father figures and their children. After the first part of the program, children returned to their classrooms while the dads formed a circle to share and discuss their ideas about the brief video we'd just watched that was based on a children's book dealing with family challenges.
I told the dads I had a special gift for them that would remind them of what every one of their kids most wanted for the holidays. The dads were hyper-attentive as I handed each of them...
A mirror.
* * *
Give Them Presence for the Holidays...and Then Some
EDITOR'S NOTE: A version of the following post was originally published and distributed worldwide by The New York Times/Hearst News Service, November 22, 2006. We ran an updated version on the Daddying blog, November 25, 2021. A link to the full Daddying post is below this opening excerpt:
This is the time of year when I wish my ad-laden newspaper and daily junk mail came with a hand truck so my back won’t go out as I haul it inside. And when I wish the deluge of uninvited social media invaders and broadcast hawkers would cease and desist. Halloween, Election Day, Veterans’ Day, and Thanksgiving are now behind us, and Chanukah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa, impatiently awaiting their turns, are ready to intensify the materialistic hype. How I long for it to ebb.
As retailers jockey for advantage and social media goes into overdrive, the flurry of gift-buying advertisements and websites builds to a blizzard earlier and earlier and comes at us from every conceivable (and inconceivable) angle – cold consumerism fills our television screens, and all the other screens new technology afflicts. With the retail giants now displaying Christmas decorations and other items in early September, and mail-order and internet catalogs pushed on us as early as Labor Day, the days without holiday frenzy seem to be outnumbered by those with it. (Thankfully, some "big box" retailers finally decided to close on Thanksgiving Day, enabling their overworked and underpaid employees to enjoy the holiday with their families.)
This annual commercial blitz makes it harder to think about the unique opportunities the holidays provide for deeper meaning. I’ve spent years asking scores of people to tell me what they remember about their childhood holiday celebrations. Not a single person began with a memory of a specific gift they received. Instead, they spoke about traditions, tastes, smells, sights, places, visitors, and, most of all, about feelings. Their responses reminded me of a saying I read on a refrigerator magnet a few years back: “The most important things in life are not things.”
So, a few years back I established a new tradition of giving holiday presence, rather than presents.
READ FULL POST: Presence for the Holidays
Happy Holidays to You and Your Family!
Allan Shedlin has devoted his life's work to improving odds for children and families. He has three daughters, five grandchildren, and numerous "bonus" children and grandchildren. A trained educator, Allan has alternated between classroom service, school leadership, parenting coaching, policy development, and advising at the local, state, and national levels. After eight years as an elementary school principal, Allan founded and headed the National Elementary School Center. He’s written about education and parenting for major news outlets and trade publications, and given numerous TV, radio, and podcast interviews. In 2008, he was the first male honored as a "Living Treasure" by Mothering Magazine and founded REEL Fathers. In 2010 he advised the Obama White House on fathering policy. In 2017, he founded the DADvocacy Consulting Group. In 2018, he launched the Daddy Wishes Fund and Daddy Appleseed Fund. In 2019, he co-created and co-facilitated the Armor Down/Daddy Up! and Mommy Up! programs for veterans and their children. He’s conducted daddying workshops with Native American pueblos, veterans’ groups, penitentiaries, Head Start centers, corporate boardrooms, and elementary schools. In 2022, Allan founded the Daddying Film Festival & Forum (D3F). In 2024 he was named to Who’s Who. Allan earned his elementary and high school diplomas from NYC’s Ethical Culture Schools, BA at Colgate University, MA at Columbia University’s Teachers College, and ABD at Fordham University. But he considers his D-A-D and GRAND D-A-D the most important “degrees” of all.
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