Six readings. One for everyone at the table.

Why family matters more than we say

In 1938, researchers at Harvard began following 268 sophomores to find out what makes a life go well. They later added a group of young men from Boston's poorer neighbourhoods, and then the original men's children, about 1,300 of them. It is one of the longest studies of adult life ever run, and its clearest answer wasn't money, fame, social class, IQ or genes. It was the quality of people's close relationships. ¹

The study's director, the psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, found that the people most satisfied with their relationships at 50 were the ones doing best at 80. It wasn't about how many people they knew. Couples who felt they could count on each other when things went wrong did better, even the ones who bickered all the time. ¹

For most of us, family is where those relationships start, and often where they last longest. Your sister remembers the kitchen you grew up in. Your dad knows how you got the scar on your knee. Your grandmother can tell you what your mother was like at nine. Nobody else carries that much of you around.

The ordinary struggles of family

None of that makes families easy. Ask anyone who has planned a holiday dinner. People move for work and see their parents twice a year. Brothers and sisters who shared a bedroom for fifteen years end up trading a text on birthdays and not much else. The weeks fill up with shifts, practices and homework, until everyone is in the same house and nobody is in the same room.

Families also look different than they used to. In 2015, Pew Research Center found that 16% of American children lived in a blended family, with a stepparent, a stepsibling or a half-sibling, and that 26% lived with one parent, up from 9% in 1960. Bringing two families together takes time, patience and a lot of goodwill on every side. ²

We won't pretend a card fixes any of that. What we have noticed is smaller. It's easier to feel close to someone when you have something to talk about that isn't the dishes or the schedule, and a bit of shared silliness goes a surprisingly long way.

Birthdays, holidays and game nights: why rituals matter

Researchers who study families draw a line between routines and rituals. A routine is the practical part: dinner at six, bedtime at eight. A ritual carries meaning: the birthday song, the Thanksgiving table, the game night nobody is allowed to skip. ³

In 2002, the psychologist Barbara Fiese and her colleagues reviewed 32 studies published over the 50 years since Bossard and Boll's 1950 work on family rituals. Routines and rituals went along with more confident parenting, better-adjusted children and happier marriages. The authors were careful to add that the studies couldn't always untangle what caused what. ³

A ritual doesn't have to be grand. It has to be yours, and it has to come round again. Pancakes every Saturday counts. So does the same terrible joke at every birthday, and so does somebody reading the horoscopes out loud while everybody else groans.

Where "blood is thicker than water" comes from

It's the saying people reach for when family has to come first. It is older than most people think, and the popular story about what it "really" means is much newer than it claims to be.

1. About 1180Heinrich der Glîchezære's German beast epic Reinhart Fuchs, a tale of Reynard the trickster fox, has a line usually translated as "kin-blood is not spoiled by water." Phrase historians note it may not be the same proverb, but the idea is the same: family ties hold. ⁴
2. 1670Many references say the saying appears in John Ray's Collection of English Proverbs, published at Cambridge in 1670. We read the scan of that first edition and couldn't find it, so treat that date with caution. ⁵
3. 1737The earliest English printing the Phrase Finder has found is in Allan Ramsay's collection of Scots proverbs: "Blude's thicker than water." ⁴
4. 1815Sir Walter Scott put it in his hugely popular novel Guy Mannering: "Weel, blude's thicker than water." The novel's full title is Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer, and it opens with a young Englishman casting a horoscope for a newborn heir. ^4,6
5. 1859On 25 June 1859, during a battle between Chinese forts and a British squadron, US Commodore Josiah Tattnall stepped in to help the British, although the United States was neutral. His explanation was "blood is thicker than water." ⁷
6. 1990sA new story started going round: that the "full" saying is "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb", which would mean the opposite. There is no record of it before then. The writers who spread it, Albert Jack and Richard Pustelniak, gave no source. The saying has always meant what it sounds like. ⁴