Whether it’s a Thanksgiving feast, waking up early to shop for the best bargains, attending church on Christmas Eve, lighting the Menorah or toasting at midnight on New Year’s Eve, the coming weeks will be filled with people celebrating holidays and moments with their own traditions.

Ask one hundred people about their holiday traditions and you are bound to get one hundred different responses. Many people certainly enjoy and value their traditions, while others dread and even resent them. Regardless of where you stand, for better or worse traditions play a significant role in our mental health.

Traditions can be driven by culturally-specific customs, beliefs handed down generation by generation or simply regular patterns of actions. Some of these things, such as the way in which we commonly name children, might never be consciously considered or even recognized. Others, such as the ways a family celebrates birthdays, are more consciously considered. But naming conventions and birthday celebrations often look very different when it comes to the traditions of various cultures.

It’s important to acknowledge that cultures exist within nearly any type of group. A family has its own culture, as does a school, workplace, religion or region of the country. While cultures include tangible things like language, symbols, clothing or food, the bulk of what makes up any culture is intangible, such as values, beliefs and attitudes. And those intangibles influence and shape the traditions practiced within that culture. This is why a family’s tradition of wearing matching pajamas and watching the same movie on a specific date each year can be held in such high regard by those who practice it.

The question becomes how these things impact our mental health. Research has shown that different types of structure and routine can have a beneficial impact on mental health, as people know what to expect and may feel more productive, more fulfilled and less anxious. Conversely, adhering too strictly to routines may be detrimental if it begins to cause unnecessary pressure, burden and worry. Along these lines, research has also shown that novelty can enhance moods and lower anxiety and depression. And in that contradiction lies the challenge with tradition, specifically.

On one hand, traditions can offer a sense of familiarity that leads to comfort and contentment. In this way, traditions with our families might provide the stability and predictability we need to make it through the holidays with our mental health safely intact. On the other hand, simply doing things the way they’ve always been done for the sake of tradition can prove unnecessarily rigid and cause anxiety to spike, particularly around the holidays when many are facing the heightened demands and expectations of families and other groups.

The challenge is balancing the most important elements of your traditions with the inevitability of change. That might mean that the core of your holiday tradition is to share a meal with your extended family. Whether or not that occurs on a Thursday or another day, or at a certain house or even with specific foods might not be the most important factors.

In the end, it’s important and valuable to honor the heart of your traditions, while remaining flexible and open to the fact that those traditions might occur on different dates, in different places and with different elements that change over time, particularly as people and families grow and evolve. Amidst that delicate balance, hopefully we can all find the patience and compassion for ourselves and each other as we share in traditions, both new and old, with families and loved ones throughout the holiday season.