Share Your Holiday Traditions Part 1
I love hearing about your holiday traditions! I want to steal some these ideas and make them my own traditions. Please share your traditions with me so I can pass them along!
On Christmas eve we take a drive around town to look at all of the Christmas lights on houses. Then we come home & open up one gift (its always our jammies) put our jammies on then watch a christmas movie, drink sparkling cider, & eat a cheeseball & crackers. Then its bedtime for the little ones & mom & dad play santa!-CierraEvery year we decorate the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. We also have hot chocolate and Christmas cookies that night. Its just a nice relaxing day while most everyone is out shopping the crazy sales:)Also, this is the first year we will be starting a Tree Angel tradition with our daughter. Every year we want to pick a child off the tree that is her same age that year and shop for them. We want our children to understand that there are children out there that are their same age that will not be getting as much that year and that Christmas is not about “getting” but giving to others.
-Melissa
The Mouse
My mom has an advent calendar with a little mouse that sits in the pocket indicating the day. Every day of December, he would watch us, and would then report to Santa Claus and let him know how we were. If we were good, (and we always were!) he would send some little treats for us to find in the morning. When I moved out, my mom sent my roommate a box filled with little bags marked with the days of the month each filled with my mouse treat for the day, and a little mouse of my own. When I got married, she made me my own calendar to go with my mouse. I love it, and now so do my kids.The Story Tree
We wrap up 24 of our favorite Christmas books and unwrap one each night to read. On Christmas day, we read the scriptural account.The Jammy Elf
On Christmas Eve, Santa sends ahead a special elf to delvier some new PJs to us so we know that Santa is on his way and it is time to go to bed.Oh my, I have so many more, but I will stop there. Christmas is my thing. I love it. So much.
-AmandaWe love Christmas in our house, so we have quite a few traditions that are a combination of the things we enjoyed or wish we did as kids. Hopefully our kids will look back fondly at the things we do now.Each year each family member gets a new Christmas decoration for the tree (when the kids are older and have a home of their own, they will be able to take all the decorations that are theirs). We take part in a Christmas fancy dress pub crawl with all of our friends the Saturday before Christmas Day (the costumes get better every year).
We have a family night out to watch the panto on the Monday before Christmas Day. Everyone who visits our house on Christmas day has a handmade personalised stocking and we hang them all the way down the stairs (there’s about 10 of them – mine, my husbands and our 2 kids hang elsewhere). On Christmas eve my husband and our daughter make something chocolatey for Santa, which my daughter then puts out on a plate with a drink (my son is too small yet), then we all sit around in our PJ’s with hot chocolate and a christmas movie. Just before bed we each get to open one small present then we hang our own stockings in our bedrooms.Christmas morning we all sit on mine and my husbands bed and open our stockings (which Santa has filled in the night!) then my daughter runs downstairs to check if Santa liked the food she left. Then she checks the tree to make sure Santa left the “magic key” that he uses to get into our house (no chimney) ready for next year. Santa usually leaves some choccies on the tree too 🙂 Santa gives each child one present especially from him and the elves (the rest he just wraps and delivers for family members). All our family come round for Tea in the early evening. Boxing night we go to my mother in laws to play board games. Then we have a christmas gathering for all our friends on the 27th with games, a quiz and lots of food.Sorry, that’s really long! Can you tell we like Christmas a little bit!?
-Vicky
In our family we have the tradition of Christmas breakfast. We all gather together at mom and dad’s and have pancakes with sour cream, crushed strawberries, and a little syrup. It may sound like an odd combination, but it is absolutely delicious. We also do English Christmas Crackers. If you don’t know what an English Christmas Cracker is, you should definitely find out. (You can find them at www.oldenglishcrackers.com) They are like giant poppers that have a paper hat and a prize/toy of some sort in it. We love them. We open the crackers before breakfast and wear the paper hats all through our breakfast meal. It’s such a wonderful time.-Jamie
My kids are still quite young (my daughter is 3 1/2 and my son is 15 months), but I’m trying to de-commercialize Christmas as much as I can for them. As such, we really limit the gifting in our family (we still want to give gifts to each other after all!) to 4 gifts each from 4 categories: WANT, NEED, WEAR, READ. This way we can stick within a smaller parameter and yet we can still be creative with what we choose to give. Of course, wherever possible, we try to make gifts for each other too! 🙂-Skooks
My little families tradition is to open one pressie on Christmas eve, that one pressie is always new pajamas. We wear them to bed, then all the next day. The grown ups have a brandy/champagne cocktail and the little one a juice cocktail. Then after a cooked brekkie we open pressies.-Rebecca
When I was a kid I was alway sent out to “look” for santa on Christmas eve with my uncle. When we came back I had always just missed him and he had left my gifts. Now that I have my own family we wait to open our gift on christmas morning so we have a spin off to my old tradition now we still go look for santa, but while were gone he comes and leaves one gift with a note telling the kids they must go to bed early or he won’t come back. Plus they must leave carrots and cookies, so we bake cookies and leave them out and go to bed early. So we took and made our own tradition out of an old one my kids love it.-Sam
We will be starting a NEW tradition this year….The Elf on the Shelf! More information on this on my blog at: www.thewoodfordfamily.com. So exciting!-Jessica
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Every year at Thanksgiving my mom gives each of us a new ornament for our trees. It starts us all in the holiday mood.
And we draw names for crafts. The first year it was all things like decoupaged ornaments and framed pictures. Now we play in the big leagues 🙂 We've had a tree water sensor that looked like an ornament, but played 'O Christmas Tree' when the water was getting low, a solar powered cell phone charger, books written. It takes us all afternoon to go through the crafts, we open them one at a time and then there's lots of ohhh-ing and ahhh-ing. It's so much fun to see what everyone comes up with!
For Christmas each year I would put a pin on my child's Christmas stocking. One year my daughter loved giraffes so I found a giraffe pin. If we went on vacation I would pick up a pin of where we went.to One year they each received a ribbon with a bell on it. My oldest daughter said " Look Santa left us one of his bells from the reindeer". They really enjoyed pins.
Oh I love reading everyone's traditions! I picked up a few that I want to start doing now too:)