Christmas Tradition Ideas

The Christmas season is often filled with traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation. If your family doesn’t have Christmas traditions this is a great time to start! Traditions will give your child great memories and something to look forward to year after year! Here are some of my favorite traditions.

Before Christmas

With all your family members present set down and make a list of your favorite Christmas carols, and download them to a CD. This CD will be very enjoyable when you are doing other Christmas activities such as decorating, making cards and cookies, or just driving around town.

Another fun activity during the Christmas season is advent calendars. In recent years these have become harder to find, but local schools typically sell them at the start of the school year as a fundraiser. Another option is to make your own calendar. I took a solid red piece of fabric and cut out 24 little squares; on the squares in green fabric paint I stenciled one through twenty-four. Then I sewed the squares onto a holiday themed piece of fabric stuffed with baton. I then took some brown fabric (for a chimney) and stuffed it with baton and sewed it to the top of the calendar with Santa coming out of the chimney. If you don’t want to use candy for each day you can put Christmas bible verses in for each day, or make a marker and use it to count down the days to Christmas.

The first weekend in December buy construction paper, markers, glitter, glue, stencils, and anything else fun you can think of. Spend the day with your child making Christmas cards to send to friends and family. When you take a break have some hot coco with marshmallows, or whip cream and have a traditional snack which you make each year. My family always makes chex-mix muddy buddies before we start making the cards.

If your child is older decorating the Christmas tree together can be a fun activity. After Thanksgiving my sister, cousins, and myself help my Grandmother decorate her tree each year. Buy one beautiful ordainment that you make a big deal out of putting on each year. For example we have one ordainment that belonged to a great-great grandmother and each year a different child puts the prized ordainment on the tree.

The Friday before Christmas set down with your child and help them make out their Christmas list. Don’t feel uncomfortable about setting down rules about how much is on the list or the value. That Saturday or Sunday go to local mall (or where ever Santa is in your area) to visit Santa. You can also have pictures taken to put into a Christmas photo album. After visiting with Santa take the kids to pick out Christmas presents for grandparents, and other family members.

Christmas Eve

A fun Christmas Eve afternoon activity is to make Christmas cookies. If the your child is older have them help you mix up the batter. Well they are cooking have some hot coco and watch traditional Christmas movies. Once the cookies have cooled decorate the cookies with frosting and sprinkles for Santa. This part may get messy but it will be a lot of fun and make for great picture opportunities.

A good tradition to start is going to a local Christmas play. If your child isn’t old enough to be in school yet call your local elementary school and find out when they have their pageant. Another option is your local church!

On Christmas Eve we were always aloud to open one present early however it was always the same present, pajamas. We would get all ready for bed, grab a few blankets and drive around town looking at the Christmas lights and seeing if we could catch a glimpse of Santa. When we got home we would set out the cookies we had made earlier with a big glass of milk and carrots!
At bedtime on Christmas Eve read a Christmas themed story together. You can either read the same story each year, or you can buy a new story year after year. If you’re giving a new book year after year a good time to give it is with the pajamas.