Christmas Traditions

Do you have any other family traditions that help to make the holiday special\? I am not big into gifts, although the children will certainly get presents from us and others.

The things that I really remember from Christmas, aside from getting my first two wheeled bike, were more of the traditions, than the gifts. My mother pulled taffy, made peanut brittle, baked cookies, we left a cookie and milk for Santa, and so on. She always gave us a silver dollar in our stocking and it wasn't til I was much older that I found out it was the same silver dollar every year.

I thought this year, I'd introduce the concept of an advent calendar and the creche. We'll have a Christmas tree and I will bake cookies to give to friends and neighbors and I'll involve the twins in that.

Is there anything else that you are doing in the traditions department??

Thanks in advance.

Sotto

 

Hmmm...good question! I know our first Christmas with the boys, we sat in front of the fireplace and opened presents(they were 2 months old). I think I would want to make a bunch of different types of holiday cookies with them, maybe even some crafts for the holiday dinner. But otherwise, no real traditions. I'll be interested to see what other's do!

 

Awwww!!


We don't have many traditions right now, but are going to start more probably this year or next now that they are getting it. We put cookies and milk out for Santa. I think starting next year (this year we'll be traveling) we will make the cookies together on Christmas Eve. We buy pj's for them to wear Christmas Eve and will read The Night Before Christmas before bed. We get them an ornament each year that hopefully they can take when they leave to live on their own. We also get a family ornament from whereever we might have vacationed or taken a special day trip to. My girls have a Little People nativity set so that helps us teach them about it without them wanting to touch the precious pieces of my grandmother's set that I have. And in the future I would also like to have a birthday cake on Christmas day for Baby Jesus.

 

We have a few traditions that we do each year:

We have the same breakfast every Christmas morning, egg casserole and rolls made into the shape of a Christmas tree.

Santa leaves the filled stockings at the end of the beds so when the kids wake up in the morning they are right there.

We buy each of the kids an ornament every year and put the date on the back of it. It goes on our Christmas tree now, but when they get older and leave home they will take all of the ornaments with them.

We leave cookies and milk for Santa with a note (and Santa always writes one back ) and carrots for the reindeer.

All of the gifts get opened Christmas day.

We do the advent calendar as well.

 

My mom has a green pickle ornament. She hides it in the tree and the kid that finds it gets an extra little gift. It is something the grandkids all look forward to when they go to her house. We just do the advent calendar, which is something my son looks forward to every year. Then cookies, and reading the Christmas Story on Christmas Eve.

 

Same stuff:
Ornament each year for the boys
Going to see lights
Cookies for Santa

However, this year I'm starting Elf on a Shelf. Seems like a lot of fun. Check it out!

 

I am going to start doing it this year I think.

I like that idea.

We also do the ornaments, milk and cookies for Santa, and we throw magic reindeer food out for them as well. We bake cookies and do little crafts all month long. They get Christmas p.j. on St. Nick's day that they wear and on Christmas Eve we read Twas the night before Christmas. Maybe this year I will do the advent calendar.

 

Amy, I love all your ideas!!! I think I'm going to steal the whole "ornament for them every year that they take with them when they get older" ... so cute!!

We don't have too many ... every year the weekend before Christmas we do a whole day of Christmas music, Christmas movie watching and cookie baking with our best friends (who are also atheist! :laughing: )

We started the tradition our junior year in college when we were all 20 years old. This will be our 15th year doing it! But now it's even more fun with the kids that we all have! Its one of my favorite parts of the season.

We also always go the day after Thanksgiving to get our Christmas tree. We go to a farm, cut it down, bring it home and decorate it the same day. My whole family comes over to help us.

I think I'm also jumping on the "elf on a shelf" bandwagon. Because anything that gets my kids to behave better makes me happy!

 

Our traditions are:

~Reading the Christmas Story on Christmas Eve
~Sprinkling Reindeer dust in the front yard on Christmas Eve
~We always go to my cousins house on Christmas Eve to celebrate with my Dad's side of the family. They live in the TX Hill Country. So, we usually go on a hide ride and go out and pick a Christmas Tree (AKA cedar tree) on the property. Then the kids decorate it with homemade ornaments.
~We also usually do some kind of Christmas weekend with my parents, siblings and our kids. We pick a Christmas town to go visit or an amusement park that decorates and does stuff for Christmas.
~We also go look at Christmas lights one evening.

We will also probably start doing Christmas Cookies this year. Now that they are old enough and are realizing they like to help mommy cook.

 

Brandy, that is where Santa left my stocking as well when I was growing up.

Thank you, steal away.



I love hearing all the different traditions. :wub:

 

Ooohh! These are great ideas! We do the ornament every year, too. With the boys, I envision a tree full of superheros and cars for many years to come!

One thing my husband and I have done for years is the Christmas Angel program through the Salvation Army. We usually do it without the boys, but I think they might just be old enough to do help us pick out some toys for the less fortunate. We'll see...I could be asking for a meltdown in the middle of Target!

 

We have a pre-Christmas Tradition. One of my best friends lives about 30 miles away -- her family is Jewish, but we picked this way to share our December celebrations. Each year we gather in December and bake loads of mini cranberry bread loaves to give to work friends.

We've done this for 20 years! Her kids (now 9 and 16) grew up doing it and how show my kids the ropes. It is a day filled with laughter and gets us in the spirit. (Sometimes we've even gotten to stay for Hannukkah candle lighting, which is fun to share traditions.)

Meg

 

We go out on christmas eve and sing christmas carols while we look at the christmas lights. Also we go through the house and get stuff together for christmas hampers.My son is pretty good about going through his toys and giveing some away to kids who don't get very many presents. We try to do a lot of family things like going sleding and having hot chocolate and cookies and then playing family games to emphasize more on the family aspect than the presents because I don't like how greedy some children have become at christmas esp my nieces so we are trying to teach our children more about sharing with others and spending time with family rather than all the focus be on the presents. We still get our kids presents we just don't go nuts with them.

 

We have always done an ornament for each kid every year. I have ornaments dating back over 40 years, because my mom did that with us. I have some that were my grandmother's, too. This year DS2's ornament is a smiley face with braces and DS1 is getting a mortar board because he will graduate from high school.

On TG Friday the kids and I decorate the tree together (this takes all day, I am an ornament nutjob) while DH bakes Lebkuchen. He has to bake them, I can't bake German, metric recipes. They have to age for a month before they can be eaten.

The kids make cut-out cookies with my mom.

There are certain cookies, like my ginger cookies, that only get baked during the holiday season.

We started listening to Christmas music as we decorate the tree and listen to more and more as Christmas gets closer.

We go out and look at lights.

We got to a restaurant between here and where my parents live that has a tremendous light display every year. They are famous for their pies.

We have a special Christmas Eve dinner while we watch "A Christmas Story" together. We only watch it that one time, and that's the only time the little kids can eat in the living room. They get to have cocoa as part of it. Christmas Eve is our special time for just our nuclear family.

After the little kids go to bed, the big ones help assemble whatever needs assembling.

The presents are nice, but it's really about all the things we do together as a family that are special to this time of year.

 

Oh yeah, this reminded me.... We do Operation Christmas Child every year. The twins aren't old enough to know/participate yet, but hopefully next year they will be able to help us.

 

I love this thread and I love Christmas! Here are our traditions . . .

*As a family, we go to the mountains and cut down our own tree . . . for us, this signifies the beginning of the Christmas season
*We have an Elf, Tessa, who comes to our house once the tree is up. Tessa has a habit of getting into things or making a mess when we sleep. The kids LOVE to find Tessa in the morning and see what she's been up to.
*We love to go for drives (or walks depending on the weather) and look at the lights. We do it all the time, but especially Christmas Eve. Christmas songs must be sung while looking at lights!
*I have been taking the kids shopping every year since they were babies to buy a gift for a little boy or girl. When they were 2, they got to start picking out their own angel from the tree, then we go select a toy. The kids have their "own" money and pay for their gift themselves. I always do this after Thanksgiving, by myself, because my DH is always either working or hunting, so it's become my own little tradition with my kids. We talk about it all year long too.
*DH and I pick out a special ornament for each child. We try to get an ornament that represents a milestone, or something special that happened that year. We date the ornaments on the back. Each child has an "Ornament Book" where I write a quick story as to why that ornament was chosen that year. Each child has their own ornament box where they are stored during the year. When we decorate the tree, they get to choose where they want to put their ornaments.

On Christmas Eve we go to church. After services, we drive around and look at lights. We usually try to save the best houses for Christmas Eve. After that we come home and each child gets to decorate two sugar cookies (that we made, cut out, and baked earlier in the day) however they want. One cookie is for them, the other goes on our special hand made "Santa" plate for Santa. We also make a plate of veggies for the Reindeer and put that out front. We also hang Santa's key on the front door so he can get inside our house since we don't have a chimney. After all that is done, the kids have to find the pickle in the tree. The kid that finds it gets to open the present from the Christmas tree. It's always a family movie that DH picks out and pajama's for all of us. Then we watch that movie and go to bed.

Christmas morning we open stocking presents, have breakfast, then open gifts. It still takes my kids forever to open things, so it's usually late afternoon before we're done. We open one at a time, so we can all watch the recipient's face and see what everyone's getting. They seriously have LOVED every present (even the socks!! "Look Mommy! New socks!! I need to try them on right now!")and want to play right away with each one. My DD still did this on her 5th birthday, so I don't think it's going to be any different this year.
*Santa's presents are always wrapped in paper with Santa on it. My DD's presents are wrapped in red Santa paper, Nathan's are in blue Santa paper, and Andrew's are in green Santa paper. The toys are already assembled, taken out of packaging, etc so they are ready to play with immediately. It's a PIA getting all that ready before hand, but makes for a nicer Christmas Day because we aren't having to take all kinds of things out of their boxes with that fun childproof packaging.

Goodness! I better stop! I'm getting excited about the holidays writing all this up! Yikes! It's not even Thanksgiving yet!!

 

We're trying to establish some ourselves... I typically always enjoy going to the Christmas Eve service at church, but the boys are still too young to participate in that yet, so I don't see the point in leaving them in the nursery. But one day we'll get back to that. I also like to have "our" Christmas morning just the four of us at home- we travel to see family either before or after, but there's just something sweet about waking up on Christmas morning w/ your kids to see what Santa left under the tree.

 

We do most of this too. My boys are 4.5 now and they get an oranment each year (this year it's a soccer ball since they started soccer this fall). We set up the Little People Nativity and talk about the true meaning of Christmas, we decorate gingerbread men to leave for Santa and bake a birthday cake on Christmas Eve to eat on Christmas Day. They get Christmas jammies each year and, after they hang their stockings, we read Twas the Night Before Christmas which I bought special for them and DH has been reading to them since they were in utero. Their first 3 Christmas Eve's were crazy since extended family celebrated on that day. Last year Christmas Eve was just the four of us and it was so much calmer and enjoyable. Now family comes over on Christmas to dinner. We also drive around to look at the decorations.

 

Wow, so many great ideas. I look forward to adopting some of these and making them as my own. I will definitely try to read Twas the Night before Christmas or some other book with them.

Thanks for all the contributions. Feeling a little more in the Christmas spirit already.

Sotto

 

There are some awesome ideas! And I am getting REALLY excited about the holidays this year!!!

I have gotten the boys an ornament each year and that's something I want to continue. My mom did that with us(although she hasn't given them up yet...). And I am somewhat of an ornament snob! :FIFblush:

Do you let your kids pick out the ornaments, or do you pick out the ornaments(something that reflected things that happened in the year)?

I am thinking Black Friday we will have the fireplace going, decorate the house, set up the Christmas tree....

Oh-and I am loving the Christmas book on Christmas Eve. Oh-and "A Christmas Story"-we watched that movie all the time growing up!!!

Is it Christmas yet?!?!?! :ibiggrin:

 

:wub: So many great ideas! I haven't really gotten my holiday spirit going yet... but I love the ideas!

 

For me it is a mixture. This year the boys had big things happening (braces, graduation), so I picked the ornaments. Also, as teenage males, they weren't really into picking out their own. The girls picked their own to reflect things they like. When they were babies and toddlers, I picked, of course. So, I would say that often I chose to reflect what was happening, but I would get their input to make sure they like the ornament.

My mom did give me mine when I moved out, plus some ornaments she no longer had space on her tree for as my "seed" ornaments. Ornaments, if you want the really beautiful ones, aren't cheap, so it helps to have a starter set so that you can collect them over time instead of having to lay out a ton of money. I will be passing my children their ornaments when they set up their own households, plus some seed ornaments. My mom still buys me ornaments, she uses them instead of bows on gifts.

 

Great idea. I know for us, it would result in a melt down in Target.

I think that is GREAT!!

We do this too. I am going to Boone (headquarters) on December 11th to help assemble them all and check them out. SOOOOO Excited about that.

I think all of yours are great. I really love the idea of the book.

That reminds me... as a child I would get to open 1 gift on Christmas Eve. I may let the girls do that this year. :wub:

 

We won't have a tree this year but next year I think I will borrow the ornament idea. I made some when I was in school as a child and when my parents moved, my mom threw them away :-(

Anywho, when the kids get older I think we will borrow from a Seinfeld episode about Festivus and perform "Feats of Strength". You have an entire year to prepare your feat...it will be great!

Kidding...kind of, we'll have to see if it catches on.



Happy tradition creation!

Lindia

 

We had a few traditions when I was a kid that I loved:

~ my dad would always read the Christmas story right before we opened presents (I've tried to do this, but dh always gets impatient so I love the idea of reading it Christmas Eve!)
~ our stockings always had a special letter from my dad
~ driving around Christmas Eve to look at lights & caroling for the neighbors
~ every year we baked cookies for all the neighbors & always left a plate in the mailbox for the mailperson
~ my mom always had a snack, crayons & a coloring book in our stockings. As the rule was we could get up any time to open stockings but we had to wait for Mom & Dad to wake up for presents, I think she did the snack & coloring to buy her a little extra sleep

I am SOOOOO excited to start our own traditions with our kids!

[i]~ Christmas PJ's (though this year we're going to skip that one b/c of money & last year's still fit them)
~ not exactly a tradition, but soons as it gets cold enough to use the woodstove I always keep a pot of water on it with mulling spices so the house has a "holiday smell"
~ dh always has to watch Christmas Vacation at his mom's house on Christmas Day
~ We also go up with my family every year to the woods to get a tree. The last 2 years we actually rented a cabin & stayed up for the weekend.
~ cookies & milk for Santa (and I love the carrots for the reindeer, I'm definitely stealing that one!)[/i]

 

Great ideas!!!

I love the ornament gift idea and book to go with it!!!

Well my/our tradition.
My dad always made a cookie-house. This started when we lived in Canada. I was born there and moved to Holland when I was 1,5 years old.

So dad baked the parts and then on Christmas we sticked it together and decored it. This was when we where kids

WELL after Berber came in our lives I had the great/crazy idea to start the tradition again.
Never thinking how much work it is hahahaah

But I love doing it!

In Holland not much Christmas traditions because we have
Sinterklaas/ Saint Nicolas
He comes december 5th with his helper black Peter
That is a big thing in Holland
The kids think he is real.

 

I forgot one! My aunt always has everyone over for a dinner sometime before Christmas & we have a gingerbread house contest. She usually provides the supplies & it's loads of fun!