Traditions are what make the holidays the most wonderful time of the year. I have always loved Christmas and can say hands down it’s my favorite holiday, but it’s even sweeter now that we have little people to share it with. When I think back on what I loved most about the Christmas season as a child, it’s all of the memories that were made carrying out traditions like decorating our family tree or driving around looking at Christmas lights. These are the very things I make a point of doing now that I have kids of my own. Who doesn’t love a trip down memory lane while creating the same memories for your own children to reflect back on someday? I wanted to share some of the traditions that we enjoy as a family in the hopes of inspiring some new ones for your family.
A newer tradition for us as a family is celebrating Advent. Last year was our first year to start this tradition, and the kids were so excited to pick out their Jesse tree to hang their ornaments on for this year. This one is so important to me because I want my kids to know the real meaning of Christmas and not get so caught up in the gifts and hustle bustle. We use the book Unwrapping the Greatest Gift by Ann Voskamp. I love the reading each day leading up to Christmas, but also the activities and prayer it leads you in as a family. I gather up all of our supplies beforehand that we will use for the activities in the book and wrap them for the kids to open each day in order to complete that day’s reading and activities that go along with it.
Probably one of the oldest ones for me is decorating the tree AS A FAMILY. I can remember what a big deal this was to my mom. We would load up as a family and head to the local tree farm to pick out our tree each year, bring it home, and start decorating. My mom would make all kinds of finger foods for us to eat, and we would listen to Christmas music the whole time. Once during my teenage years I asked to go to the local Christmas parade on the night we were supposed to do our tree and my mom’s simple answer was “No.” I will never forget that, and I guess it has stuck with me because it showed me how truly important this family time was to her. Now that I am a mom myself, I understand it even more.
Christmas lights are another fun tradition to do as a family. When I was a kid we would ride around looking at lights, but now we love to go look at Lewis lights. This is a local family that decorates their entire yard with tons of cute lights and little wooden characters. We take pictures each year to document our visit so it’s fun to see how our family has changed or grown each year. I make a big thermos of hot chocolate and we sip on that as we walk around looking at all the pretty lights.
Baking sugar cookies and decorating them has become a family favorite. We started this before we even had the “littles” as we like to call them, and it has stuck around ever since. There is something about homemade sugar cookies and a kitchen littered with sprinkles, cookie cutters, specks of flour and every color icing you can imagine that is just so Christmas-y. Not to mention they taste amazing.
Decorating a gingerbread house is something the kids and I both enjoy. It usually doesn’t make it very long on the counter before the kids bite into it, but it’s still fun to sit down and decorate it together. Sometimes we get two and do boys vs. girls just to change it up a little.
At least one night during the holidays, we like to put on our pajamas and snuggle up on the couch with our hot chocolate to watch the old school Christmas shows like How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. It’s so crazy that I watched these same shows when I was a kid and now I’m watching them with my own kids. We love the Polar Express and some of the newer Christmas movies as well. It’s more about the family time than what you are actually watching.
Opening one present on Christmas Eve is something we looked forward to as kids. It was always a new pair of pajamas! I loved this and have continued it with our kids. This year we will be sporting matching pajamas- all 8 of us so I’m not sure who will be more excited- me or the kids. Probably me, and I’m completely ok with it.
Another newer one for us is Elf on the Shelf. I know a lot of people opt out of this one, and I totally get it but for us it has been fun and something the kids enjoy. Our elf, Jose, comes to our house each year on the night we put up our tree and sticks around doing silly things each night and creating his own mischief for the kids to see each morning. He leaves on Christmas Eve and doesn’t return until the next year when we put our tree up.
One tradition that I loved as a kid and plan to start this year with our kids is collecting ornaments. As a kid, we would go to Hallmark with my mom and choose a collection (or 2 or 3) of ornaments that we loved. Each year when the new ornament for that year came out, we would get the ornament that went with the collections that we had chosen. When we got older and left home, we got to take all of our ornaments that we had collected through the years with us and use them on our own trees in our own homes. These same ornaments that I collected as a child decorate our family tree each year even now.
At our church, Venture, they offer several services during the holidays but we always choose the Christmas Eve one so this has become such a special tradition for us. I so look forward to spending this time with our church family and just celebrating the real reason for this wonderful season. After the service we love to one of our favorite local restaurants for dinner before heading home. It’s so nice to just go and worship then not have to worry about cooking dinner afterward or even having it done before we go to church.
On Christmas Eve we sit down as a family once we have gone to church, eaten dinner, and opened our new pajamas and Brad reads the Christmas story from the Bible for us. It is the sweetest time just reading the original story and talking the kids through it all. They love to hear it and always have more and more questions as they get older and it resonates more and more for them. Such a precious story for them to go to bed dreaming about.
These are our family traditions that make this season so special for us. I’m sure we will continue to pick others up as we go, but these are the staple ones that we look forward to year after year. I hope one day our kids will share them with their own families. Leave a comment below and let me know what traditions your family enjoys during this time of year!
