Holidays
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
What are your Christmas traditions?
We have an almost 6 y/o and a 4 y/o and I really want to start some Christmas traditions with them. I'm looking for anything from the way or timing of decorating house/tree to what is served for dinner............anything at all.......
We have an Elf on the Shelf dude but so far, that's about it for traditions.
Thanks for any suggestions!
Re: What are your Christmas traditions?
We used to go cut down our tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving in the morning. While my dad got it situated and up, my mom, sister and I would make tuna, egg, and ham salad sandwiches. By the time dad was done setting up the tree (and tying it to the wall) the sandwiches were done. We'd sit down and eat lunch (paper plates!) and then go and decorate the tree with Christmas music on. When the tree was set up, we'd all sit down and watch Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol.
Throughout the next week, after school, we'd do our homework and then we'd decorate the rooms of the house (my parents had (have) a HUGE collection of Santa Claus').
We did a countdown to Christmas with an Advent calendar.
My mom would make lots of Christmas cookies, and we'd get to help her in the kitchen. These were used a lot of the time for teacher (etc) presents.
We'd print out the ABC's Countdown to Christmas calendar and put it up on the fridge and if there was a show that we all wanted to watch, we'd gather in the living room to watch it. Most of the time, though, since we were all different ages, we'd wander off and watch the ones we wanted on our own, and then one of the other siblings (there's 5 of us) would wander by the room and get sucked in!
Christmas Eve we got pizza for dinner, and we left pizza and beer for Santa. (My parents always told us that Santa left our house for last, and he needed a beer after doing all that hard work.) Carrots for the reindeer.
We made reindeer food (oats and glitter) and there was a poem that we used to say when we spread it out on our front lawn. (By the time the morning comes, the birds and squirrels have eaten all the oats and just the glitter is left.)
Christmas morning it's stockings first (and nobody's allowed to wake up mom and dad before 6 am. If you get up, you look to see if it's 5:59 or earlier, you can get your stocking and go back to your room.) Someone is the "garbage collector" which basically means someone gets balled up wrapping paper thrown at them all morning. Someone else is the present passer outter (this would be a good job for your 6 yr old to help him with name recognition!!)
I had to choose just three!
1. We went together as kids to cut down our chistmas tree every year, we would sing christmas carols the whole way (much to my dad's discontent), decorate with delivery pizza when we got home and then watch a christmas movie.
2. I love my memories of baking with my mom for christmas, we only did fudge and frosted christmas cookies.
3. I was just reminded of this today when my brother and I were about you kids age (your 6 yr old still believe right?) we would drive around christmas eve night looking at christmas lights/ 'looking for santa'. The night would conclude with my dad declaring santa would arrive in our area when he knew we were asleep.
We hide a Christmas pickle in the tree somewhere and on Christmas day whoever finds it gets a small prize
My Planning Bio
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My kids love having an advent calendar to count down to Christmas. Each little cupboard has either an ornament for their "kid tree" (an artificial table top tree we set up for them) or a candy.
We all love driving around to look at the holiday lights. I pack hot chocolate in travel mugs (just make sure it is already at a drinkable temp so the kids don't get impatient).
We like to donate gifts to toys for tots. I let each kid pick out something for the donation.
We visit Santa at a local museum instead of the mall and make a whole day out of it.
This is great!!
my read shelf:
We had an advent calender with a chocolate behind each door and my sisters and I took turns getting to open the doors and eat the chocolate.
There was a Christmas bear with a Santa hat that we took turns sleeping with throughout the month of December as kids.
My parents were both elementary school teachers so we wouldn't get a tree until the first weekend of Christmas break. Then we go to a tree farm, pick out a tree, drink hot chocolate and ride the hay wagon pulled by horses. Once we're home we (5 kids, 2 adults) each get to choose 10 ornament to put on the tree (that's 70 ornaments; my parents were crazy). And we'd decorate the rest of the house too while listening to Christmas music.
My sisters and I (all five of us) would sleep in the same bedroom Christmas Eve. Two in beds and three on the floor. And then Christmas morning we'd cuddle up on the couch together and wait for 7am to wake mom & dad up.
As a family we'd go driving around town and look at Christmas light. All of us kids would go in our pjs and slippers cause it was bedtime when we got home.
My oldest sister was (and still is) present passer outer. The middle older sister (I'm the youngest) did and still reads the story of Jesus being born before stockings or presents.
This one was a tradition at my grandma & papa's house; every year we did something there. The year I was 10 we decorated gingerbread men. The year I was 7 year we decorated sweatshirts with Christmas iron-ons and puffy paint. We made ornaments another year. I want to do something like that when I have kids. Something special every December.
Growing up we always put up our Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. My parents were raised to do this with their families as well. ON Christmas eve everyone would come over and we would play Xmas music and decorate the tree together. It's something I still do to this day on Christmas eve with my parents. When DH and I start a family I plan on doing the same thing with my kids.
#2 I have fond memories of baking sugar cookies with my mom and sister. My Mom would always let us chose our cookie cookies and we got to choose which sprinkles we wanted to decorate our sugar cookies with.
# 3 I remember sitting at the top of the stairs waiting for my parents to get up so we could go downstairs to see what we got. They would go down and we would here them oh wow wait till they see what they got! We would go so psyched. Then they would ok come down. Before we came down they would always snap a pic of us lol. Its funny to go back and look at these pics from over the diff years.
We don't yet have children, but our family traditions include a Christmas Decorating Party the weekend after Thanksgiving with our family and some close friends. We decorate the house together and put up our tree which my younger nieces love. We also do a cookie baking/decorating day the week before Christmas.
When I was growing up each year my parents would take me to the store and I'd get to pick out a new ornament for the tree each year.
There's also a great website www.northpole.com that gives lots of fun activities and ideas.