HomeschoolChristian's
Christmas Section

Holiday Traditions

Traditions are an important part of the holiday season! Below are the answers we received when members of HSC were asked, "What are your favorite holiday traditions?" Of course, you will have to modify the suggestions to fit your family, but this list is a good first step towards starting a new tradition in your family!

Mary Leggewie says:
Chopping down our own Christmas tree! After 2 years of a fake Christmas tree because of the fire danger, I have my eye on a white fir that is about to block my view of the desert from the kitchen window (the best view from the house besides the boys' room). It's coming down and the top will be our Christmas tree!

Allie says:
One of our traditions is going to Midnight Mass. Although I'm not Catholic anymore, the local Catholic college opens their chapel once a year for the most beautiful service I've ever seen. Then when we get home, the kids get to open one gift. I think that's about it - we really need some more!!!!!!! Reading from the bible is one too, on Christmas Eve.

AngelaDawn says:
We celebrate many of the same traditions I have read so far: Christmas Eve jammies, looking at lights, etc. My favorite thing is when the tree and lights are all up, when the kids shuffle off to bed, my husband and I like to sit near the tree with all lights off except the tree lights. We snuggle and talk. On a family note, one tradition we have followed most every year is that we travel to see family. I can only remember two Christmas's when we haven't done that. The preparation is so much fun!

Betty in Vegas says:
Some are handed down from my family--we always have the nativity under the tree (I moved it up when the babies were very little, but now it is underneath again.) We tell the story of Christmas from Luke, with the kids all reading on Christmas Eve, and we play Driedel, in order to better connect with our Jewish brothers and sisters and honor the Jewish religion.
Then we let them open one gift from mom and dad --it's ALWAYS pjs (was for me, too, just so we'd have on new PJ's in the family movies and pictures.) and one from family out of town or their brothers and sisters. Santa comes after they are in bed. Even my 21 year old prefers not to be awake when "Santa" comes.
We go to Christmas Eve service, which is very special, and we do look at lights. We spend the holiday season making gifts for one another and filling out our cards and writing our Christmas letters--and of course, we make all the Christmas cookies my mom made!
In the morning, the kids have to come down and have OJ before opening anything, and they MUST open stockings first. We have honeybaked ham on Christmas, which is GREAT, because we can then snack all day or serve guests--I make the side dishes (all cold) in advance, too. No work on Christmas, even for Mommy.
This year, we will host both the tween and teen Christmas parties for our co-op- 25 kids each! I hope to add that as a tradition because we are looking forward to it as much as the kids are.

Bobbi S. says
Last year, I took my kids to the annual lighting of the tree in the small town we were staying in. We're going again this year, so that's our newest tradition! We also made cookies together, and took pictures. We also let the kids open up one present each on Christmas Eve, usually from one of their siblings.

Cathy H. says
First, when we decorate the tree, I MUST have Perry Como playing on the CD player! Because that was what was always playing on the stereo when I was growing up and we decorated the tree! I always give our daughter a Precious Moments ornament that she gets to unwrap and hang on the tree the night we decorate it. Her birthday is the day after Christmas, so we always put her b'day presents (wrapped in b'day paper) under the tree. She likes that because, #1, it looks like she has more presents under there, and #2, after opening gifts on Christmas morning, she still has presents under the tree and the tree doesn't look so "empty"! We always go to Christmas Eve candlelight services. Dad always reads the story of our Savior's birth from the Bible on Christmas Eve. Then he reads "The Night Before Christmas" to us as well. We always watch "A Christmas Story" on Christmas Eve...you'll shoot your eye out!! Just love that movie! My daughter and I always bake cut-out Christmas cookies together.

Christiana says:
We have communion together as a family, to remember and celebrate the greatest gift Jesus came to give to us, His own life as a sacrifice for our sin.

Darla says:
Sometimes we wait until Christmas Eve (after the kids are in bed) to put up and decorate the tree. They LOVE that!! This year we're having a Christmas Eve family supper, though, so the tree will go up earlier.
We get out all our Christmas books on the day after my husband's birthday.
We participate in Operation Christmas Child through Samaritan's Purse (the shoebox ministry).
We give our kids a "collectible" in their stocking, that we use in holiday decorating. They all get a similar little thing (one year it was a toy; they got similar ones, but of different animals. This year it's a hinged box of a village scene -- each different, but making a whole village).
We, too, open one gift on Christmas Eve and the rest Christmas morning.
We go visit my family on Christmas day (usually).

Dawn H. says:
My children's favorite is our annual caroling party!

Debbie S. says:
We start out by decorating the house on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We put something in EVERY room!!
Every Christmas Eve I make individual menus to set at each table setting and I get the table set up with plates, folded napkins and fancy glasses. Christmas morning is the only day that I cook a huge breakfast and try to tailor it to meet the tastes of the individual family members. We usually wake up 7-8am, leisurely open gifts, and then have our big breakfast. We are usually just finishing up when my parents show up to give us our gifts. Then a few hours later, my brother's family comes and we spend the rest of the day playing and eating and just enjoying each others' company.

Debi says:
Since our church did not do any "children's Pageant" at Christmas, I hosted a "Nativity Party" - this began 7 years ago, I think. I invited my children's friends, and gave them a character (Mary, Joseph, shepherds, angels ( lots of angels and shepherds), wise men, etc. They came dressed up. I hung a blue sheet with stars onto our swingset in the backyard to make a "stable", and the kids added stuffed animals. When everyone arrived, we broke out the cameras and video camera. One mom read a picture book story of the Nativity and the kids acted it out as she read it. Joseph knocked on our back door and the Innkeeper came out and yelled "There's No Room!". You get the picture. We had a large cardboard foil-covered star hanging from a fishing pole that one mom carried around the yard (for the wise men to follow), etc.
It was a blast. Hilarious. I think the oldest child at this time was 5 yo, so you can imagine how it turned out. When we were done, we had a Happy Birthday Jesus birthday cake and punch, and watched the video - over and over and over again.
This became a yearly event, and my kids still want to do it! Of course, now that they are older they add more "lines" and Christmas carols to the story. We still like watching the videos of "Nativity Parties" from years past!

Deona says:
We also set up our tree the day after thanksgiving, that officially opens the "Christmas season" for us. After thanksgiving we try to have some sort of sweet(i.e. cookies and hot cocoa, apple cider, egg nog, etc.) almost every evening until Christmas. It is also the only time of year that I try to keep little candies out in bowls. They also look forward to opening one gift every Christmas Eve, which they have come to expect to be a pair of Christmas Eve Jamies so everyone has something snugly to wake up in. On Christmas morning we try to have some sort of food that the kids each love in their stockings so they have something to nibble on while opening gifts since we don't have breakfast first.

FLDonna says:
We start the Advent study with a Christmas devotional, reading Tabitha's Travels this year, opening the advent calendars that Grandma sends every year.

Linda says:
Baking cookies and pralines. Putting the tree up two weeks before Christmas.
(Going out the week of Christmas seeing the neighborhood yard lights and decorations.
(Giving to the Salvation Army.
(Church Christmas eve, then come home and open presents other people gave us, then Christmas morning the rest of the gifts and a large brunch.
(That afternoon go to a movie.

JanB says:
Last year we were at a friends house until around 10:30-11:00pm (right in front of ours), we came home to the whole house lit up with candles (oldest son had come home a mite earlier to do this) all the electric lights out. We sat in the living room with the woodstove burning and recalled Christmas' past. By the time we had finished it was near 1am and everyone was in a quiet but excited mood, so we went ahead and broke tradition of opening one present on Christmas eve, and opened them all! The kids absolutely loved the whole thing, even though it was unplanned, and want to do the same thing this year.

Julie says:
In addition to only giving three gifts, we use three different colored bows on wrapping paper.
Gold for the gold that was given to Jesus.
Silver for the frankincense, and white or red for the myrrh. This kind of gives the kids a "signal" on which to open first. The Gold bow is on the gift they wanted the most or the one we think will be their favorite.
For example, one year we had the gold bow on my son's Narnia set, silver on the metal detector and white on the legos.
Also, We make our shortbread cookie dough and cut with cookie cutters and pipe frosting to decorate but we do buy the refrigerator gingerbread dough for the gingerbread houses and men.
We make cookies and candy for friends, and participate in either the church program or a Christmas ministry.
We have a fire in the fireplace 24-7!

Lorissa says:
We light candles and turn off all the lights, then read the story of Jesus' birth from the Bible. Then we sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and sing other Christmas songs. Then we all say a prayer, and then it is bedtime for the kids. Sometimes we have a cake or apple cider; just depends.

Melissa S. says:
A few days before Christmas we break out the sugar cookie dough, roll it out, cut out Christmas shapes with cookie cutters and on some of them we put green and red sugar crystals on before baking, but with most I let the kids frost them with vanilla frosting I've mixed with different food colors and then pile on sprinkles, chocolate chips, mini M&M's or whatever when they come out of the oven. The kids LOVE this and look forward to it every year. (They're the only ones who want to eat them with all that junk on them, but so what!)
Something else we've made a tradition of is always getting our tree on Thanksgiving afternoon, trimming it and getting it set up. (Decorating it is done the following day or weekend.) Then we have a special dessert and watch a family Thanksgiving TV show together if one is to be found. I don't know how or why the tree thing started on Thanksgiving day, but we've come to look forward to it!
Another thing we all love to do each Christmas season is plan a couple of nights just to ride around and look at the lights and decorations people have on their houses and in their yards. Hot chocolate is a MUST when doing this!

Renee says:
We start Advent with a paper chain, and each day pulled off has some fun activity to do-- bake cookies, go caroling, etc. Also, my husband goes crazy with the lights every year. His birthday is late November, and every year he gets more lights. The kids get to open one present on Christmas Eve... and it's always pajamas. The celebration they look forward to almost as much as Christmas Day is Epiphany. The kids are to invite one special grownup in their lives. We make a fancy dinner-- with homemade gnocchi and we have king's cake for dessert. The kids read the story of the wise men and we have one last present for the kids and their guests(always books).

Ruthi says:
Also, now that my daughters are older, we only exchange 3 gifts. The Bible only records Jesus receiving 3 gifts, so that's what we do. This tradition allows us to bless each other with a gift, but still keeps the focus on Jesus.
And we also try to *adopt a child* (send gifts) each Christmas through either the local food pantry, church, Angel Tree, or a local foster care organization.
Some of our traditions include making tamales at Christmas and making cookie cutter cookies from packaged cookie dough on Christmas Eve. (I bake really well, but we always get so busy that night that packaged cookie dough has become a tradition!)And even though my daughters are teenagers, they always participate; complete with flour fights and messy faces.

Shelly says:
First, my mom's birthday is on the 14th, so the tradition is that HER tree goes up the weekend before her birthday. Now that we kids are grown, we go over and help her do it, which the kids love doing.
She always has all 11 grandkids over to make Christmas cookies. The cut-out kind with decorative sprinkles. The children get to make as many as we can stand to help with and bake!
Then for my own children back at home. Every year we have a night of driving around looking at Christmas decorations. We have our favorites places to go see every year and we also pick a new place just to see what we can find. There is a local church that sometimes has a drive-through Nativity and we will go through that as well. (If it is cold enough we have hot chocolate when we get home)
We light Advent candles every Sunday of Advent. We then have root-beer floats afterwards. (a tradition I started because my parents met because of root-beer floats, so it is sentimental to me).
As for our tree, we put it up whenever my husband unloads the boxes from storage. We play Christmas music and have a fire in the fireplace (of course, there are years we run the A/C in order to have it!! lol!)
I have a night with the kids that we bake cookies for Santa. This is usually very close to Christmas night because by then the kids are high-strung with excitement and need something to keep hands busy.
(If we don't bake... it is because I have a neat Christmas cookie design for us to do. One year, it was a reindeer made of Nutter Butter's. :-D

SoCalPam says:
Thanksgiving weekend we get out our little Dept. 56 houses and set up the buildings. We have two collections that we display. My husband and I have been collecting them for the 15 years of our marriage and it's a very happy thing for us to put them out. Now the kids are totally into them, too. The other special building we display is our nativity creche; our youngest child arranges the figures "just so".
We bake cookies and give neighbors homemade baskets of treats, usually topped with an ornament (this year I'm giving unshelled pine nuts.) On the first of the month we start the chocolate advent calendar :o) Last year it was the Lego one. I've been investigating some of the Advent sites that have been mentioned on the board, but haven't done anything yet.
We participate in our church's gift outreach, Project Angel Tree (we picked three names this year), as well as Operation Christmas Child (the shoeboxes), and our library's tree, where we generally pick a senior citizen and a child. Then we get to go shopping!
We try to make at least one gift each year. We're not that crafty, but we try. Sometimes our "homemade gift" is a collection of small groovy things that we make into a gift basket or something like that.
We make a point of going around and looking at Christmas lights. There are two areas that are must-see's that we never miss. My kids like to look and see the number of nativities displayed. The first year we actively hunted them we were so disappointed -- only four. Last year we counted in the high teens! That was wonderful.
We participate in our church's drive-through/walk-through nativity all three nights. My younger son is a shepherd (with a line this year!) and hubby is Gabriel. My older son and I help in the kitchen feeding the volunteers, about 300 a night. My husband also acts in our church's Christmas musical, which we then go see. And last year we started our new tradition of going to see Marla's daughter dance in the Nutcracker!
Christmas Eve is our special time. Hubby makes steak and lobster, which we enjoy with a bottle of excellent wine by the light of our Christmas tree. He has been doing this every Christmas Eve since we married. At first we dined at night after the kids were in bed, but now they want to join in! And now they're old enough to eat groovy food with us instead of us being able to pass off a grilled cheese sandwich on them :o) So we all eat together and have a picnic by the tree..
Before bed we read the story of Jesus's birth from our book of children's bible stories or our DK book (which we love a lot). All month we read children's Christmas stories -- we keep them in a big basket in the living room so they're easy to get at.
We definitely believe in Santa at our house (for at least another year), so early on Christmas morning everyone brings their stockings into Mommy and Daddy's bed and we open them together (Santa leaves the filled stockings on the foot of our beds; this is a tradition from my own childhood).
After Christmas we have had a "leftovers" party on a couple of years (we've done it every other year). We may do it again this year. The house is kind of worn out and shabby with bits of wrapping paper stuck to the floor, the food is half-eaten -- let's have a party! I use up the leftover paper goods from the prior year(s) and serve whatever is leftover from Christmas. Everyone brings their own leftover dish and we potluck. I always have a prize for the most leftover dish, generally an old chocolate rabbit from Easter or some Halloween candy or something like that. People wear whatever they want: Christmas clothes, sweats, or whatever!

TN Lizzie says:
Christmas morning we like to take a gift to the hospital and see the babies who were born the night before. My 5yo daughter loves to be reminded how little Jesus would have been that first morning!
The gift is usually a basket to be given by the nurses to a Mama who really needs something! We always include a card to the new baby, a tract, a candle (Jesus is the Light of the World), a New Testament (Jesus is the Living Word), some candy, etc.
We set up a manger with a babydoll Jesus and some hay and put it on the front porch. (Everyone who drives into our cove can see our yard.) Last year, Sarah had to go give Jesus a hug and a kiss every night before bed! She was sad when it turned really cold...
Christmas morning (early) I bring the whole thing in and set it up by the fire. The doll is nice and warm by the time Sarah gets up (or was last year!) and she was one happy little girl!
My husband reads the Christmas story from the Bible as we sit on the floor by the fire.

HomeschoolChristian's Christmas Section

Holiday Traditions

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HomeschoolChristian's
Christmas Section