A Collection of Christmas Traditions

With Christmas just around the corner, I thought it would be fun to talk about the traditions that we all hold dear. Whether big or small, traditions secure the roots that ground our families and string together generations. Some of them are passed on from those that went before us and some of them are starting with us. It’s never too late to incorporate something special into the season and I wanted to share the responses I received from all of you. I loved reading each and every tradition and plan to adopt a few of these for our family.

• Reading ‘”The Night Before Christmas'” before we go to bed as a family.
• I buy each of our kids an ornament that represents something special from that year.
• Christmas Eve is always a mish-mash of family favorite appetizers and a bottle of bubbly!
• Watching our local Christmas pantomime with friends.
• Hosting a friends BBQ on December 26 for anyone home for the holidays.
• Donations to our local Santa Shoebox charity as a family.
• Sibling Christmas shopping for each other
• Christmas morning gift opening, church service and a family lunch.
• Christmas Eve with just us 7 – matching pjs and a Christmas movie.
• Annual family photo with Santa at our local mall.
• Coffee cake and breakfast casserole every Christmas morning.
• Santa writes a letter to the kids each year. It describes why he brought certain gifts and highlights from their year (A nice way to journal big moments).
• Driving around to see Christmas lights with hot cocoa.
• Decorating the tree together, reminiscing over ornaments purchased on trips.
• Decorating cookies, drinking hot cocoa, watching a Christmas movie.
• Christmas Eve dinner is everyone’s favorite snack food/appetizer.
• Grandmother reads ‘”The Night Before Christmas” to the grandkids on Christmas Eve.
• We use my late grandmother’s special Christmas dishes for breakfast.
• Setting up a Christmas village.
• The kids have been making gingerbread houses for years. We use as holiday decor!
• We go the Nutcracker Ballet in DC every December.
• When putting away our stockings we write a note of hopes and dreams for the new year. Next year when we take out the stockings we read the notes and see what came true.
• Christmas stockings opened in our bed before anything – even now with 19 and 23 year old.
• Leaving a basket of snacks and a message of thanks on the porch for the delivery people.
• Deciding as a family which charity to give to during the holiday season.
• Ice skating in Millennium Park with my kids.
• Christmas family pajamas. Open one gift at a time taking turns.
• Mom gifts new pajamas on Christmas Eve.
• Baking my Grandma’s cookie recipe
• Grab bag (hubby/kids) Christmas Eve night after extended family leaves.
• Decorating with family on Thanksgiving weekend.
• Reading ‘The Polar Express’ as a family in front of the tree.
• Matching pajamas and make homemade pizza on Christmas Eve.
• Decorating sugar cookies during the day on Christmas Eve.
• We always have tamales on Christmas Eve! It’s a south Texas Mexican food favorite.
• Every year we sponsor a family and love to shop for them.
• Advent Calendar with a family activity to do each day as we countdown (anything from reading a book to driving to look at lights).

All of these traditions warm my heart. I love the idea of quality time with family. I think traditions are a gift and these are all so beautiful. I hope you found one or two ideas to incorporate into your own holiday planning. Thank you to everyone who took a moment to share.

*The last time I collected traditions from readers was back in 2019. Many fun ideas in this post.