Spread the word!

If you know me, it’s no secret that Christmas is my very favorite holiday. I believed in Santa until I was 15, I listen to Christmas music year round, and Christmas movies are never off the table at my house. For me, the best part about Christmas is all of the traditions that surround the holiday. Every family is different, of course, but I’m willing to bet that there was at least something that you remember doing every year around the holidays!

Something that’s been really fun for me as my kids are starting to get older is sharing some of my family’s traditions with them, as well as starting brand new traditions for them to hopefully share with their kids someday! Today I thought it would be fun to share a few of the traditions we have in my family. Maybe you’ll be inspired to try something new this holiday season!

Holiday Family Traditions

Holiday traditions will be passed down from us to our kids, and eventually to our grandkids. Start traditions now, and they will be memories you cherish.

Cookie Day

Cookie Day is my mother’s make believe holiday. We have had it every single year since before I can remember. My mom [now my mom, sister and I] make hundreds of sugar cookies for the kids to decorate for Santa. It started out just close family, us and my cousins. Then some friends got invited. Then more friends. Then we were too big for our house and started renting a hall. Then Santa started to come visit and “inspect” his cookies and take pictures with the kids. Now at cookie day there are people I’ve never even met before! It has really taken on a life of its own, and the kids just love it. One day I’ll take over cookie day preparations [but don’t tell my mom that!]

Decorating Together

Decorating together is another tradition that I’m keeping from my house growing up. My mom is a little lot obsessed with Christmas decorations, so she always made sure that we decorated the house together for the holidays. Even when we were teenagers and “too cool” to decorate the Christmas tree, she made it happen. Looking back those are some of my favorite family memories, even if they were usually filled with us teasing my mom for her enormous collection of ornaments. I swear she kept everything we ever made from preschool on!

Christmas Eve Box

This one is kind of a hybrid tradition. I remember as a kid we always got Christmas jammies to wear Christmas Eve every year. I loved that because it felt like cheating to get to open a present before Santa came! We do this, plus some in our family now. Our Christmas Eve box that we open as a family has jammies for each of the boys, popcorn, hot cocoa, sometimes mugs, and a Christmas movie. We get in our jammies, pop the pop corn, make the hot cocoa and snuggle and watch the movie before going to bed! It’s also extra special because the boys get to stay up later than normal, since we don’t get them back to our house until 8ish. It’s a treat all around!

Birthday Cake for Jesus

This tradition is brand new with our family, and it was started by Mr. C! When we were explaining to him the real meaning of Christmas, he decided instantly that we had to make Jesus a birthday cake! If we get cakes on our birthdays, so should Jesus. After all, his birthday is the most important! So we made a birthday cake to enjoy on Christmas. We made it a marble cake, which is vanilla and chocolate, to explain to Mr. C that Jesus is God and man. Don’t you love when fun stuff can turn into teaching moments?

These are just a few of our holiday traditions. What kind of traditions do you do in your family?