Hi friends!
Christmas & other holiday traditions are something I’m very passionate about especially since growing a family of my own!
Traditions around the holidays are so important because not only are they meaningful ways to better connect with your family and get in some quality time, they also help create & keep the magic of the holiday alive! There’s something so special about seeing the same traditions you remember as a child now bring magic to your little ones too.
As you grow a family of your own you’ll of course want to keep and pass on some of your favorite traditions from your childhood but you might also want to find a few unique ways to create new special traditions too! Here are 27 of the best ideas for Christmas family traditions!
1. Try A New & Festive Recipe!
Find a cute, fun & festive new treat to try! A few years ago I stumbled across a post filled with a bunch of Disney recipes and saw this adorable hot chocolate recipe. We made a whole night out of it by going to the store as a family and gathering all the ingredients, turned on Christmas music and followed the recipe as best as we could. It was messy and it didn’t turn out exactly like the photo but we had fun and made it our own!
2. Visit A Tree Farm
Hear me out, even if you use an artificial tree every year I still encourage you to visit a free farm! Often they’re super decked out, offer hot chocolate or apple cider, do bonfires and sometimes even wagon rides around the farm of trees! Its fun to just walk around and enjoy the scenery, snap a few cute photos of the kids & be in nature! Pick up some garland or a wreath while your there to help support the farmer and their family 🙂
3. Blast Music While Decorating
“Alexa, play Holiday Favorites!” – Is even really December if you don’t have Christmas music playing 24/7?! Tell Alexa to turn it up all the way and dance and sing your heart out while the whole fam joins in on decorating! If you’re a little picky about your Christmas decor (guilty!) .. Pick up a few inexpensive pieces just for your littles and let them go ham in their rooms!
4. A Mini-Me Tree
Got a toddler who won’t leave the ornaments alone? Buy them their own little tree 
5. Visit Santa’s Wonderland
We have a tradition of going to Bass Pro Shop and visiting Santa’s Wonderland! We love going Bass Pro Shop because they give you one free photo with Santa and the option to purchase more, often for cheaper than the mall. Not only that but they also have an entire “wonderland” set up with Christmas activities for the kids. They can play, color and even send a letter to Santa. We always go to iHop and get festive pancakes afterwards too for some reason lol it’s just one of those things that accidentally became a tradition with it.
6. Decorate And Share Cookies
Growing up every year my grandma, aunt and everyone would come over and we’d all get together and bake and decorate an insane amount of cookies. We’d have sugar cookies, gingerbread, chocolate chip, peanut butter cookies with the little Hershey’s Kiss, etc. All the different cookies! Looking back it was probably a lot of work for my mom (love you momma!) but I just remember it being fun. Afterwards we’d put them cute Christmas containers & pass them out to friends, extended family, church members, community workers, etc. I’m not so sure if places like fire departments and such still accept these sorts of things anymore out of safety concerns but you could always ask.
7. Build Gingerbread Houses & Hold A Contest
They never come out super pretty but thats part of the fun! Get together and get messy. They sell so many different types of gingerbread “houses” these days the options are endless. If you use Instagram/Facebook you can even hold a mini contest by posting photos of everyones house “anonymously” (labeled A, B, C, etc) and letting your friends pick the winner by voting for their favorite. The winner gets bragging rights and maybe a $10 starbucks card or something!
8. Make Tamales
Not really sure why or how tamales are a Christmas thing but everyone loves a good tamale around Christmas time. Yes, they take a while to make but if you make them as a family you can assign everyone a role. Teamwork makes the tamale dream work! One person presses the masa, one person adds a different filling, one person wraps them, etc. You can make enough to have a tamale everyday for all of December.. *drools* YUM.
9. Advent Calendars
Countdown to Christmas with a fun little treat each day. You can buy a beautiful customizable advent and re use it each year by filling it with your kids favorite little candy or you can buy a new one. There are so many different advent calendars out there to purchase for literally every interest!
- Lego – LEGO City Advent Calendar
- Barbie – Barbie Dreamtopia Advent Calendar
- Hot Wheels – Hot Wheels Advent Calendar with Cars and Accessories
- Frozen Books – Disney Frozen Storybook Collection Advent Calendar
- Disney Books – Disney Storybook Collection Advent Calendar
- Paw Patrol – Paw Patrol – 2019 Advent Calendar
10. Take Christmas Photos
Taking family Christmas photos every year is the perfect way to watch everyone grow throughout the years. Hire a photographer, go to JCPennys or find a beautiful area near you, grab your handy-dandy tripod
11. Make & Send Out Christmas Cards
Put those photos to use! Save one or two photos from your family photoshoot that you don’t put on social media and use it in a Christmas card! You can use Shutterfly or even just go to Walmart and use their photo printer! Send everyone a little holiday cheer 🙂
12. Christmas Family Pajamas
Matching Christmas family pajamas are so fun! Kid’s love to see parents get involved in these sorts of things – it makes things way more fun! Ever see a kids face light up when their parent or teacher wear a costume on halloween too? A few years back it was harder to find a whole matching set but this has now become so popular you can find matching sets everywhere! I’ve seen them sold at Target, Carters, Old Navy, Walmart – and of course Amazon!
13. Christmas Movie Marathon Day
What’s better on a cold winter day than spending all day inside all cozied up on the couch binge watching Christmas movies?! Nothing – that’s what! Make it a tradition to have a lazy day with the kids where you stay in your pajamas all day (maybe the matching family set?) and do nothing but drink hot chocolate, eat popcorn and watch Christmas movies. Order a pizza for dinner and bam – ultimate lazy day for parents and the kids will love it too! It’s truly a win-win!
14. Local Christmas Light Spectacular
We live in Lousiville KY and every year we go to something called “Lights Under Lousiville!” It’s basically a cave a few miles long that they completely deck out for Christmas & you get to drive through it with your windows down listening to the Christmas music. It’s honestly the best. If you Google a bit I’m sure you can find something similar near you too.. Type something like “(Your city or the largest city close to you) Christmas Light Spectacular”. When we used to live in Texas we would go to the San Antonio River Walk & take a boat ride to see all the lights – Here’s a really old mini vlog we did a few years back lol
15. Make A Christmas Paper Chain Countdown
We love making paper chains for literally any event! They’re super quick & easy to make and kids love them! You can use regular old green and red construction paper or you can get fancy with it and use christmas themed patterned paper
16. Neighborhood Christmas Lights Wagon Ride
If you’re blessed enough to live in a warmer climate, make it a tradition to take a night walk with the kids and look at Christmas lights around your neighborhood. Put them in a wagon and give them glow stick necklaces to wear while gazing.. (glow sticks automatically make anything more fun, honestly). If you’re like us and live somewhere where its too damn cold at night for that nonsense, use your car instead lol. We always bring a cozy blanket, some hot chocolate in thermals and bake Pillsbury Christmas cookies to take with us (the ones with trees or Santas!) to munch on while we drive around. This is my daughters fave!
17. Write a Letter/Prediction To Open The Next Year
This tradition is honestly the best! On Christmas Eve you write a letter talking about all the plans and things that you think/hope/want to happen the next year! Talk about anything and everything, seal it up in an envelope and then next year on Christmas Eve you all read your letters out loud to the family. The best part about it is seeing what actually happened, how far you’ve come, if things didn’t go quite as planned or if they went even better.. You won’t remember what you wrote so reading it will be a surprise for you too. (HINT: Make you sure you put it somewhere you’ll find it next year!) Here’s part of my letter from last year!
Dear Family,
Another Christmas already! I can’t believe it, this year was so much fun! Asher was born this year and Rylee just turned 4! The highlight this year (aside from Asher being born) was definitely our trip to California! We had such a great time and made so many memories! Last month I found out the unthinkable happened – I’m pregnant AGAIN! Can you believe it? I was pregnant twice this year.. Yikes! haha! With this new pregnancy i’m expecting a lot of change this upcoming year. One, by this time next year we’ll have a 5 month old NEW BABY! Is it a boy or a girl??!? Whats his or her name!? Although I know Rylee wants a sister I’m thinking its a boy.. We’ll see! I’m betting right now that I’ll have to be induced again! If not, what was actually going into labor like!? Did your water break?? Was it crazy!? With this baby we can no longer fit in this 2 bedroom apartment so we’ll probably be buying a house if everything works out.. A whole different house & a family of 5! wow! I wonder where we’ll end up, we might need to move out of Lousiville, I guess we’ll see. If we successfully bought a house, is it nice?? Do you love it? Asher will be almost 2 years old, he’ll be walking (and running!) right now he loves bananas, is that still his favorite food??
18. Give Back
Make it a tradition to find a way or way(s) to give back each year. Teach your kids about the gift of giving! During the holidays there are so many ways to give back. Here are just a few ideas:
- Christmas Shoe Box – this has been a thing for as long as I can remember.. Take the kids shopping and have them help pick out and collect all the things to put in the box
- Donate food to a food bank – have them help you pick out the food at the store
- Sponsor a child for Toys for Tots
- Pay it forward – Ex: have your child write 4 kind messages as simple as “You look nice to day!” on different post its and give them four $5 bills to wrap in each post-it and let them hand/leave them for whoever they choose during the week/month
19. Pick Out a Special Ornament
Go to Hobby Lobby, Target or look online every year and let each kid pick out a special ornament. Anything they want! Is your 5 year old into JoJo Siwa? Great, maybe find a Jojo ornament! Throughout the years they’ll be able to pull out all the ornaments from years past of things they used to love for some mega nostalgia!
20. Sneaky Santa Photo
Santa has gotten very bad at being sneaky in our house because every year I manage to catch a photo or video of him! There are SO many apps these days that let you “catch Santa” sneaking out or putting gifts under the tree.. My daughter loves asking if I caught a photo of him this year & of course I did!
21. Elf On a Shelf
Erm, actually maybe not.. Props to you mommas who have the willpower for that type of shit lol
22. Leave Cookies & A Letter For Santa
This one is a little obvious but we do this every year, even when our first born was only 1 month old! Santa needs his cookies after a long night of getting everything ready for Christmas. Its a must.
23. Use A Special Plate
Santa has a special milk & cookies set he gets his treats from us on every year! It’s the one and only time each year this plate gets used, it’s only for Santa!
Santa Cookie Plate
24. Make & Leave Reindeer Food
On Christmas Ever as you prepare the milk and cookies for Santa don’t forget about his reindeer! They deserve something special too! We make special reindeer food and leave a trail leading to our door so they know the way! Make sure you use *edible gold stars* 
25. Leave a Key For Santa
Since we’ve never had a chimney, we used to “leave the door unlocked” for him (we’d still lock it after they went to bed because thats not happening) but now we leave a magic key for santa
Christmas Holiday “Santa’s Magic Key”
26. Donate Old Toys
Every year we go through all our toys and pick out the ones that are still in good condition but we either have multiples (how the hell did we end up with eight baby dolls!?) or have outgrown and donate them so they can be loved and cherished by another child. This is great because it not only teaches them giving, but its also environmentally friendly and helps clear major space for the new things so you aren’t completely drowning in toys.
27. Pick One Gift To Open Early
On Christmas Eve we always let the kids open one gift. You can either let them pick one from under the tree or make a special gift box for them. This box can contain a new movie, a stuffed animal, a pair of Christmas pajamas, a special bath bomb, a new book, a fun holiday mug, etc!
