Christmas Traditions
December 21, 2007 11:36 amFour days until Christmas. Because our kids are young, Nicole and I are creating Christmas traditions as we go, taking the best from our own childhoods and joining them to the best of what we’ve heard of from others. Here are some of the things we’ve done and are planning:
- Decorating the tree. The funny thing about doing this with a four year old is that you end up with 90% of your ornaments only three feet off the ground.
- We pile in the car and go to the Festival of Lights. It rocked.
- Making a Christmas list with Jack of the stuff he wants to give others. We’re trying to help him think more about giving gifts and less about getting gifts. His list is pretty funny.
- Special Christmas Eve breakfast with A Charlie Brown Christmas. Nicole is making her famous banana pancakes. Then we’ll decorate Christmas cookies and help Jack wrap his presents for others.
- And of course: our Christmas Eve Service. Always a highlight. Followed by a Christmas Eve feast with family and friends.
What about you? Favorite Christmas traditions we’re missing out on?
5 Responses to “Christmas Traditions”
christmas mornings have started before sun-up on mom and dad’s bed as long as i can remember. the rule is, no one can go out to the living room until we’re all awake. so, as each kid wakes, he creeps into mom and dad’s room to await his siblings.
no one ever gets to sleep past seven.
then, we line up by age, youngest first (with dad in front so there’s no premature peeking), all the way up the scale to where mom brings up the rear and march out to the living room where we have to all sit quietly before dad passes out our stockings. it heightens the anticipitation.
then there are mom’s cinnamon rolls for to devour before we tear into the gifts under the tree.
i love christmas!
Our biggest one is driving up to our G-parents home in Maine. It takes about 11 hours, and we’ve done it for about 15 of my 17 years. I don’t recommend this to everyone, it can get pretty crazy in that van…
We all open stockings on Christmas Eve, then any of the kids who want to (those who do not consider themselves too grown up for this or who do not mind being woken up early) sleeps by the Christmas tree. In the morning we have a special breakfast and do our chores before gathering together to read the Bible and the Christmas story. After that, my dad passes out gifts one by one. As little kids, we were not allowed to play with our toys until after all gifts were open. It takes about three hours to open gifts because we do them slowly and because of interruptions for little breaks, but it is so much fun!
Each of the kids in my family get to open one present on Christmas Eve. Mom gives us a choice between a few though. Otherwise we would probably all go for “the big ones”
After the Christmas Eve service we go home and help mom finish making the dinner, and every year we have honey baked ham,some kind of potatoes, vegetables,and bread, for a special drink we have sparkling cider. When we’re done with dinner we go into the living room and mom lets us open ONE gift, And it has always been pajamas.!!!!!!!!! Because we love sleeping in our new ones and waking
up on X-mas morning with them on.
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