Christmas Family Traditions

What are your family traditions?  Are they traditions that have been around for decades, or new traditions your family has stumbled upon?

Many of our family traditions are new with our immediate family, but of course we do have some from each of our extended families that have been carried over to our household.  It will be interesting to see which traditions our children choose to keep and carry on!

Quite a few years back I created an Advent Calendar, which has become the centerpiece of many of our Christmas Traditions.  Our boys look forward to the Advent Calendar being hung and get excited about each day (some more than others), quickly reading through them all so they can "hi-five" over their favorites!

Here is what I had put together, inspired by an advent calendar I had seen posted those many years ago (sorry, don't remember who originally created it, or even when).  I can just remember being in my workshop working diligently on putting this together and being so proud of how it turned out!  The hardest part was determining the "activities" for our advent calendar.  Each day had to be something that could be done regardless of day of the week (i.e. workday, schoolday, weekend, etc).

This is our list of Advent Calendar Activities...if you don't already have your family traditions or an Advent Calendar, hopefully our list, or some of the other ideas show below will help you get started!

December:

1 - Write Letters to Santa

2 - Put Candy Canes on the Tree

3 - Read Precious Moments Christmas

4 - Look through our Christmas Album

5 - Write a Letter to a Soldier

6 - Watch Rudolph

7 - Make Gingerbread Houses

8 - Watch the Grinch

9 - Make Bird Treats

10 - Create Teacher Cards

11 - Order Pizza & Play Board Games

12 - Drink Cider & Listent to Carols

13 - Watch National Lampoons Christmas

14 - Hang the Mistletoe

15 - Create a Christmas Photo Ornament

16 - Donate

17 - Make Reindeer Food

18 - Watch Frosty & Drink Cocoa

19 - See Christmas Lights

20 - Make Chocolate Covered Pretzels

21 - Make Santa Cookies

22 - Deliver Goodies to Community Service Workers

23 - Read Twas the Night Before Christmas (yes, a little early)

24 - Set out Santa Cookies and Reindeer Food

Here are some other ideas:

Order Pizza and watch a Christmas movie together	Clean out closets of unwanted toys and clothes and donate those in good condition to a shelter or charity.	Talk about hope and share one thing each of you hopes for.	Write a letter to Santa.
Decorate the tree.	Wrap  present(s)	Go see some Christmas Lights	Do an act of service for someone you love.
Read a holiday story	Sing a Christmas Carol.	Make a new ornament for your tree.	Make a list of the gifts that God has given you.
Come up with as many words from  the letters MERRY CHRISTMAS as you can	Read about how Christmas is celebrated in another country	Go Christmas caroling	Watch a Christmas movie
Purchase an item for “Toys for Tots” (or whatever is in your area) and wrap and deliver it	Do an act of service for a neighbor	Draw or color a Christmas picture	Take a photo of your Christmas tree
Make Christmas cookies	Make a Christmas Card.	Put out the cookies and milk for Santa	Tell what Jesus Christ means to you