Hellobee

I love Christmas. I loved it as a kid and now being on the other side with a family of my own, it is really neat to watch the wonder in my daughters’ eyes year after year. In a season with so many parties, family obligations, gift-buying, crowd-navigating and just general busyness, I have started to find some quiet times with the kids and my husband to create our own holiday traditions. Each of the special things we do throughout December brings great memories for all of us each Christmas. Here are my top family Christmas traditions:

Playing Christmas Music: I really love Christmas music so after school when both girls are home, we start playing Christmas music as our background noise. It is so pleasent and every once in a while we’ll all start dancing. I love the made up words the girls come up with for the lyrics; it’s really great!

Watching Christmas Movies: We love family movie times so on the weekends and sometimes during the week we’ll watch Christmas movies. The kids really like the older classics like Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph, Polar Express and The Santa Clause too! We don’t always get through all of the movie, but it’s fun to snuggle up with them and watch their little eyes thinking about the magic of Christmas.

Baking Cookies: We bake a lot for friends and family during the season, but the girls’ favorite is to bake Christmas cookies for Santa. We always bake a cake for my husband (who was born on Christmas), and this year I’d like to add in celebrating Jesus with the cake as well.

Making Ornaments: My girls love arts and crafts so we make ornaments every year! Sometimes we make cinnamon ornaments and sometimes we make paper ones. This year we’ve painted a few ceramic ones and are working on some wooden circular ones. I love pulling out the homemade stuff each year; it brings back memories of the girls making the ornaments and their age at that time.

Baking Pies: I love to bake pies so we always bake a few to take to my family for Christmas dessert and to our neighbors. The girls love to help make the pie crust and put the pies together.

Wrapping Gifts: It’s so cute to let the kids pick something small for a friend and wrap it themselves; they love to wrap with the kid scissors and tape and add ribbon and coloring to their gifts.

Writing a Letter to Santa: Now that my oldest is starting to write, this has gotten to be really sweet! She is asking how to spell words and making her attempt at writing what her hopes are for Christmas. Some of her hopes are for seeing certain people or that Santa will travel safe. It’s really cute!

Seeing Christmas Lights: We have to spend at least one night driving around looking at the cool light displays in our area. We haven’t done this yet this year, and since we’ve recently moved we are excited to see all the new lighting displays in our new hometown.

Drinking Hot Cocoa: We try to limit sugar in our house so cocoa is our seasonal favorite treat! We all go out after school or on a weekend to drink hot cocoa or just make some at home with little marshmallows or homemade whip cream.

Decorating the House Together: This is probably my favorite part of the Christmas season. We’ve started to finally get a collection of Christmas decorations going over the past five years and it has really become fun to transform the house into a festive Christmas party atmosphere.

Waking up for Christmas Morning: We no longer travel before Christmas Day to see our extended family because we really want our kids to get the experience of waking up in their own beds and noticing that there is something special for them under the tree!

Christmas Eve Celebration: Since my husband’s birthday is on Christmas Day, we make Christmas Eve our fun birthday celebration day. We watch movies, go on walks, attend church services and have a special birthday dinner for him with a gift.

These are my favorite traditions, I’d love to hear yours!