The past few years events have gotten me thinking about family traditions, and how to encourage them, and what time of year has more traditions than Christmas? Over the next few days I’m going to be sharing how we create Christmas traditions for our family.
My kids love to create Christmas traditions.
Any book we read, movie we watch, meal we cook, or craft we create instantly in their minds is fodder to create more Christmas traditions.
Which can lead to disappointment when I don’t plan on repeating an activity again next year. Or the reverse an activity I think they’ll love and we’ll do every year falls flat.
But over the years, we’ve had a few tried and true activities that we ALWAYS make sure to get into our Christmas activities.
And I’ll be sharing those over the next few days, but because some of the sales related to these will only be going on until today, or they’re designed to start tomorrow, I want to mention them specifically in today’s post:
I’ve had this for a couple of years and haven’t followed through on using it, and this year I want to because the crafts are so much fun. It’s designed to start tomorrow December 1.
I’m going to mention “Why Do We Call It Christmas” in a day or two and it’s on sale now, and I’m eyeing their ADVENT activity book which is also on sale.
I’m looking forward to learning some new crafting techniques with this class, and the price goes up to full price of $48 tomorrow, so get it now for $36. Christmas is a major crafting time for us and we make all of our wrapping paper traditionally, so I’m hoping for some new ideas beyond the mess of wrapping paper we have.
Okay this one has nothing to do with Christmas, I just think it’s a cool resource. I’ll admit it.
That’s the last of the deals I wanted to share with you today. I hope everyone has had a great Thanksgiving weekend.
Here’s my plans for the coming week of Christmas traditions:
- Christmas movie traditions– there are some movies that if I don’t watch them, it is not Christmas yet. There’s also some I’ve discovered just do not work for our family.
- Christmas book traditions– I have a large stack of picture books to read every year and a chapter book or two that I love to read.
- Christmas giving traditions– Part of our goals for our children is to teach Christmas isn’t just about getting presents, but it’s about what God gave us.
- Christmas craft traditions– Christmas is the time of year for crafts, and more crafts.
- Christmas music– I play Christmas music almost nonstop starting the day after Thanksgiving..
What Christmas traditions does your family have? I’m always on the lookout for a few new books or movies to add into our Christmas rotation.
Tomorrow many other ladies from iHomeschool Network will be starting their series on Christmas as part of the 5 Days of Christmas series.
The December month is one where I aim to create a Christmas tradition by repeating certain activities such as making Christmas snacks, cards and some crafts. It appears that reading Dickens’ Christmas stories are going to become part of our Christmas tradition. I’m looking forward to reading about what you guys do for December. 🙂
I’m having fun writing it right now. I pick these topics and think, “Oh, this will be so easy to write about,” and then I get started and start saying, “Oh my goodness what was I thinking writing about this.”
It is amazing how many Christmas traditions creep up over the years – and like you said, some that fall flat (or mom doesn’t have/make time to repeat…). Some of our “traditions” occur every other year or so – it can be difficult to find the time for everything we want to do – but they are still memorable. We do gingerbread houses/structures every year, girls get Christmas trees in their bedrooms, a family “sleepover” “under” the Christmas tree – in the living room with mattresses on the floor, all of us together watching movies until late, and trying to get some sleep. Our favorite movie to watch at Christmas is Little Women.
You know I have never done a gingerbread house, probably because I am rather incompetent at baking as of late, and I’m sure it would go horribly.
I’d never even thought of it as a Christmas movie, but that’s a great idea! I’m sure Princess would love it.
We certainly have book tradition and also going to see The Nutcracker.
I’ve gone to see it for the past couple of years with Princess, and she loves it.