First of all, here are our pictures of our little Christmas corner that we set up in our house.
Here's the tree:
I think the boys had more fun playing in the decorations and ornaments.
This picture reminds me of the magic of Christmas that seems to just naturally come to little children:
The stockings were hung on the woodstove with care.
Now on to making "Gingibread Men"
These were made with whole wheat flour. They turned out pretty good!
Eternal waiting:
Making the frosting:
And finally, enjoying the cookies:
Now.....my question is this: What are your Christmas traditions that you could share with me? I've been trying to implement as many as I can now that Easton is getting old enough to understand. My family had some wonderful ones that we did growing up, but I KNOW that you have some of your own Magical Ones to Share! I'm doing a shout out for
all Christmas Traditions!! So Please Share!!!
Now you don't need to read all of our Christmas traditions if you don't want to. But please share with me at least one Christmas Tradition that you have or have heard of.
Our Christmas Traditions
1. Breaking out the Christmas music sometime in October or November so we have plenty of time to hear our favorite carols to our King.
2. Welcoming in the Christmas season with a Christmas lesson from Dad and a viewing of The Nativity (Luke 2).
3. Decorating our tree and house the day or Monday after Thanksgiving.
4. Making a "Thankful Box" and writing the big and simple things we are thankful for throughout December and then sharing them on Christmas or Christmas Eve.
5. Selecting someone to give an anonymous Christmas ham to the week before Christmas.
6. Watching the First Presidency Christmas devotional.
7. Sending out Christmas cards to our family, friends, (both here and in Portugal.)
8. Christmas Drills. This one started when my mom was little. Her older brothers had the uncanny love of setting out booby traps so that my mom and her sister wouldn't get up too early on Christmas morning. So she and her sister developed the idea to do Christmas drills during December to be prepared for the booby traps. (They would climb in bed, pretend it was Christmas, grab their flashlights, pretend to dodge all the booby traps, and run to the living room yelling, "It's Christmas! It's Christmas!") So this tradition carried over to me and my sisters--despite the fact that we didn't have any brothers setting traps. We haven't started this tradition with our boys yet, but maybe we will in the next few years.
9. Making gingerbread houses and gingerbread men.
10. Purchasing or making a new ornament every year. My sisters and I each received one each year and my mom would write our name and the year on the back with permanent marker. When I got married, my mom gave me a box with all of my Christmas ornaments. In order to still have some for herself, my mom bought an ornament for she and my dad to share every year as well. We've done this every year since we've been married. In fact, our first one we purchased on our honeymoon in Driggs, Idaho. (in the middle of August I might mention.) I'll have to post some pictures of the ornaments we've collected so far.
11. Doing the 12 Days of Christmas for someone in our ward. When I was little, we loved picking out the gifts and making the treats. Then we would take turns running the gift up in the cover of darkness, ringing the doorbell, and running to a nearby hiding place until the family found the gift. Then we would sneak away.
12. Sugar cookies. Ahhh....Mother's sugar cookies are to die for.
13. Writing, directing, and putting on a Christmas play, presentation, or movie on Christmas Eve. My sisters and I always did this. One year we did "Christmas Around the World" and we sang different songs from other countries. my favorite year by far was in Portugal when I wrote a movie called "A Greene Family Christmas." It's a full length movie and despite our lack of actresses, settings, props, equipment, editing software, etc., it turned out quite well. Patrick even cried when he watched it the first time!
14. Singing Christmas carols at the nursing home for our great-grandmothers.
15. I've started the tradition of having a "Christmas Eve Fireside" on Christmas Eve complete with Christmas stories, cookies, hot chocolate, and a retelling of the Christmas story.
16. Watching Christmas movies. We love the ones produced by the Church (The Nativity, Mr. Krueger's Christmas, The Other Wiseman, etc.) And then last year we found a whole bunch of our old Christmas movies on Amazon for a great price. Do you remember the old puppet movies like Rudolph, The Year Without a Santa Claus, The Little Drummer Boy, and Santa Claus is Coming to Town? These along with Mickey Mouse Christmas, Winnie the Pooh, Frosty the Snowman, and the Grinch (cartoon version), fill our home during the Christmas Season. I just counted them and we have approximately 26 Christmas movies. A whole month of memories!
17. Opening a gift on Christmas Eve--always pajamas. Sometimes we even got matching slippers. One year my mom made our pajamas and a matching doll. That was special.
18. Writing "Gifts to the Savior" and "Gifts to our Family" This started when I was younger and we have implemented it into our family. We take a notecard and write a gift we want to give our Savior during the next year (such as more kindness, more time with Him studying the scriptures, etc.) and then we keep the card as a reminder of what we gave Him. We do the same for each member of our family. Then the next year we pull out our cards and read them to each other. We reflect on how well we did the past year and make new gifts for the coming year. This is one of my favorite Christmas traditions.
19. Spending Christmas with one of our families (we have to switch off every year since they live 100 miles apart).
20. Watching The Nativity (Luke 2) before opening presents on Christmas day.
21. And of course, a big Christmas breakfast. Patrick grew up with Pull-apart Bread and Hot Chocolate and I grew up with scrambled eggs, orange julius, and French Breakfast muffins. Let me know if you want any of the recipes. We haven't really decided on our own traditional Christmas breakfast yet.
22. Having Christmas ham for supper.
23. Having a "Thank-You Party" sometime during the Christmas break to write cards to those who have given us presents. This year I am going to take pictures of the boys using their gifts and send them to those who gave them those presents.
Once again, I'm asking you to share with me your traditions. Our family traditions become better as we share our good ideas!
10 comments:
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We have lots of great Christmas traditions. One of my favorite is a dinner we have on Christmas Eve called "dinner for the holy family," where each item on the menu represents someone else in the Christmas Story. For example, we have angel hair pasta for the angels, milk and honey for baby Jesus, etc. Sounds like you guys have lots of fun traditions, too! Isn't it fun to think about all the different traditions we can establish with our little families?
Wow, you have all sorts of fun traditions. It was good to read all of them. You gave us a lot of good ideas! One of my favorite christmas traditions is decorating the christmas tree while playing christmas music it helps me get in the christmas spirit. We also put chritmas lights up on the house. Hope your Christmas is one to remember!
You have so many great Christmas traditions! We didn't have too many Christmas traditions growing up. We did open a gift on Christmas Eve (pj's of course). And I love the idea of having the kids act out the Christmas story with costumes and everything! When we got married, we made a list of traditions we wanted to implement, hmmm, I have no idea where that went, so maybe we'll just copy yours :)
Wish we had some traditions to share. Seems like we come up with something we plan to do every year, but we always forget what it is the next year! We should write our traditions down, til we get consistent. You've inspired me though. Thanks for all the ideas that you shared.
Great post! What a fantastic list of traditions--most of them focused on family and the Savior (by the way, I hope it's okay that we linked you from our Santa post). I've always enjoyed the sibling exchange gift that I did with my family growing up.
And I absolutely have to see "A Greene Family Christmas"
Jordan and I have a lot of the same traditions so its easy to keep them up....I think. We also have many of the same ones to you.
When I was little always did a 12 days of Christmas to someone. But last two years we haven't been able to do it because we are at our families for christmas.
Christmas eve is always a BIG FEAST. If it is just immediate family...we would always try to invite widows or those without family to enjoy with us as well.
Christmas eve we all dress up and act out the nativity and sing hymns.
Go caroling to neighbors or nursing homes....We have only done it once but serve at a soup kitchen. Loved that.
Deliever goodies to neighbors.
We both grew up with Christmas story books and would read a christmas story each night.
Cheesy christmas shows! Love them all december long.
Open one present christmas eve.
We would chose names from the kids and buy a gift for that person in our family.
Christmas day, my dad would make a big blockade that we couldnt get out to the front room. We had to wait until the fire was on, mo tab playing, candles lite, the video camera rolling. Then we would have to walk out in a line.....youngest to oldest. We open our stockings first and a few presents. THen we have a HUGE breakfast....bacon, eggs, sausage, etc...
I haven't done this but have a friend who told me about it. They have christmas pillowcases they made. So every year on December first they get to put there christmas pillowcases on. I thought this was a cute idea.
We also had a white box where under the tree that we put gits to the savior on it and read it on Christmas.
When i was younger we used to make an ornament with my grandma each year. Since she has passed my mom has given us an ornament each year. Usually an angel.
We collect nativites....my mom started it. She has several from around the world. I am just starting my collection with 4 but I think its a fun tradition.
The past few years jordan and I have made our gifts for family members. Which has been fun and they seem to love them and we develop a new skill.
well I am sure there are more but all i can think of right now! Hope it all makes sense. Hear Daniel waking up....got to run
Jamie your blog is MaGnIfIcEnT!!! I LOVE all the Christmas traditions! That's so wonderful that you recorded them all! I LOVE the pictures and smileboxes too! I LOVE YOU SOOOO much! Here are the other traditions we thought up:
-Chrismtas Pillowcases.
-Laying out our stockings where we wanted our presents.
-Watching the Bishop's Wife on Christmas Eve.
-Sleeping out by the tree the Friday before Christmas and playing flashlight tag.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo!!!!!
I loved all the pictures! The pictures of you and Easton baking "gingibread" men brought back so many memories of you and the girls baking with me!
A few more traditions to add:
-Before we started to give our gift to the Savior and "write on a card" what we would try to do that year to draw nearer to Him and become more like him, when you girls were really little, we would wrap a present for the Savior and cut a slit in the top. All throughout December when you did an act of service you would write what you did and slip it in the box as a gift to Him. Then on Christmas morning after we opened gifts, we would open the gift for our Savior and read the acts of kindness and service that you did and it helped us realize when we serve others we truly are serving Him.
-You each had a Christmas quilt and pillowcase that I made for you to put on your beds in December.
-We had a Christmas afghan on the couch and we would cover up with it and read a story together every night.
-Remember always acting out the nativity and you girls would also do a nativity puppet show? Remember when you were the donkey, (I think you said your name was "Hilbert") and Nicole (Mary) had a hard time staying on you with her slick nightgown on and Natalie was the angel and said that "Jesus was lying in a 'wanger' in 'Ham Ham'" (Bethlehem)? What wonderful memories.
I love you and hope you have a joyous Christmas season!!
love,
mom
It's so fun to see pictures of you with your little boys. They are lucky to have you for a mom. As far was Christmas traditions, my siblings and I would always sleep in the same room on Christmas Eve, and watch Mickey's Christmas Carol and Garfield's Christmas. We'd also dress up and perform the nativity (I usually played Mary or the Angel). We always eat sweet and sour chicken on Christmas Eve--in fact we now call it Christmas Eve chicken. I enjoyed reading about your traditions! Merry Christmas.
I was trying to think of some traditions that were not shared and we have a few.
First we read a Christmas story every night to count down the 25 days of Christmas. The stories are ones like "The Gift of the Magi" etc. All are uplifting and have a great message.
We also count down for christmas by getting a red or green tall candle and painting 25 white dots down the center of the candle. Then when we read our christmas story we light the candle and let it burn down to the next dot.
We listen to and read the Forgotten Carols by Michael McLean every year. And if we are lucky every few years we attend the live performance.
Jared and I want to start this next tradition. I think when the children are small we will have to go on our own, but as they get older we would love to take them to listen to Handel's Messiah every year.
That last tradition is one that I have heard about but it is not one that my family has done. My friend said that her mom made her and her siblings a Christmas Quilt. Just a small square quilt that would sit on the end of each child's bed all December. Then on Christmas morning the Christmas Quilt would be taken out by the tree and each child would put their gifts on their own Christmas Quilt and open presents on their Quilt. The idea is that each child will have their own designated space to open gifts to eliminate arguing over space etc. Plus it added a fun element to Christmas morning.
Merry Christmas!! And thanks for sharing your traditions. It gave me some GREAT ideas!
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