Finding your own
Traditions are special experiences you share as a family through the years. Some may have special meaning or some are just plain silly or even corny! There is no right or wrong holiday tradition, it is something that can be as special and unique as you. It is a piece of YOUR family’s history, that you choose to repeat year after year!
Here are a few of the holiday traditions our family celebrates during this time of year…
Take Some Time Together
It doesn’t have to be something big and elaborate when you are making a tradition with your family. It is just something that gets repeated over time. One holiday tradition the girls and I have begun is to set time to be together for one night during the crazy, busy Christmas Season. It is our girls night together!
We decided to take one night and do some of our favorite things together. So for us, we would grab some of our favorite hot chocolate from our local coffee shop and drive around to enjoy the amazing Christmas Lights in the area. Even better for us, we find a great neighborhood and park our car. We get some time just walking around, enjoying the lights with our warm, chocolatey hot chocolate. It is a great opportunity to just slow down in an especially busy season! The best evening for us!
Great Christmas Photos
If you are a control freak like me, you love to have everyone matching and dressed nicely in the family photos. Well, I don’t know about your house, but that doesn’t always happen in our house. There was no way I wanted to see crazy mismatched pajamas, with or without holes in those Christmas morning pictures.
So this big brainstorm hit me! I would grab new pajamas for the girls for them to wear for those Christmas morning pictures. So that Christmas Eve, the girls opened their traditional one gift before going to bed and opened their brand new, clean with no holes, Christmas pajamas. And what if I were to make this an annual thing each year. And there you have it, a new family Christmas tradition! And the girls love it and look forward to it! It is a WIN- WIN!
Turning Something Bad Into Good
Christmas Eve was always a big deal in our house, that was the BIG Family Christmas Dinner with all the extended family around town. It was Church services and other family traditions, UNTIL I began working for a Church.
If you have never worked at a Church, Christmas is one of the biggest nights of the year! Now instead of having those BIG Family Christmas Dinners on Christmas Eve, I would now be working on Christmas Eve.
No longer would it be all about our usual Family Christmas Dinners and traditions. Now, my day would be filled to the point of exhaustion when I would stumble home long after the girls should be in bed for the evening. And most of the time, with no delightfully delicious smells coming from the kitchen. And who wants to cook late at night on Christmas Eve after a VERY LONG and BUSY Day?
So after watching one of our favorite Christmas movies, A Christmas Story, you know the one…You’ll shoot your eye out? Always a family favorite. More so than that though, however, was when the family’s Christmas Dinner was ruined and they ended up at a Chinese restaurant for dinner and made memories they soon wouldn’t forget.
Well, while we wouldn’t be visiting any local Chinese restaurants on Christmas Eve with my crazy work schedule, it did give me an idea. So now instead of having a fancy, sit down Christmas Eve Dinner with family, our family now picks up our favorite take out and enjoys it together. Sometimes on the floor picnic style in between my crazy work schedule on Christmas Eve. A new family tradition was born! Even better, Family Christmas Dinner didn’t go away, it just moved to the next day! I didn’t lose a tradition, we gained one, without missing out on any of our most cherished memories!
What are some fun holiday traditions in your family?
