Your Holiday Traditions?

We start out traditions on thanksgiving weekend. We make gingerbread houses. We started with the kits you put together. But now we buy them already assembled. And then decorate like no one's business. We have 2 people to a house. And a goofy blue ribbon that gets awarded. Sometimes for the best, sometimes for the weirdest lol.

We go see the lights/Christmas story display that has music and big display board with the story written on it.

We bake and decorate cookies

after i've finished laying out the gifts and stuffing the stockings on christmas eve i wrap the doorway in paper. when the boys were little they LOVED bursting through it like superheroes.
now that they're grown they roll their eyes and make comments about how mom never lets 'em grow up, but i tell you true, they'd miss it if i didn't do it.
and then they still burst through it like superheroes.
:) khairete
S.

When my mom was a kid she would get an orange in the toe of her stocking, which was pretty special during an era when fresh fruit in the middle of winter in upstate New York was not as readily available.

She carried on the tradition, even though we lived in California ;-)

My kids know the story behind the oranges in their stockings, and enjoy it still.

We have so many holiday traditions, new and old. One that not a lot of people do is we celebrate all 12 days of Christmas, from Christmas Eve until Epiphany. We do a Christmas activity every day, have special meals and leave all of our decorations up until after our Epiphany feast. We also save some gifts (one for each of us) to open on Epiphany. I never liked the idea of the holiday being over and done with after the 25th, it seemed like such a letdown. I love letting it go on for 12 days. Other things we do is attend carol services, at our own church an at our friends church's. I love the music of the season. We go to the drive through light display, go for horse drawn sleigh rides, go to a festival of trees and lights, go to a levy at the legislative building, go tobogganing, go snowshoeing, go to the zoo, go to the museum, catch the holiday show at the planetarium, go to a live theatre show and more. We have a seafood feast on New Years Eve and Chinese food New Years Day. Traditions I carry on from childhood would be opening one gift on Christmas Eve, pj's, and eating a big breakfast after stockings but before opening gifts on Christmas morning.

We do a Christmas lights tour around our town. I live in a warm climate and Christmas is summertime for us. Every year we go to the beach to watch Santa Claus arrive for the junior surf club Christmas Party. He comes in a boat around the headland, and stops to talk to kids who are in the surf before coming into the sand. Then he hands out lollies. We love it - it's so us.

On Christmas Day we have croissants with ham and cheese for breakfast, and Christmas lunch with cold baked ham, turkey, fresh prawns and heaps of salads. In the evening when it cools down a bit we have a traditional boiled Christmas pudding. We turn off all the lights and flame the pudding. My mother makes it in an old copper. We also go to Carols by Candlight every year. In every town in our country, there will be an evening set aside where the whole town gathers and sings Christmas Carols. Everyone takes a picnic and candles. It's a lovely time.

Making and decorating sugar cookies with my mom and kids.

Holiday arts & crafts. This year we made homemade snow and white playdo!! Some years we make a paper chain counting down to Christmas.

We have a chocolate advent calendar for the kids to open each day and eat the chocolate. We found ours late this year....so the kids got to catch up and enjoyed it!!

We usually try to see the lights but this year have not been yet :(

DVR and watch the great Christmas movies from my childhood.

Spend Christmas Eve with my husband's family - but make sure we set out cookies and carrots for Santa/Reindeer. We also put oatmeal/glitter in a baggie on the front lawn so the reindeer know where to stop.

Growing up we had pizza on Christmas eve but that has changed since we now spend it with my in-laws. We also were allowed to open stockings while my dad made the orange cinnamon rolls and coffee.

Christmas morning the kids can't go out and see the tree/presents until Daddy or I check to make sure Santa has been there (so we can set up the camera and turn on the music). Then the kids can look at their Santa gifts while Dad and I get coffee. I think this year I'll have some sort of breakfast casserole or cinnamon rolls ready to put into the oven!

I love this question!

We do an Advent Calendar in December with a different activity each day. Some are simple, like writing a letter to Santa or purging bedrooms to make way for new gifts, others are more complex like volunteering at the Food Bank.
My husband and I spend a day with the kids where we each take one shopping for Mommy or Daddy and then we have lunch together as a family, and switch in the afternoon. That is probably our favorite day before the actual holiday, since we both get a little one on one time with the kids.
We have pizza every Christmas night, our son asked Santa for pizza when he was three, so it has stuck as a tradition.
We also give the kids a game to share as a Santa gift each year. That way the game closet keeps growing every year.

Beginning with our first child's first Christmas, we did not place gifts under the tree prior to Christmas eve ( and then, we put them there after the kids were asleep).

Instead, we put books around the tree. All the books were Christmas-themed, or winter-themed, though not all were religious. They included Golden books, wordless picture books, lovely stories, humorous books, serious books, poetry books, long books, books with just a few pages, The Night Before Christmas (beautifully illustrated), The Polar Express and my favorite, A Small Miracle by Peter Collington.

At first they were those baby-proof, chew-proof safe soft books. As the kids grew older we added more age-appropriate books. Usually we bought a book or two a year, but each year we put every book out, even the baby books. So now our collection extends from "Baby's Christmas Bathtub Fun Book" and Max Lucado's "The Christmas Candle". I bring the books out the night that we set up the tree., and I put them away in a box when we take the tree down and store them away so they're special.

My kids are in their 20s now. They still look at the books, and when they stop by with friends, their friends love sitting by the tree and laughing over the childish stories and sometimes sitting quietly and reading the books. So under our tree, until Christmas eve, are just books. It's my favorite tradition.

Well we try to see friends at parties, bake cookies, do advent calendar, elf on the shelf my 6 year old is so excited to find it. Cut loops to count down til Christmas. Decorate tree with music.
Try to see lights it's always do busy anywhere we go we are still going try time permitted ,
Xmas eve church or watch Christmas caroling truck at friends. I make a huge lasagna with salad bread we eat that with wine around 7:30. Hot cocoa cookies for kids and keave some for santa. Christmas Morning dad gets cameras ready, I get coffee ready and kids go wild. We make them open some one at a time so everyone can see what tbry have. Both grammas are with us and spend night. After that I make a breakfast bake, Bellinis we eat , then okay all day until dinner with drinks, beef tenderloin etc.