10 Holiday Traditions to Start with Your Family

Welcome!  Here are ten of my family’s holiday traditions.  I hope you can take some of these and mold them to your family to create some awesome traditions and make some new memories!

Christmas Card Photo
Obviously, a photographer has to touch on this.  However, as a normal, human being, Mom type of person, I must say something as well.  We live in a digital age.  There is no denying that.  But when you get a card in the mail, and that card has a photo, and you hang that photo up to display and look at and think warm and happy thoughts about the people in the photo, THAT is saying something.

So if you’re not ordering cards from your photographer, get that snapshot uploaded to a nice lab and order those Christmas cards!

Decorate the Tree
Decorating the tree can be the worst.  I mean, the worst!  The lights are all tangled and some of them burnt out.  The tree is scratching you as you put it together.  The ornament boxes EVERYWHERE…..  But it’s so awesome to do it with kids, and talk about all the ornaments and the memories they hold.  We don’t do generic ornaments.  Every year growing up, I would receive a special ornament from my parents, and when I moved out, I had a box of meaningful ornaments to decorate my first tree.  Now, I think that’s a totally rad tradition so I of course carried it on with my children.  More on that later 😉

Write Letters to Santa
In our family, we usually write letters to Santa on Christmas Eve and leave them in the ‘Letters to Santa’ ornament, next to his milk and cookies.  However the past couple of years my kids have written a short note and taken it with them when they’ve visited Santa.

Bake Cookies
Another tradition I’ve taken from my childhood and now passing it down to my own children.  I remember cookie baking and decorating being an all.day.thing….  like hundreds of cookies.  We froze them and gave a lot away.  We would gather together, inviting the cousins, decorating our little hearts out!  We’ve scaled it way back and mostly do a solid batch, maybe double if we’re doing them with Grandma.  Gotta have (homemade) sugar cookies for Santa 🙂

We are looking for a new cookie recipe.  Do you have a tried and true recipe you can share?

Visit Santa and his Reindeer
This has been a fun tradition of ours for quite a few years.  I think we visited Santa in the mall for three years, maybe four.  NOT so fun for us.  Totally reminiscent of A Christmas Story’s mall Santa experience.  After we tried visiting Beaver Bark in Richland, seeing the reindeer outside and visiting Santa inside, and being able to take our own photos (or purchase from them), I was sold on the whole experience.

Now I just need to get a print of every year’s visit so I can display them every Christmas time (instead of them sitting in a folder on my computer somewhere…)

Build a Snowman
I grew up in Spokane, so there was usually snow aplenty.  Here in the Tri-Cities, it doesn’t snow all that often, and often when it does, it’s not the sticky snow, snowman building quality.  I think if you’re kids are old enough to roll a ball in the snow, they’re old enough to enjoy building an awesome snowman with their Mom and Dad.

Pajamas and Ornaments
My favorite Christmas tradition is the opening of the Christmas Eve gift.  Growing up, my Mom would offer us a few options of a gift to open the night before Christmas.  I don’t really remember what I would open, but it was always fun to get that tease of gift opening fun.  For my kids, they get to open their Christmas pajamas and their special ornament on Christmas Eve.  I’ve recently thought about changing this up.  Maybe somehow changing it so they get their pajamas earlier in December, so they can wear them more before Christmas, instead of the months following Christmas 🙂   But it’s so awesome to get my kids all snuggled up in their PJs and ready for bed.

Senske Light Show
Something fun if you’re in the Tri-Cities is the Senske light show.  It’s grown every year we’ve gone.  Last  year, we got out of the car and sat in the driveway at Senske headquarters.  You’ll have to check it out.  Pack up warm blankets and a mug of hot cocoa and make a short evening, family date of it!

Paper Snowflakes
A fun, family craft that can sometimes require more creativity from Mom than patience from the kids, paper snowflakes are an easy-peasy holiday craft.  We have gotten a bit craftier over the years, and use the internet for templates to create awesome designs!  We’re big on Harry Potter and Star Wars ones over here 🙂  After we cut them out, we’ll tape them to the windows, or hang them from the ceiling or on the tree.  Just have fun picking up all the little cut away pieces 😉

Unwrap a Book
One of my favorite traditions that nurtures our family bond is unwrapping books.  At the end of November, we gather all of our Christmas/winter/holiday books (I think we’ve got around 25, so perfect) and we wrap them up!  Wrapping paper, newspaper, scrap paper… whatever’s on hand.  Then we’ll mix them up and write numbers on them, 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on.  Then, on December 1st, we’ll sit down every night around bed time and unwrap the corresponding numbered book and read it as a family.

What are some of your family traditions?  I hope you are able to adopt some of ours and make them your own to start with your family.  Create those lasting memories with your children.  Nurture the bonds.  Adore the little moments.