New Christmas Traditions

Since our youngest smartie is a year old and we have completed our little family, I wanted to start some Christmas family traditions.  I, of course, hopped onto Pinterest to get some inspiration.  I came across some wonderful ideas from The Things I Love blog.  As soon as I read about some of the things she does with her family, I got to work getting things ready to do them with my family.

The first fun idea is reading a Christmas book every night.  I got all the Christmas books we already have (and bought a couple new ones) and each day I pick out a different book and put it a gift bag under the tree.  After bath time, the kids open the bag and get out the book for us to read as a bedtime story.  They get so excited about which book we will read that night. After we read the book, it gets put in the book basket in our living room.
The next tradition we started was the 25 Days of Christmas Fun.  I like the list on the blog I mentioned earlier so I decided to use some of those ideas but include some of our own too.  After I typed up our list and  printed it off, I framed it and have it sitting on a counter in the kitchen.  The kids like being able to check off our activity each day with a dry erase marker.

Something I like even better is her list of the 25 Days of Christmas Spirit list.  I  printed off her list and framed it too.  We have had such fun learning the reasons why we do certain things at Christmas. I am sharing what we learn each day on My little smarties Facebook page so you can learn things right along with us.

One of the things on our 25 Days of Christmas fun is to hang a family ornament on the Christmas tree.  I thought it would be fun to pick out one new ornament each year to add to our collection.  I want to get one with the year on it but this year, the girls picked out one that didn't have that on it so I wrote it on the back with paint pen.  I can just imagine how fun it will be to look back, when the kids are grown, and remember each ornament and hopefully a story or two about that Christmas.

                          
Another new tradition we have started is called the Scripture Chain (also from blog mentioned earlier).  Each night at dinner, we will read a scripture and then add it to our paper chain.  On Christmas day, we will have 25 scriptures hanging in our kitchen entryway.  Here are the scriptures so you can print them off too. They are in no particular order.

I also came across these excellent ideas for Random Acts of Kindness Advent Calendar (on Pinterest) that I definitely want to start with my kids when they get a little older.  We will be doing some of these acts this year but since my kids are still small, some of them will be a little hard for us to do.  I did challenge my oldest (who's in kindergarten) to do a little RAK for someone at school every day. 

Here is our list of 25 Days of Christmas Fun but I encourage you to make your own list of things that your family would enjoy doing! I printed off our list onto cute Christmas paper and framed it...

25 Days of Christmas Fun

1. Start our Advent Calendar and set up Nativity scene

2. Make Christmas cookies

3. Have hot chocolate & cookies while watching a Christmas movie.

4. Make paper snowflakes and hang them from our Thankful Tree

5. Hang our new family ornament on the tree (pick a new organment out to add to our tree each year)

6. Go to Candle Tea at Old Salem

7. Take canned goods to church

8. Write/email letters to Santa

9. Make icecream cone Christmas trees

10. Shop for sibling gifts

11. Go see Christmas lights around town

12. Go see the Nutcracker or other Christmas play or movie as a family

13. Go iceskating

14. Attend a family Christmas gathering

15. Watch a movie about the birth of Christ 

16. Go visit Santa at a local store

17. Random Acts of Kindness Day-each person much choose at least one RAK to do for someone

18. Sing our favorite Christmas songs together as a family

19. Wrap presents together

20. Deliver gifts to neighbors

21. Go visit Daddy's family

22. Spend the day with family we don't see often

23. Make the cookies we will leave for Santa

24. Have a nice dinner together, put out cookies for Santa and carrots for Reindeer.

25. Have a wonderful Christmas Day spent with family.

What are some Christmas traditions you do with your family?

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