Christmas is a good reason to add something new to your life. And it doesn’t matter if your family is young or not – it’s never too late to refresh old traditions or invent new ones!
Perhaps it is these bright and joyful moments that your child will remember with warmth after many years and will keep them in their family.
Here is a list of great Christmas traditions, rituals and just pleasant household trifles to start with your kids this year.
1. Make an advent calendar together.
2. Make handmade Christmas tree toys (you can also opt for making a figure of an animal symbolizing the upcoming year).
3. On Christmas Eve, hide small gifts or notes from Santa Claus under the pillow of your kid(s).
4. A week before Christmas, try to cut down on everything delicious so that festive treats bring real joy not only to your children, but also to adults in the family!
5. Collect unnecessary things and take them to charities.
6. Send homemade greeting cards to your friends and family.
7. Go to the library in the beginning of December and choose a thematic Christmas book there so that you can read it with your kid every evening.
8. Rearrange your bookshelves. Choose the books that are associated with the winter, miracles and Christmas. Read them on the Eve of the holiday and throughout the winter, and then clean up again. Every year try to find new books suitable for children by age.
9. Make a photo album with pictures of the most interesting and significant events of this year. Before the holiday, watch albums from previous years.
10. Take a sheet of paper and write down the saddest, hurtful and unpleasant moments of the outgoing year, especially if they disturb your child (or you), and burn the list together.
11. Write a list of promises and wishes for the next year. Read it next year and celebrate what has been implemented. You can also cut and paste pictures from magazines if the child does not know how to write.
12. Before the New Year, change something in the interior of the house: rearrange furniture or replace covers and upholstery on it, change curtains, tablecloth, towels or shower curtain.
13. Make Christmas costumes for all family members and pets.
14. Arrange a photo shoot for the whole family every year, including grandparents and other close relatives. Or simply take pictures on the background of the Christmas tree every year. Over time, there will be more and more such photos, and it will be very interesting to see how family members change.
15. Make a photo album with pictures of significant events of the outgoing year in order to remember and discuss the happiest moments with your family members.
16. Decorate the Christmas tree, cook salads and decorate the apartment while listening to good Christmas songs. It can be soulful retro hits of Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra or Louis Armstrong.
17. Bake gingerbread or cookies. Collect all kinds of shapes and decorations for baking and make as many different gingerbread cookies as possible. Put them all in one bag and invite the guests to pull out a gingerbread: what has fallen out is waiting for them in the coming year. You will have to show a lot of imagination to come up with what a squirrel, a clown, a star or a house mean. You can also hang gingerbread on the Christmas tree and, starting from January 1, eat one piece at a time, and when there is no gingerbread left, remove the Christmas tree.
18. The youngest member of the family starts decorating the Christmas tree. They can hang a homemade toy, for example, with a symbol of the coming year or start decorating the Christmas tree with a new toy every year.
19. When the Christmas tree is decorated, gather the whole family, say in chorus: “Christmas tree, light up!” and turn on the garland.
20. Give gifts to all pets, be it a dog, a hamster or an aquarium fish.
21. Watch the same movie with the whole family every year, for example, “Home Alone”, “Christmas Chronicles”, “Klaus”, “Miracle on 34th Street”.
22. Take special time to thank each of those gathered at the table using some specific rituals. Another way to do it is to take turns saying compliments and kind words to each other.
