Want to start a Christmas Eve tradition...what's your favorite?

Advertise with us
shop deals on amazon
Shop deals on ebay
Valve Replacement Forums

Help Support Valve Replacement Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
J

Janea

We are going to spend our very first Christmas together as our own little family. We usually are plugged into whatever our extended families are doing. So, I am trying to think of a fun family friendly Christmas eve tradition and was wondering what traditions others have. If you have a favorite tradition please share. Thank you!!
 
When we were growing up we used to drive around on Christmas Eve for a couple of hours looking at the Christmas light displays on houses. We then went home and opened one present each, saving the rest for Christmas morning. Of course we all joined in leaving cookies and milk out for Santa. If it was snowing or if there was snow on the ground, we would make snow angels so Santa could easily find our house.

I still have vivid memories of many of these Christmas Eves.
 
Janea said:
We are going to spend our very first Christmas together as our own little family. We usually are plugged into whatever our extended families are doing. So, I am trying to think of a fun family friendly Christmas eve tradition and was wondering what traditions others have. If you have a favorite tradition please share. Thank you!!
Click to expand...

We have a "brunch type" dinner then all pile in the car and go looking at the Christmas decorations. We always used this as a ploy for "Santa" to deliver Christmas presents while we were out of the house. After twenty years and five kids, we decided to just keep doing it, and so we do.
 
We go to our candlelight Christmas Eve service at church, then come home, light the fire and watch It's a Wonderful Life drinking hot cocoa and having some munchies. (I usually fall asleep about 30 minutes into the movie!)
 
***We always go to a Candle Light Christmas Eve Service. Good for the soul. ***Usually have lived in neighborhoods where the driveways or streets are lined with illuminairies.....paper bags....sand....candles...ya know? Kids always enjoyed putting them together and putting them outside with us. ***As my kids were growing up, we would always make sugar cookies from scratch (a favorite aunt's recipe) out of Christmas shapes, sprinkled with red or green sugar, to be left for Santa. ***We would always leave carrots for the reindeer. Funniest thing and saddest, one year we had a foreign exchange student from Japan. We made the mistake of taking a picture of Hazuki taking a bite of the carrot so the kids would think Rudolph had been inthe house too!!!!!! :eek: :eek: :eek: The kids saw the picture a month or so later and that is how they all three found out about Santa!!!!!!!! All at the same time.....simply devastating!!!!:eek:
****One more thing****My sister from Cary, NC and her family and me and my family from Houston came in for the holidays here in WV to be with my folks. With grandparents helping, we dipped the kid's hands in green fabric paint and each one of the kids made a wreath shape out of their handprints. I think we used muslin material (pumphead) for each child. We then dipped the kid's thumbs in red and placed them around the wreath as berries. During the holidays my sister and I sewed little tiny gold bells around the wreaths, took them to a monogramming place at the mall and had each of the kid's names placed in the middle of their individual wreaths. My kids were 2,4,and 6. We put dowel rods through the top and hung them with red ribbon. Christmas would not be Christmas if we still didn't hang them up each year. It's cute to see how little their precious hands were. Oh my, I am getting misty eyed.
***One more, one more thing***"Santa" buys them each an ornament each year (special to their interests...cheering, soccer, etc.) so that when they have a home of their own, a tree of their own, they will have 20 some years of special ornaments for their own trees.
OK, I obviously love Christmas! EAch year, they remember whose turn it is to put the angel on top of the tree. They are now 20, 22, 24!
That's it! We have more traditions....but Ithink I've covered enough for you!!!!!
Is it too early to say Happy Holidays!
Debbi
Sorry, I am going on and on!
 
We all go out to dinner(22 of us last year) which is great for me and surprisingly the restaurants are not crowded. We always tip our waiter/waitress a huge tip because they are working Christmas Eve and then it is back to my house to open presents. Dinner is usually our treat and it is part of our Christmas present to the kids and grandkids. We have been doing this for over 20 years.
 
We go to church.. then drive around and look at lights..
then the siblings Always exchange their gifts..
Honestly they look more forward to that gift exchange than any other gift.

they buy each other a gift with thier own money each year. they have evolved from macaron necklaces to very nice DVD collections (LOTR trilogy).. the younger ones still have some cute dollar store or homeade things that they like to do.. but it is everyones favorite time.

Other traditions are..
Only receiving 3 gifts on Christmas (not 3 packages full of stuff). I started that many years ago when I was a single mom and couldnt' afford much (still cant:rolleyes: )
but one was usually clothing, one was fun and one was the 'big' gift.
We always said if 3 gifts were good enough for Baby JEsus..then 3 were good enough for us:)
Besides with 4 kids that is still 12 gifts!
 
I think I'm going to terryj's house this year!

My old time favorite was making Christmas cookies, going to candlelight Christmas eve services, then coming home and opening one present. We'd have homemade cookies and spiked eggnog.
 
Come on Ross and bring the family. The more the merrier. We usually have so much chaos that we wouldn't even notice a few extra. Everyone orders what they want and the grandkids don't even have to order off the kids menu. Its my favorite night of the year. Several of the granchildren always say the blessing before dinner.
 
Hello!

What a nice idea, for all of to take the time to share our own holiday traditions......

In our family, we go to the Children's Mass at 4:30, where there is a reenactment of the Nativity, done by the children. We then have a huge Christmas Eve dinner, with family and friends. There is ALWAYS one gift opened on Christmas eve.....and it is always pajamas, so that the pictures in the morning will look really good. We always tried to "match" our daughters jamies, and we have some nice photos. Since our girls grew up, my husband and I often will also attend midnight Mass......we find it a special time for just the two of us. When we get home, we put out the gifts, and then fall into bed. In the morning, it is time for gifts! My husband goes into the family room, lights the tree (again for good photo ops), I get the coffee and juice ready, and in we all pile for the opening of the gifts. Then a HUGE Christmas breakfast. Many years ago, I bought Christmas dinnerware, and I have never regretted the investment.

For our family this year, it will be very different. Our eldest daughter died this past summer. I will find a way to remember her in a very special way this Christmas, as she so loved the holiday time.

Marybeth
 
Ours are the same as many mentioned - Candelight Service, looking at lights, open one gift (a tradition started by moms that don't have the patience to make the kids wait :rolleyes: ).
I LOVE the idea of the kids exchanging. I think we will start that this year - how sweet. I have 5 brothers and sisters - so we exchange names each year now that we are adults (well, grown anyway;) ).
My grandmother used to give us all a new ornament every year - I always loved it!! I still have most of the ornaments - good memories. I buy the kids one every year - I always buy Santa's. I love to try to pick out Santa's that reflect something about each kiddo.

This is a fun thread!!! thanks for starting a joyful thought!!
 
I find that some of our traditions change, just slightly, as the family gets older and our circumstances change. Our children are now 17 to 32, three are married. But a few things stay very much the same. Since our 2nd Christmas, we have always had homemade chicken noodle soup (with homemade egg noodles) and scones and eaten our dinner by candle light (oil lamps). We also do the sibling gift exchange on Christmas Eve.

Four years ago I started giving "heritage" gifts. At first it was a bound copy of our family's story to that point, one for each of the kids. The past 3 years, everyone has written some contribution to that ongoing "history." They give a summary of the year and what has happened in their own lives/families and then usually write some outrageous memory of their growing up years -- some of it bordering on fiction! But still fun reading. They think that the longer their contribution, the greater chance they have of being Mom's "favorite" child. Last year, the longest contribution was 10 pages - typed. These books are without a doubt, the most looked-forward to part of our Christmases now. In addition to the books, I also have one or two DVD's made of favorite home videos for each of the kids so they have their own copies.

Now that the kids are all OLD, we don't worry about the Santa thing. My husband and I go to bed but they stay up most of the night putting together 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles and/or playing Monopoly.
 
Our new tradition is to eat at McDonalds before they close, come home watch tv and go to bed. Whole different ball game with an empty nest! We don't even mess with lights or decorations anymore. We are the official Bah Humbug family.
 
Great idea!!!

Great idea!!!

Karen,

I just LOVE this idea! I hope you don?t mind if I start doing it with my children. Maybe I can even get some of my brothers and sisters to contribute. How fun! I love family history and boy do we have some childhood memories....being a family of eight. LOL :D

I always buy an ornament for each of my children also... I even bought one for my grandson who wasn?t yet born last Christmas! :) I have to confess..... I do love Mexico over the Christmas holiday. Probably half of the last 26 years we?ve been down there on a beach at Christmas. The kids have never complained! :) Some their most memorable Christmases are the ones breaking pinatas with all the other little kids in the town squares of little villages out in the middle of nowhere.

And Ross..... you get out those Christmas lights!! That 'bah hum bug' will kill ya quicker than CHF!! :eek: Come on.... do it for us. :) At least a little Christmas tree.
 
My dad's family is Polish, so Christmas Eve was always the Big meal,(Wiglilia) w/ alot of the traditions that go along w/ that, like not being able to eat until the first star was out (which really stinks on cloudy nights so then planes counted lol.) BUt something my parents did that i thought was pretty neat was their first Christmas Eve Dinner, they bought a big candle (their is a red christmas tree) and lit it during dinner and when dinner was over we blew it out and it wouldn't get lit until the next year. They hav been married 51 years and just since i was around it has been pretty interesting how much the candle went down.
there has been alot of great ideas here, Lyn
 
Christmas Program

Christmas Program

We have always had a family Christmas program. Some perform music, some do readings, and we intersperse several Christmas carols during the program. By tradition, the program ends with me reading something I have written. Sometimes I have written something to the family as a whole, and sometimes to different individuals. For me, good writing can be hard work, and there were times I regretted taking on the responsibility.

And then, a few years ago I helped carry something heavy into my parent's bedroom-a room I had not gone into for many years. And there they were on the wall-copies of every piece I had ever written for Christmas-the good and the not-so-good, framed & hung, obvious treasures to a mother?s heart. It was a moment I will never forget. I sat quietly for a few minutes, and thought to myself about that day in the future when I could no longer drop by or pick up the phone. Now the writings seemed so valuable. As I sat there I knew I would never feel remorse for important things left unsaid. She has a picture of my love-in a dozen frames, hanging on her wall.
 
We have film of us four girls and

We have film of us four girls and

one little boy ceremoniously hanging our respective stockings. That was a biggie on Christmas Eve - hanging the stockings for Santa to fill.

We also opened one present from Mom and Dad (NOT Santa) which was usually a new pair of flannel pajamas.

Mom would make oyster stew (which is for good luck - don't know why!) - I think this is an old English tradition.

Of course we would always go to a candlelight service to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas.

My parents made my childhood very special and my memories give me great joy and comfort.

Christina L
 
Such neat memories from

Such neat memories from

everyone on this thread.

Dennis, I hope you will honor us and write something for Vr.com Christmases every year from here on out. :) Your writings are so beautiful.

Christina L
 
Thank you for your kind words:

Thank you for your kind words:

Thank you for your kind words, Christina. I will give that serious thought. Last year I did a post on the "Christmas Elk", so I guess I have a bit of a start already.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top