Keeping the Magic of Christmas Alive – What Traditions Do You Do in Your Home?
Christmas is a busy time of year for everyone. What could be more important during this season than preparing food for all the family and presents for everyone. But there’s so much more to the holidays than just that.
It’s the family traditions that make the holidays extra special, traditions give each member of the family a sense of belonging or the sense of feeling ’at home’. It can also generate a wonderful sense of excitement among members of the family, a feeling of which can be passed on to your children and in turn their children.
Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year and your family can make it more unique by keeping your traditions going. Here are just some of the common traditions that families do to make their holidays more magical!
Start the excitement on Christmas Eve. Many families start their Christmas Celebration with a “Christmas Eve Box” This can include, pyjamas for the whole family, maybe a DVD or homemade ticket (if you use a streaming service) to watch a Christmas Movie. Hot chocolate sachets are perfect to add in along with some christmas treats to munch on whilst watching your film. If you want to go further you could even add in a bag of reindeer food to sprinkle out the front of your home whilst your little ones are on their way to bed. Little things like this make Christmas Eve so exciting for children.
Spend quality time together as a family. Christmas is a very special time. Make it memorable by spending the days doing what everyone wants to do. Whether you like unwrapping presents together, playing board games over a hot cup of chocolate or watching movies at home, you cannot deny the fact that even the simplest of moments can make the best and most memorable experiences!
Encourage the gift of giving while they are young. The holidays are the perfect time to teach the kids the beauty of giving and helping other people in need. To make this more fun, you can put this out as a Reverse Advent Calendar. Instead of the children having their own advent calendar, why not create their own in and let them put something which they want to give away to those in need.
What can you suggest they put in there? How about non-perishable food, clothing and toys which they no longer play with. As a family, you can collect everything and donate the items to your local charity or food bank. It is a great way of helping people and sharing the real value and reason for Christmas.
Go on a Christmas light hunt! Here’s a cheap but enjoyable tip that the whole family will love! You could wrap up warm on a cold evening and go for a walk around your local neighbourhood or hop in the car and go further a field on a hunt for the best decorated house with the most wonderful Christmas lights. This is of course best done early evening to truly appreciate the beauty.
Create something together. There are a lot of things you can do as a family to have fun. To start, you could make a new Christmas decoration each year to hang on the tree. Make sure to pop the date on the back so you can all look back and enjoy the wonderful memories you have made.
You could also make homemade cards that you can give to friends and family. How about baking some goodies together to give as gifts? Or getting the children to create their own letters to Santa to send, you can send these off to Royal Mail and they will send your child back a personalised response!
These are just some of the things you can do as a family over Christmas. Traditions are beautiful and can carry on for generations.