Best Magical Christmas experiences with DC?

[Doughnuts68]

Best Magical Christmas experiences with DC?

i mean in the uk.

The magical things are rarely the big paid for things. For us it has been the small surprises - meeting Santa at playgroup and he knew their names, coming in to the house on christmas eve to discover a hamper as appeared.

We do like a frosty nighttime walk around a nt property with a lights display.

That said, we did a trip to Lapland with Canterbury Travel when they were little and that was magic.

I agree with pp. Although I have very young children so haven't done much but looking back at my own childhood it was opening the living room door to see all the presents Santa had left.

Having family around for Xmas lunch and all the puddings mum had made.

Visiting Santa or Santa coming to nursery or Sunday school and giving a wee present.

Agree, the most magical are the cheapest. Especially if your kids are young.

Best thing we did last year was a panto at our leisure centre. We all really enjoyed it.

Oh yes a panto!!

I thought of another one - reading the Robert Salbuda Night Before Christmas book together on Christmas Eve when the kids have just got out of the bath.

I just bought that book for Ds! Can't wait to read that!

mine are teens now but actually the one thing that DD always wants to do is the 5am xmas food shop a day or 2 before xmas!!

I have 3 kids all 18months to 2 years apart so when they were really little I would get up early to do the xmas food shop so i would be back in time for DH to go to work and so then didnt have to take the 3 small kids with me!! When DD was 5 she asked if she could come so I said I would wake her gently once but wouldnt make her get up. She jumped up and came and sat in the trolley and loved it so it then became a yearly thing.
She is 14 now and she's already asked what day we will do the food shop!!

When they were younger we would do 1 father xmas visit (they would have playschool/school/beavers ones too) but we didnt want to do loads and loads of them so would just pick one a year to go and do. - we do the toy mine in an actual mine!, which was fab one year.

Thanks everyone.

Trip into town after dark to see the lights and shop windows.

Christmas carol service and Christmas Eve Children's Mass

We were always very restrained about Santa but we always tried to get a nice photo.

Small little touches at home, leave a few carrots out for the reindeer crew, some of them go back in the fridge but one has top and tail with visible bite marks perhaps just left outside the back door, somebody is a very messy eater so Mum or Dad will be giving out loudly about cookie crumbs scattered about, and the reindeer will have upset the bowl of water (on tiled floor), Santa never quite finishes his glass of milk and always forgets to put it in the dishwasher.

Children do a Christmas colouring picture and note for Santa, astonished to find one has dropped out of the sleigh and into the apple tree the next day.

Very limited gifts from Santa under the tree, get them into thinking that Santa brings X and a surprise (if X is big then surprise is small). Very glad to have kept this well under control now that we need money for college fees. However, Santa puts all sorts of daft things that Mum and Dad would never buy into their stockings (chocolate Brussels sprouts and the like)

It's not about the money

@BrieAndChilli my kids love doing the Christmas shop at 6am, they squabble over who comes (have 4 Dc).

Most of the paid for Christmas trips or activities have been a disappointment either years and tantrums or just disappointing. Pantomime so far has been a success but that’s it. Walking back from the church in the dark after carols by candlelight is always talked about and loved.

Both dds being Mary on consecutive years on Christmas Eves and riding a donkey up to the church, with the village community lighting the path with lanterns.

Reading The Dark is Rising to the dds in the evenings during the week leading up to Christmas.

Standing outside on Christmas Eve eating sausage rolls and watching the International Space Station passing overhead.

Making a truly revolting version of Rocky road (with pink wafer biscuits and smarties) as requested by dd1 every year (no one else eats it).

Im struggling to think of any activities which I spent £££ on which were in any respect magical or memorable.

In the north -
Yorkshire wildlife park
York Xmas experience
Stockeld park
Are all fab

Choose one book that only gets read on Christmas eve. The night before Christmas is a nice one.

everyone I know has raved about lapland u.k.

Mine liked driving around in the dark looking at people's Christmas lights.
They also liked choosing a decoration.

Expensive, Longleat was fantastic.
Added value of not only the safari park but also the house is dressed and they have a festival of light. The little train tumbles around to fc in a woodland.

Lapland UK is a totally immersive bubble of theatre where you do feel like you have been somewhere different! V v expensive, I wouldn't pay the top dollar tickets for it but it was Brilliant.

Seeing presents under the tree Xmas morning...

Sometimes papering over the door so they have to "break through". .
Candles, low lights...

My best magical Christmas experience wasn't actually with my own DC. I'd taken a class of Y4 children on a trip and we got the bus back to school at 5pm along Oxford Street. Despite living close by, most of them had never been to see the lights and they were absolutely transfixed. It was amazing to see the pure joy on their faces. They talked about it for the rest of the year.

Thanks all