Christmas traditions with young DC?

[ridl14]

Inspired by the thread about Christmas dinner!

First Christmas with my baby, too young to know what's going on this year but I'm planning ahead!

I guess I'm asking a mix of how you spend Christmas eve / day as well as traditions you love in the festive period.

Bonus if anyone who goes to church on Christmas morning could tell me what they do with young DC before service - presents before? One present? Thanks!

Lovely idea for a thread. We go to to in-laws on Christmas Eve and exchange gifts with them. We open all presents when we wake up Christmas morning, go to my family afterwards for the morning and home for the afternoon to have dinner together and play with the presents. This is what we have done since having children and I LOVE it. We don't go to mass anymore but when I went as a child we went to Christmas Eve mass.

This will be my second Christmas with a child so following for inspiration. This year it’s just me and DD on Christmas Eve day so really unsure how to spend it. So far I’m thinking a big walk and a visit to the park, she can help me with some baking and we will look at Christmas lights once it goes dark early evening.

DH’s family will join us in the evening once DH has finished work and we will do a Christmas themed bath, a cosy story and putting out milk and mince pies for Santa. MIL adores DD so she will enjoy it as much as DD :)

We have a Christmas eve box full of activities and things to do to keep the kids busy and not just buzzing around with Christmas excitement. We have a Christmas film to watch, a craft to do, Santa's cookies to bake, etc.

DS goes to his dad's for Xmas every other year so we go to DDs grandparents for Christmas day the year DS is out and go to their shared grandparents on the year we're all together (we see the other set of grandparents on boxing day so noone misses out)

We always go to see Santa (DS may be aging out of this soon but he'll keep it up for DDs sake, I'm sure), Christmas tree farm, ice skating and sometimes a panto/light up trail too

I make Santa Claus and snowman pancakes every Christmas Eve for breakfast. We go to the nativity service at York minster during the day and we bake Santa’s cookies. We usually make some sort of excuse to take DC out for a drive like going to see local lights for example, so their Christmas Eve boxes from our elves can arrive.

They get Christmas pyjamas and socks and some chocolate coins. We then have hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows and watch a Christmas movie which was historically always Polar Express but the older ones aren’t interested so we’ve switched to Home Alone 1/2 or Muppets Christmas Carol in recent years. I read The Night Before Christmas and we put Santa’s cookies, milk and carrots out then bed!

Christmas Day is just a case of opening the gifts as soon as they wake up which we hope will be no earlier than 5am ideally but we’ve had it be 4 before which was a killer! I usually make fresh pastries for breakfast and it’s a bit of a chiller day to be honest, pyjamas all day, DH and I get drunk and make the Christmas dinner in a state! In the evening we watch the Julia Donaldson special and Wallace and Gromit or something else if anything decent is on.

My favourite Christmas Eve tradition when the children were little was watching The Snowman - all of us snuggled up on the sofa with hot chocolate for the DC and a glass of fizz for me. We then put out treats for Santa and Rudolph, hung up the stockings and I’d read Christmas books to them in bed.

Even as young adults they indulge me with The Snowman on Christmas Eve even though some of the other traditions have gone.

Mine are teens now, but Christmas Eve when they were little was crib service mid afternoon, then after dinner they would have their bath during which the elf would magically deliver a wrapped pair of new PJs on to their beds. Then new PJs on and back downstairs for Polar Express with hot chocolate made for the hot chocolate song. Hang stockings, put out snacks for santa, read The Night Before Christmas all together then bed.

Christmas morning the stockings would be hung on their door knobs, they would bring them in to open on our bed, then breakfast would be croissants and chocolate milk. A bit of playing time, depending on how early they had gotten up, then off to church. The rest of the presents opened at grandparents' house after church and before lunch (extending past lunch when they were very little and in danger of getting overwhelmed - we've always done one present being opened at a time rather than a mad free for all). One final 'tree' present after lunch then playing until the evening.

We still follow that rough timeline now but there have been a few extra films added (including Die Hard!), and eldest has set a boundary for the earliest she is willing to be woken by youngest 😁