Christmas Traditions For a Grown-Up Family

[ShabbyNat]

Hi
I need your help please
My 2 DDs are now 20 & 19, so outgrown all of the lovely Christmas traditions we had every year as they were growing up<img loading="lazy" class="inline-flex mumsnet-emoji" alt="Sad" src="https://www.mumsnet.com/build/assets/sad-q5SIe0Cq.png"><img loading="lazy" class="inline-flex mumsnet-emoji" alt="Sad" src="https://www.mumsnet.com/build/assets/sad-q5SIe0Cq.png"> The last couple of traditions we had left are not going to work this year, as weve all moved forward
But......I love to have special times at certain points of the year
So, can you all help me try & find some new things that we could do in the build-up to Christmas & over Christmas please??
I need them to be free or to cost very little money aswell please
Thank-you[santa][santa][santa]

I feel your pain op. Mine are young teens & scoff at all the childhood traditions so will be following this for suggestions 😩

Xmas eve boxes you can personalise put in as much or as little as you like-unless you've already done this?

What are they into? Could you have a pre-Christmas pamper night? Or a Christmas eve trip to cinema/pub as a family? Or trip into town to see the lights and have a cocktail? It depends what sort of DDs they are and if they're similar or like completely different things. Do they like cooking/baking?

Wrapped early gift of new pj's on Christmas Eve are lovely for any age

mine are age 17-22. Our xmas day usually follows a pattern
get up and open stockings (I do stockings for everyone including myself and the dog with small funny things/chocolate/magazines) in front of the fire while sausages etc cook.
Pancakes/sausages/bacon and then we go to church (only day of the year I ask them to go)
Home and open presents from each other.
Kids retire to their rooms usually for a few hours
Early afternoon we all bring the dog for a walk in the woods unless it is really bad weather.
Back to their rooms/help with making dinner
Dinner and a game of cards against humanity.

Last year an uncle gave them all gift cards locked in an amazon puzzle box - these were a big hit.

Christmas film night, DVDs from charity shop, home made popcorn, cocktails.

Go to a carol concert, probably free if you went to a church. Come home to mince pies, mulled wine, hot chocolate.

Collect things for a local food bank week by week, wrap it all up in a Christmasy box to deliver it.

Each week in December, cook a meal for the family that includes a Christmas dish from another country.

We do local Xmas craft Market trip on 1st December to start the Xmas build up. We also put the tree up then together.

Trip to garden centre to buy a new bauble. We always give it a special significance, so this years one will be in memory of my mum.

Xmas eve we have breakfast at local wetherspoons.
Trolley dash round shops together, different family members have different shopping responsibilities.

Back home, eat krsipy Kreme donuts. Santa always brings a new board game on Xmas eve which we play. We make Xmas cracker place markers for the Xmas Dinner. They always contain a scratch card and a chocolate.

We like to visit a stately home that has been decorated for Christmas ( me and 2 dd aged 19,27 ). Not free but a lovely day out.

We also go to a small theatre for their pantomime which is inexpensive and visit local garden centres to look at the lights and displays .

Could you ask them what they'd like to do and they could help plan new ideas for the festive season. Like films they'd like to watch, music to listen to, new treats to have. Maybe they'd like to feel involved now they're older.

Oh yes, we always do a carol concert too. Husband sings in a choir.

This is a lovely thread full of lovely ideas.

When you say the last of your old traditions won't work op because you've all moved forward, what do you mean?

I agree with the Christmas Eve new pjs and board game idea.

Do you make a Christmas cake? This is my tradition - I have continued making the cake I used to make with my mum when I was little and have gradually invited more friends and family to join me, so we all chip in for ingredients and make huge amounts of cake batter in a builder's trug, then all cook the cakes at home (8 full sized fruit cakes to be made in the bucket this year). It means that the chopping and mixing takes plenty of time even with many little helpers so we can all listen to Christmas songs and feel jolly about 8 weeks before Christmas. Guiding little ones to do it is a great feeling for grown up kids as you become part of the adult traditions rather than the child ones.

The things I enjoyed as a young adult at home for Christmas:

Taking over some of the jobs like decorating the tree, setting the table, helping to cook dinner
Eating all our favourite Christmas foods
Being old enough to drink. Baileys, Baileys hot chocolate, Baileys over ice cream.
Exchanging glances and stifling laughs with my db as dm and df performed their Christmas roles with utter predictability, even quarrelling perfectly on cue.
Playing monopoly with my db after dinner
Watching movies and eating toasted turkey sandwiches and reading in companionable silence
Arguing about who ate the biscuits off the bottom layer
Going sales shopping with my dm

In dh’s family they open one gift at a time which I think is really lovely, and they play 25 after dinner which is always good craic.

I quite like the idea of playing bad Santa at dinner when the dc are older.

My sister and I are both in our 30s with kids now and have a few traditions that we have been doing since teens/20s and still do with our mum in the build up to christmas!

In early December we always have movie night in our PJs where we watch Love Actually and have hot chocolate with marshmallows

We go to a show together, usually a carol concert but have done the ballet a couple of times instead

A trip to a local garden centre with an amazing Christmas section to look at/buy decorations

Then on Christmas Eve we do a big mince pie baking session (we have done this since we were little)

Go to the theatre on Xmas eve? Or a carol concert? Dinner and Cocktails either before or after.

We meet up at a Christmas market sometime in December. We choose a different one every year. We also have cheese night on Christmas Eve where we eat Brie, talegio, etc etc with bread and dips. Not sure exactly when that started but I’m absolutely not allowed to skip it

Last year we got up crazy early to hit marks and Spencer’s food hall at 6.30am or something as mad. My twenty somethings thought it was brilliant fun and asked if we can do it again this year. I think it’s more a case of fun mad things together that you’d not do the rest of the year and less stress on the Santa/Christmas side of things.

oh we also do giftwrap at the homeless shelter we donate to and go for dim sum after - that is usually a couple of weeks before christmas.

I have been making the Xmas cake for my mum since I was 13, I am in my forties, last year for the first time Ds 14 made the cake. He loved doing it, and I was responsible for watching him and drinking sherry. It was lovely.
In the last couple of years we have started doing an escape room in the week before Xmas.

We always put the xmas decorations up while eating a tub of celebrations and watching xmas films, we then order Chinese and eat it with just the xmas lights on. My teen dcs still enjoy this tradition.

Oh and we always make biscuits cut into lots of festive shapes which we decorate on Christmas eve or the day before. My soon to be 20 yr old was asking when are we doing that this year the other day ( I have trained her well to get into the Christmas spirit early )
Oh and we watched Nativity on sat morn as she said she was feeling a bit festive. I need no excuse at all to indulge in a Christmas film so it was lovely . Christmas films and hot choc with marshmallows is another firm favourite and cheap as chips .

We always have another local family or two over for a 'games night'. All the teenagers join in. I supply buffet/party food like slices of pizza, cheese and biscuits, cherry tomatoes etc although the other families also bring a plate of food. The idea is that the food is easy so you can run the games.
We don't play board games on these evenings but we might have a Christmas guess the song from the intro quiz (check on YouTube the compilations are already done for you) and silly games like putting a paper plate on your head and drawing a Christmas tree. Christmas Dingbats are easy to find online and print off. They tend not to be physical games as we don't have masses of room.
This year we are having a Taskmaster style evening. To kick us off, each person has to bring something they bought at a charity shop for under £3 and the winner will get all the things. Taskmaster tasks can also be googled eg tear the longest continuous. strip of paper that you can from one sheet of A4

Thanks all, some great idea`s for me[santa]
Pumpkintopf well, I separated a few years ago, so ex not around all the time, the kids are older, younger DD stays with her boyfriend 3/4 of the time & spends a lot of her time with his family, so 99% of our traditions this year have gone But they have been dying out these last 5/6 years
Would love to hear more of your traditions still[santa][santa]

On Christmas Eve we have an 'Alpine' supper, cheese fondue and a pierrade for the meat eaters.

Last year extra excitement when DH set fire to the tablecloth.

Shabbynat that sounds tough, my DC's are also growing up and it can be hard to adjust the traditions to suit!

Christmas Eve carol service, Christmas markets, pizza night and watching Christmas movies or Christmas specials of TV shows they like, light switch on my teen still enjoys this