To ask you to tell me your family Christmas traditions?

[elm26]

First Christmas for my DD who will be 7 months and of course, she won't understand anything about it but I am so excited.

I was raised by my grandparents, every Christmas Eve, all of us cousins (about 14 of us) would get into our Christmas pjs and into bed with some on the floor on blow up beds etc and we'd watch a christmas film and drink hot chocolate and my Grandad would put his big work boots on and walk around the house sprinkling talc around the boots all the way from the fire in the little room at the back of the house through to the front. We would wake up so excited.

I cherish these lovely memories but my love for Christmas died when my Gramps died when I was 21, it was never the same.

Now I'm 30 with DD and DH and can't wait to start our own traditions.

I've ordered a Christmas Eve box for DD with her name on it and plan to put a toy, a book and some Christmas pjs in there every year. I've also ordered a bauble with her hand print on and a lovely tartan dress from M&S for her first Christmas Day.

What traditions do your family follow at Christmas to make it special?

Some of my favourite Christmas traditions are the ones I carry on from my own childhood.

Make sure you snuggle up in front of the TV with your DD and DH just like you did. And get DH to make the talc footprints too. Even though DD won't understand, it'll be magical for you and she'll have the photos to look back on

My favourite tradition is making rum truffles and giving a box as a gift to my parents.

DD gets a snow globe in her Christmas eve box every year.
We do daily 'advent activities' with her every year instead of an advent calendar . Some we've kept the same since her 1st christmas. Some have needed to be swapped out as she's got older. Her favourite that we've always done is a Christmas disco bath (christmas music, disco light, glow sticks in the water)

We did the new pjs thing with mine as well as a bottle of beer and a cookie for Santa plus a carrot for the reindeer out. We hung stockings by the chimney until we moved here (no chimney and they are adults!) once they became choristers so worked on Christmas Eve, we would get home at around 1am Christmas morning and open the pjs, once they got old enough, mid teens, we had a tot of baileys too.

Yum, rum truffles sound good!

I'll definitely get DH on the work boots and talc job. He thinks I'm nuts as I've ordered one of those plates with her name on and it has a place to put Father Christmas's mince pie and a carrot for Rudolph etc but I think he's secretly loving the excitement of having our own child at Christmas x

I love a baileys! Stockings are lovely, I've ordered her a personalised stocking and sack which I hope will last throughout the years, I'll hopefully still be putting bits in it when she's 20 odd and embarrassed by me 😂

Forgot to say that I love the idea of advent activities! The bath sounds like something I'd enjoy at 30 @TheGreatHat 😂 funnily enough, I said to DH about collecting snow globes from different places for her. We had our first holiday in Portugal last month and I picked up a mini snow globe from the gift shop to put in her memory box.

We do Christmas pajamas on the 1st December so they get more wear out of them. We make santas biscuits on Christmas Eve. The best advice I can give you is to avoid elf on the shelf at all costs, and avoid annoying relatives that will gift the sodding magical elf to your child wether you like it or not 😒

When my children were tiny I bought a cloth advent calendar and sourced things to go in it. Some were decorations but also Christmas stickers, a little game etc. As they got older I added more decorations and now we have 24 things which we hang along the beams in our living room, day by day - reindeer, stars, snowman, Santa, etc They are teenagers now but seem to enjoy revisiting the decorations each year and remember where I bought several of them. It was expensive to set up initially but we reuse them year after year and I will carry on all my life so works out quite economical over time. No.24 is extra large so I always put some chocolate coins at the bottom as well.

I used to be the one to go get the tree with my father. This may possibly the only thing I did with him alone without my sisters.
I used to make our advent calendar and ornaments for the tree - my sisters didn't.
We didn't do stockings and on Xmas morning gathered around the tree to open presents, then off to mass, then a biggish brunch as the Christmas meal was around 5pm. My parents always invited people who didn't have family nearby. After dinner we may have played games but not always. When in our teens us girls often went to the cinema!
With my own kids, we started a tradition of going to a tree farm and cutting down our own tree. We had my family on Christmas Day and a few of my husband's (big family) on Boxing or the day after. The day ran like it did growing up but I don't go to mass! Now me and my daughter also watch a different Christmas movie most nights leading up to the day.

We're just moving this over to the Christmas topic.

I think we need the rum truffle recipe @TheGreatHat

This is lovely OP. I agree you should carry on the traditions from childhood that you cherish.

I have a 9 year old and a 9 month old. Christmas Eve is always the same. DP is usually working until late PM. DS helps me prep all the veg for Christmas dinner in the morning, and then we make mince pies together, listening to Christmas songs on the radio. We wrap up and take the dog on a nice long walk, and when we get home watch whatever Christmas films/programmes are on the telly with a hot chocolate to warm up. We have a Chinese takeaway for dinner then at 7, I send DS up for a bath where he finds the Christmas elves have left him a festive bath bomb from Lush and his Christmas PJs. Then when he gets out we lay his Christmas stocking at the foot of the bed and read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas together.

As he’s getting older now I’m not sure how much longer he’ll want to do these things with me (😭) but I’ll cherish them while I can.

When DC are in bed, myself and DP crack open a bottle champagne (our annual splurge! We don’t drink in the house much) fill DS stocking and watch a Christmas film, usually get an early night after the champers 🤪 which is fine as DS will be up at the crack of dawn.

I think Christmas Eve is my favourite part of Christmas, more than the big day itself!

I forgot to add, we go and choose our tree from
the garden centre the first weekend in December. When DS was small we’d combine it with seeing Father Christmas but he’s not been interested in that for a couple of years so we go to the garden centre cafe instead, and DS chooses a new decoration for the tree. That is always the start of Christmas for me.

When I had kids in the house I had a tradition which was that on the first weekend of December we all sat around the table and made a list of what we could get as gifts for other people. What would grandma like? What about our next door neighbour? Uncle? Teacher? Best friend? And so on. Everyone would have to think and come up with ideas.
I wouldn't necessarily go on to buy those suggestions unless they were good ideas (and often they were!), but as the whole of December (and increasingly longer) is very commercial, hyped, busy, the point of the exercise was to have a short time together where I got them to really think about other people.
It would always throw up some really kind thoughts, such as grandad always come to watch me play football in the winter, we could get him some warm gloves, we always see neighbour walking her dog, we could get some dog biscuits, etc.
It was just my attempt to ensure a moment of kindness and generosity, before of course I swamped them with advent calendars, fun, presents, and more.

Following as I’m looking for inspiration for my first Christmas with my now three month old. Really lovely suggestions!

I’m definitely going to make sure we have a photo of her in a certain spot. Growing up, we had one at the bottom of the stairs on Christmas morning (in our new Christmas Eve pyjamas and so excited about our gifts we could see from the stairs). This photo of just me at first evolved to be of me and my siblings. And we got bigger and bigger of course over the years.

We will definitely have a Christmas themed new book every Christmas Eve and read that in bed with new festive pyjamas.

I hope to do something charitable with her every year too like an Operation Christmas Child shoe box. In the run up, having a pre-Christmas clean and going through her old toys she’s outgrown and donating them.

I will write her a letter from Santa every year which I already do for my nieces and nephews. When she’s too old, I’ll write her one from me every year, reflecting on the last year, her accomplishments, special memories made etc.

I’m not sure what it’ll be yet but I want us to bake something that’ll become a signature Christmas recipe. Maybe cookies to leave for Santa?

We will do some kind of experience in the run up every year - something like a pantomime, a musical, ice skating, seeing Santa obviously.

I know someone who buys a bauble every year for her little ones so they’ll have a full set of sentimental baubles tracking their entire life by the time they move out. Sooo gorgeous!

I spent most of my childhood in different countries to my grandparents but we'd nearly always make the journey to my maternal Grandmother's for Christmas, usually arriving early evening on Christmas Eve to a house full of people. My Grandmother would always serve tea to me and my cousins in the sitting room besides the Christmas tree. Lights off, lit by the lights on the tree, the fire and candles, we'd sit on a picnic rug eating vol au vents, quiche, crusty bread followed by apple dumplings and mince pies. The adults would leave us alone, drinking/wrapping presents and it just felt magical. Now we do it at least once in the run up to Christmas with my children.

We also read Enid Blyton's Christmas book which details why we do various things at Christmas such as bring in holly and mistletoe. Just like my mum did, I try and tie in our activities. For example we bring in holly to decorate the house after we've read that chapter.

Gingerbread houses. The more sweets you can pile on the better. Buy edible glue for foolproof sticking together rather than using icing.

Torchlight walk in the woods telling ghost stories. My 5 year old can be terrifying especially when she stops blinking and starts cackling at the end of her story.

We always read the night before Christmas every Christmas Eve before they go to sleep …cheesy but I hope they remember me fondly when the hear it and I’m long gone

The four Fridays before Christmas, we watch a Christmas film. At least one is accompanied by those supermarket canapés that you're supposed to put out when you have a party, except we never do! We spend quite a bit of the preceding months discussing what the films will be, sometimes old faves, but also new ones as my daughter gets older (contemplating Die Hard this year).

What a lovely thread!

Homemade calendar, some days a chocolate, some days a chocolate and activity (depending on how busy we are that day from looking ahead at calendar - I learned my lesson cramming too much in!).

The nativity set comes out (second hand set) sitting at one end of the window sill. The three wise men stand at other side. Every morning the kids take turns moving the wise men a step closer to the stable and baby.

Christmas stories at bedtime every night.

Christmas movies at weekends.

Most Saturdays in December I surprise the kids with various special Christmas themed breakfasts.

Christmas Eve is Christmas themed baking, walk in daytime, walk on evening to look at lights (we drive to the posh end of town!).

This Christmas is so special to us as our baby was extremely poorly at birth, we were told to expect the worst but she survived. She only came out of hospital last month so I appreciate every single second with her (and everyone else of course).

We choose a new bauble every year, dh and I watch our fave Christmas movie and take the kids to get fish and chips on Xmas eve - driving past all the Christmas lights.

Not really kept any from childhood except a few "rules" about when you're allowed to open presents. And a satsuma in the stockings. Lebkuchens all through December. And a small sherry on Christmas morning.

New tradition is getting pannetone which I'd always dismissed as boring but had some amazing ones the last couple of years!

First weekend of December we go and buy one new decoration for each child and I write their age and initial on the back.

They have quite the collection each now from baby's first Christmas, to Eeyore, to Paddington Bear when my son loved the Paddington advert, to others that the children have chosen for themselves over the years. They love selecting their new one. We keep them in their own boxes and when they are grown up and have their own homes, they will be given the box for their first Christmas in their own homes.

On the evening of Christmas Eve we have a board game evening and then watch a Christmas film together with a box of chocolates.

We are past the Santa visit stage now so we have started a family trip to the theatre instead.

Love reading people's family traditions. Such a nice thread .

On the 1st December the kids come down and the elf has been (don't start this unless you want to be waking up at 2am to move the thing!!) the elf leaves their Xmas bedding and Xmas pjs and advent calendars. This eat the bedding and pjs get used more and the bed sheets are the same every year.

Tree goes up first weekend of December. Christmas music and a takeaway after all our hard work.

A panto trip every year just before Xmas and we see Father Christmas every year at the garden centre to get the gorgeous photo and then across the road for a carvery dinner.

Xmas eve about 5pm ish one of us rings the doorbell and leaves their Xmas eve boxes on the doorstop. These have A new decoration for the tree, their Christmas mug they use every year, a Lego bauble to create and add to the tree and a Christmas sticker book for young one and a Christmas quiz book for the older one plus usually some fluffy socks. We order a Chinese takeaway and stick home alone 1 then 2 on. Then we do the leaving bits out for FC and sprinkle the reindeer food before bed.

Once properly asleep we do the flour footprints and get all the presents under the tree and stockings stuffed. My absolute favourite day of the year.

I lay in bed and think about how excited they must be feeling and get that warm feeling where you feel so grateful for the stuff you do have. We don't have the best of everything but they do have a magical Christmas 🎄

My eldest knows the deal now but still goes along with it and it really helps because it the younger one questions it the bigger one reassures him that he must be real because of X,Y and Z.

Sorry this has turned into an essay. Can you tell I love Christmas 🤣

Some cute Christmas memories from when my son was a believer.
I told him the stocking was from Santa.
One year I left a note by his bed, he was around 3/4 so I had to read it, it went something like this.. I hope you like your presents. I have lost a bell from my sleigh.. Finders keepers ❤️ Santa. (I put a tree decoration bell in the stocking and he was running around the house screaming " Santas real bell from the North Pole!!!"
I'd change it every year, Another one was a boomerang from a charity shop. The note said Santa was flying over Australia and thought he might like it.
Go all out with the Santa footprints (I also used to buy fake reindeer poo from the garden centre.
Having little children at Christmas is so much fun, I really miss it.

Lots of ideas here. They do tend to evolve over the early years, some that you could never predict so don't worry if it doesn't flow at first. I'm not giving mine the baubles we have bought every year though- they can start their own decor when they move!
Another don't though, don't hang stocking on end of bed - keep it downstairs on chimney or hook. It's so hard swapping it over when they can't sleep for excitement.

I still have my cloth advent calendar. My mum still fills it with smarties- for me and DP now! It's beautiful and a decoration in its own right.

My traditions from home are all anchored in music; putting the tree up whilst listening to Phil Spectors A Christmas Gift for You album and listening to Junior Choice on the radio on Christmas day. Also memories of singing along to Perry Como or Nat King Cole Christmas songs. We also have a "from Santa" silly little joke present each which over the years morphed to be "from the cat". She always puts chocolate sprouts in the toe of DPs stocking- clever puss!

With DP, we always buy a special Christmas candle and I always make pomanders throughout December. A little bowl in our living room becomes the bon-bon bowl in December and we make mulled wine or buy it from lidl to enjoy with Christmas films in the evening. We try to spend lots of time with relatives -usually book in evenings for pre Christmas "Christmas dinners" and we also have the tradition of going on the local steam railway on one of the illumination rides and a trip to a town near us to go shopping. I also choose a new special tree bauble every year. Special trip to Fortnums for that.