I don't know how to do Christmas

[Tunacheesequesadilla]

Firstly, I know this is a little early but I've been thinking about Christmas a lot recently. I had a quite neglectful childhood and holidays were completely ignored. This didn't bother me much, up until I had a baby last year, and this is the first time that Christmas feels important.

My dh isn't really a holiday person and he's not a planner either, but he'll go along with whatever I want to do, so I feel like it's on me to make it happen. Neither of us have any family to visit/invite so it'll just be the three of us.

I want to ensure my kids have holiday traditions and fun memories of family Christmases! The only problem is that I don't feel like I know how to "do Christmas" so I'm here to ask what are your traditions and how does your Christmas day look?

Budget friendly ideas are very welcome especially!

Honestly, you'll make your own traditions over time. It could be sonething as simple as you had beans on toast on Christmas Eve and your dc remember and demand that every Christmas Eve.

Superb post, @PickedYourHillToDieOn.

I was exactly the same as you, OP. I built our lovely family Christmas rhythms around the age and stage of the kids and whilst they are now 30-ish they still love everything to be the same.

Start with a plan for how you want Christmas Day to pan out and then build on it year on year.

One word of caution though.. life gets busier and more demanding as the kids get older. Don’t make things TOO hard work for yourself or you’ll make a rod for your own back.

^ eg, a friend of mine bought some crafty fabric hanging advent calendars with pockets in for each child. She bought and wrapped an individual present for each child for each day to put in each pocket - thinking she was being a virtuous mummy, instead of buying them chocolate advent calendars.
It became the bane of her LIFE, trying to think of 25 presents for each of three kids every year. So just watch yourself…!

There’s a huge amount of info and suggestions here already, @Tunacheesequesadilla - and obviously you’ll only do what appeals to you. But one thing, if, this year and in coming years, you want to include a pantomime or Christmas ballet, or carol concert, (any sort of performance) be sure to book tickets months and months in advance as they tend to sell out.

Another one from a similar situation.
mine are teens now, we’ve got our own traditions now and they still enjoy them. We do bits throughout December and it’s grown over the years.

Our local wildlife trust does lots of bits for children, making decorations and wreaths. so we do them.

picking the tree is one day, we go to a Christmas tree farm and pick one. Make a thing of it with cake and hot chocolate

visit Father Christmas on a steam train (we don’t do this one anymore!)
decorate the tree is another day. If you’ve not many decorations, make ginger bread ones.

watch Christmas films with popcorn and treats.
arthur christmas and elf are great ones. There’s also a Disney one called prep and landing which is brilliant.
I saw someone on here who does miniature food and elf slippers and hats to watch elf
im also addicted to the channel 5 crappy Christmas films

we play Christmas light bingo where we walk or drive round places and tick off the lights we’ve seen.

Christmas light trails are great. They always make me feel Christmasy so we do that at the start of December.

panto at the local theatre.

go to London to see the lights and shop windows.

we also have done (and loved!) the elf on the shelf. We’ve picked the bits of that we like, so he’s not creepy watching and reporting. Just brings craft stuff, toys getting up to mischief, that sort of thing.

you'll find your way, everyone’s is different, try not to feel pressure to make it perfect and enjoy it! I’ve given you some of ours, but that doesn’t mean they are right or what you have to do. I’ve gone from complete sadness over the season to Mrs bloody christmas!

Lots of people who aren’t at all religious still take their children to a Christmas Eve service at the local church. DD’s does a lovely children’s service - there’s a crib* and they have masses of dressing up clothes for Wise Men, angels, etc. so all kids who want to can take part.
Add in lovely carols like Away In A Manger - no wonder the church is invariably packed. Also has a v nice pub just across the road for mulled wine afterwards!

Re stockings, in our family it was always little things only from FC/Santa, anything bigger/more expensive was from family. Stockings were still so exciting!

Oh one other thought.

if your going to do stockings buy two of whichever one you choose.
that way you and little one hang one and you’ve got the other one ready packed to swap. So much easier.

I think it’s important to know that there really isn’t a right or wrong way to “do” Christmas.

Please be kind to yourself as a parent because goodness knows your efforts will mostly be appreciated by your children when they have kids of their own 😅

Honestly there will be tantrums and meltdowns no matter how “perfect” and “magical” you try to make things (and I mean from you, hubby and kids!) and you WILL question all your life choices, many times over, especially when woken by over exuberant children at 4am on the 25th when you only crawled into bed at 2:30am 😵‍💫.

Having said that though, through all of our Christmases spent as a family, over the past 20 years, the most treasured traditions are the ones that happened purely by chance. From the smell of a real tree stuffed into our car whilst the kids yell that it’s making them itchy and they don’t have enough room, to replaying the same Christmas CD my hubby and I got for free, with the Daily Mail, 20 years ago before the kids were born (it is still played every year on the CD player we kept just for Christmas!).

Just spend your time doing things during December that seem like fun - you’ll soon decide what you’d like to do again and what wasn’t worth the effort.

Your traditions will make themselves and your baby, as well as any siblings he/she may have in the future, will create a mould of beautifully chaotic joy and magic.

My favourite things are:

Putting up a tree the first weekend of December. Every year we accumulate a couple of new ornaments, usually bought on holiday, and the kids made some when they were little, so bringing out all the old ornaments brings back so many memories.

I also like to make a wreath but that's an optional extra, I didn't bother when the kids were teeny.

Christmas baking - my essentials are mince pies and Austrian almond crescents (both extremely easy!). I occasionally bake a Christmas cake or stollen but more often buy those.

Christmas music

Christmas movies - home alone is an essential, others optional

Stockings- everyone in the house has one, but Santa only brings for the children. The kids get involved in choosing things for MIL if she's staying over

Tree presents - from the gifter, not santa

Christmas/wintery books throughout December e.g. stick man, gruffalo's child, the night before Christmas

Christmas dinner - some sort of roast bird with all the trimmings. We've had everything from pheasant (when it was just DH and I and two little ones) to goose to a huge turkey

Pub visits with friends/ seeing Santa / church services / maybe going to a panto or show...

Any or all of this plus whatever else appeals to your family, nothing is essential beyond all being together and enjoying yourselves - you will build up your own traditions each year

Baking biscuits and icing them with Xmas theme. Same with cup cakes.

Making Xmas decorations to hang up at home. You can buy a packet of lick and stick strips to make a colourful garland. You can now buy sparkly as trips to add to it too.
A visit to see Santa. Lots of garden centres do these.
Decorate a Xmas tree together.
Go out for a walk looking for Xmas lights. I make my DGC a Xmas lotto and they have different things on their card. As they see a decoration somewhere on our walk they cross it off. First one to cross all off is the winner.
Hot chocolate with marshmallows and chocolate sprinkles after walk.
Earlier on the year I collected for cones. I'll spray them gold or silver and use them in a Xmas display with Holly and Ivy, and a big red bow to finish it off.

Spray paint twigs silver and add to a bunch of flowers.

I'm all Christmassed out reading this thread - and it's only just October!

Some Xmas stuff best start early on like 1 Dec - the music etc will soon pall by the day itself because it's everywhere, shops etc