Christmas is coming!!! Traditions/ideas

[rosehip]

I'm getting all excited and will have overdosed on Christmas by the time it arrives, kn......d and in a bad mood! But hey, thought I'd set up this thread for us to swap ideas. For the past few years on Christmas Eve after I've read 'The Night Before Christmas'my husband goes outside with bells (ELC £2) and jingles them so we can hear them from the bedroom, my dd jumps up and says 'santa is coming I can hear him' we both then look out onto the rooftops to try and see him. She loves it and it makes it so real - we only have a couple more years left before 'she knows ....' SO I'm making the most of it!

Me again. Another thing we did one year which was fun was to put a present (something large but unbreakable/inexpensive) out on the back lawn so when dd noticed it we said it must have dropped off santas sleigh. We did put her name on it just so she knew it was for her. She told everyone about that and still talks about it now.

Dropping a present in the back is a fabulous idea! Next year when dd understands a little more I'm going to remember that one! How fun.

A few of our traditions are having a christmas baking party (just mothers and daughters). We make the same things every year.

Opening one present on Christmas Eve.

Turning the christmas tree lights on and switching off the room lights, and the family sitting around the tree bathed in colored lights for a story before bed.

I'm going to break my mother's tradition of waiting until ten o'clock on Christmas eve to start wrapping gifts. She went crazy and was a mess by the morning!

Me again. Told you - I'm the original 'Santa's Helper!! Another thing we have done is to leave one of those cheap santa hats in the lounge for Christmas morning saying that santa was in such a hurry to go to the other houses his hat fell off. We spoke about it the following year and when dd visited santa she chirped up 'you got another hat then' - I very quickly told him he must slow down and I bet his ears got cold.....

We always left beer and carrots on the doorstep for Santa and the reindeer. I remember a posh ex of mine finding this hilarious, in his house it was mince pies and sherry.

There are a few more ideas on this thread.

Oops, sorry! It's a pity when we get a 'double' thread we can't cut & paste the posts to keep them al togther....

I have always told the kids that Santa has the hours of darkness to deliver the presents - so they must not get up until it's daylight - just a ploy really to stop them getting up at 3am.
Bunny2 - your story reminds me of ds when he was just over 3 - we went to put out the usual spirit drink for Santa only for ds to severely tell us off and head off to fetch coke - 'Santa is driving you know'!! We always put carrots and hay in the back garden for the reindeer.
I remember when I was very small - the only proper white Christmas I ever remember - my Dad had made 'hooves' out of potato (he later told me) to make sure that there were hoof prints in the snow - dedication or what!!

When did your children really know about Santa? Our ds doesn't seem to have a clue although I know Christmas is a few weeks away yet. However my friend's child (same age) seems to know all about him and is asking for presents already. I feel he is old enough to understand - he will be 3&5 months at Christmas. We hardly watch TV so he doesn't see the toy adverts. Even if he does he doesn't connect the adverts with me buying the toys or Santa giving him them. I haven't talked about him much but I wonder how much kids do pick up the Christmas tradition from TV.

Should I push the Christmas idea or take it easy and still give him gifts from Santa (as we have done every year) but not go overboard in explaining it. I don't want to seem mean and spoil the fun as children don't stay little and innocent for long.

I took him to our local shopping centre today and showed him Santa but he seemed to prefer the snow and totally ignored Santa. Children don't HAVE to like him do they?! Maybe we could just have a snowman instead (we were lucky enough to have a white Christmas last year)

Any thoughts?

I think it is so lovely that people go to all this effort to make Christmas a special time for children. It is such a commercial time of year with all the adverts and begging for this toy or that toy but underneath it all, when they are little anyway, I think it is the magic of Christmas that the children really love and that is what makes it so special. As The Grinch eventully realises ....."maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store"!!!

Sorry to sound so cheesy but my Mum was a Christmas nut and bent over backwards to make it special for us and I think it's rubbing off on me. Our Christmas tree did not go up until Christmas Eve and even then it was brought by Father Christmas and we didn't see it until it was fully decorated with all the presents underneath it and candles (yes proper candles) lit on Christmas day - a truly magnificant site. I only realised the magic of this when we did the same for my DS and two nephews - their faces where absolute pictures of wonder...so sweet..

Unfortunately DP is too impatient and we now put the tree up earlier but only about a week before Christmas. How early do others put their trees up?

Mine will be up the first week of December, together with all my bits that go on the shelves -thus avoiding dusting for a few weeks - just blow!! NB. TK Maxx have some really great decorations in at the moment, lovely unusual swags and wreaths made of all sorts (I know, I know, TK Maxx & me go back a long way .....)

oooh....I've only just dicovered TKMaxx. I will go and check them out tomorrow. Any excuse!!

my neighbour who has open fires puts on his wellies and treads in the soot and then leaves foot prints over the lounge floor. his kids love it.

Well I heard ds talking about Santa today - must have been mentioned at playgroup. Still not sure about taking him to see Santa - I seem to remember taking my nephews and they were scared of him.

My dd will be 8 months this xmas and I would love to do all these things you are talking about - sooty footprint, pressies in gardens but am I getting excited too soon as she won't remember any of it!

took ds age (then)3 to see father christmas last year. it was in our local shopping centre in a mock house affair and ds was devastated when we got in and he couldn't go upstairs to see what FT's bedroom was like, refused to speak to him and sulked all the way home.
happy happy happy.

I have a Danish heritage (dad's mum was brought up in Denmark), so we incorporate elements of their traditions into our Christmas.

We have a big family Christmas Dinner on Christmas Eve across at my parents - same main course but instead of the traditional Christmas Pudding, have the traditional Scandinavian desert: a rice pudding with cream and chopped almonds folded through it, plus one WHOLE almond. Whoever gets the whole almond (no fishing allowed!) gets the "almond prize" (my Mum usually gets a Christmas mug).

Christmas Day is then more relaxed, with cold turkey, plus the tradtional steamed Christmas pud.

We go across to Mum and Dad's for Christmas Dinner, and usually stay over and open some of our presents, and then go home and open the rest of our presents and have our own Christmas dinner, with the mini Christmas pud that Mum had made me, later in the day.

Dh loves Christmas and would love to have the tree up from 1 December - but I manage to put him off until about the 15th. As we have real tree, it's still dropping the needles drastically by New Year! We're compatible in that we both want as big a Christmas tree as possible (unlike my Mum and Dad who have to compromise every year) - which, as we have 13 foot high ceilings, means we can get an enormous tree (we usually end up having to chop a bit off the bottom to get it to fit!).

I like the idea of decorating the tree after ds has gone to bed - so he can get a lovely surprise the next day. We put the tacky Christmas CDs on full blast while we are decorating.

Ds is 2 now, so this Christmas may be the first one he remembers - he'll certainly be more aware, even if he doesn't yet understand the concept of presents etc

We have an "Open House" on Boxing Day: invites to everyone in their Christmas cards to drop by any time between midday and midnight. I make loads of snack and we get in plenty of bubbly (cheap but good Cava from Oddbins) and wait and see who arrives.

We had one rule in our house for Boxing Day and that was you weren't allowed to get dressed. Any visitors that came to our house had to come in their PJ's and even my Mum and Dad had to stay in their PJ's which I always found amusing when I was a kid.

In a way I always prefered Boxing day to Christmas Day. It was so much more relaxed and you could spend the day playing with new toys and family games and eating leftovers without any pressure.

I love the sound of your Danish Christmas Janz. I read somewhere that in Norway (correct me if I am wrong) they aren't allowed to advertise toys on television or even in shop windows. therefore at Christmas time the window displays often show old fashioned snowy scenes.

On Boxing Day we used to have a snowman with threads attached to it towards each person's placemat. At the end of the meal we would pull the thread and discover the present inside the snowman. It was always something small but in some ways more exciting than the presents on Christmas day.

I hope we have another white Christmas again like last year !!

We had the same tradition as VJR with the wearing of pajamas all day, but on Christmas Day. We'd open our family gifts, then friends would brave the snow (this was in Ohio, so we usually had snow), and come over all in their PJ's and we'd exchange gifts. Another tradition is the old cheesy Christmas music that I listened to as a child in the 60's -- with an organ (and a few outragiously "modern" songs with an electric guitar AND organ!) How "daring" we were back then! Mom made me a tape recording of the old record albums, scratches & all. I also have a stack of Christmas CD's and have already pulled them out & started playing them (SAD, I know, but I LOVE Christmas!!).

In the past I have dreaded Christmas Day as my In-laws are alcoholic and always ruined our festive time. my kids couldn't understand why they acted the way they did and spoilt the fun.
This year is going to be different as I have put my foot down and they have not been invited.
It's going to be relaxing for all of us now and there will be no threat of their foul language and antics upsetting us all....
I'll be so laid back I'll probably forget about the turkey and ruin the meal instead

My dd is too young to appreciate it but I noted down the address of this site last year for use in years to come - Follow Santa around the world on Xmas eve!

We have a similar idea to the snowman which we still call "The Snowman" (i suspect that's how it began) but is now a couple of binbags. All year all the family collect stuff, eg: freebies from catalogues, mini shampoos from hotels, etc and it all goes into the binbags with numbers on. We all get corresponding numbers and end up with a handful of pressies, some useless some good, which we then try to swap with each other until we've all got at least one thing we like. It's great fun and i can't imagine christmas without it now.

Christmas REALLY starts the Saturday before Christmas, when we all go to the Greenock Carol Concert - Mum sings in the choir. Tickets are really hard to get hold of, as it's a big event over there, but as a choir member Mum gets an allocation.

1 December, dh will get out all the tacky Christmas CDs and start playing them full blast.

Although we follow part of the Danish Christmas, we don't open our pressies on Christmas Eve. Instead, we all get wee pressies alongside the Christmas crackers on the table - a wee bit of fun, like undies from M&S, fun socks, or one year (my favouite) all the ladies got bath bombs and the men got massage bars from Lush.

I grew up with a summer Christmas and I still can'tget to grips with a cold one. You would get up on Christmas morning then belt out into the streets to show off your new bike/surfboard/skates etc to the neighbourhood kids.

The whole christmas dinner with all the trimmings bit doesn't work so it usually is a BBQ or some sort of party outside for lunch. In later years we would wander off after lunch to go and see our friends or the parents of friends who were overseas, pausing only to laugh hysterically at my English BIL who insists on watching the queen's speech.

It's up! - Am I the only sad person to have put their decs up? My daughter said 'Mummy, is Christmas not coming to our house?' so I just had to ..... Has anyone put outside lights up but used a plug in the garage or house - is this safe?
A friend said it was a waste of time having an outside socket as all the lights now come with transformers that don't fit? - Help