Christmas traditions?

[happyviolet]

So it's starting to creep up on us that Christmas isn't that far away and I want to make it really wonderful and special for my little girl, who will be around 5 months by then.

What sort of traditions do you have in your houses and any tips or things I should do? Obviously we'll get some lovely pictures of her, and I was thinking of a bauble for the tree that marks the occasion!

Bauble is a lovely idea. I used to take mine to Christmas mass at that age in a sling for Carols and Dance around with them to Christmas music. Too young for father Christmas but atmospheric lights and sounds would work.

I love the nativity and carrol service in church too, on Christmas eve. It's magical, with the dark, child evening and beautiful lights, and the wonderful anticipation of the following day.

Dark cold evening, that was supposed to say!

Have a think about how you want to structure the day as you will probably set the tone for Christmases to come. Do stockings go on beds or under the tree or by the fireplace. Does Santa bring all the gifts or just the stockings and then there are family gifts. Do you do stockings before or after breakfast etc etc

Are you going to travel to parents on the day or stay at home for the day and travel on Boxing day? Do you have foods you want to make a tradition of. I always decorate the Christmas cake with my DD, even though we dont really eat it!

Christmas Eve we build a gingerbread house, open Xmas Eve boxes, put stockings up then watch a christmas film with hot chocolate at bedtime! My 1 year old will be too young to join in this year but my 5 year old loves these traditions which we started just before she was 3 (she's a January baby).

My DD will be 21 months at Christmas this year so we don't really have any traditions that we've set around her yet as she was too young last year to understand and lockdown last year stopped us doing anything.

We have our standard family traditions that we've always done - takeaway pizza on Christmas Eve while watching Jingle all the Way

This year we're trying out a host of things to see what we enjoy and what we might like to make traditions over the coming years - we're going to a lovely country house near us that has a Christmas light show on at the beginning of December, then we're going to go to a garden centre near us that apparently has a fantastic Christmas display and also does a Christmas circus. There are some farms around us that do nice Christmas events too but most of the activities seem geared towards older toddlers/children so I think we might try one of those next year.

In the house we plan to do some Christmas baking this year. Last year we made salt dough ornaments for the Christmas tree, we got our DD to put her footprint on them and decorated them to look like reindeer

DS was 11 weeks his first christmas. We've built stuff up gradually. My DM knitted him a stocking, we had a baby's first Christmas tree decoration and we got him a few gifts (stacking cups and one of those fish that blows bubbles IIRC). The following year we introduced a christmas eve box and this year I'm introducing an advent calendar and santa visit.

Use this year to have a really good chat with your DP about what the future will look like. Does Santa bring all the gifts? Where do they go? Are you visiting family or are they coming to you? It's only in the last couple of years that I've realised how differently families do things!