Christmas traditions/ideas

[Blueberry231]

I had my first DC in jan this year, so babies first Christmas pending!

I'm after any and all ideas from you experienced parents eg....

Things to make it special, any Christmas traditions?
How to stop all the plastic tat entering our house, anyone asked for cash for a babies bank/savings account?
Any special family things to do with an almost one year old?
Anything that could be really useful to ask for as a gift from grandparents?

Basically spam me with your Christmas ideas and traditions ❤️

Thank you!

As mine got older I realised how stressful the day is itself and how I never got to play with the kids and their toys as I had to cook dinner. The dinner would go barely eaten as I was too hot from cooking it and my kids to excited . Now o do Xmas dinner on Xmas eve and a buffet on Xmas day.. much nicer and I wish I’d done this years ago

@GoingOutOutNEVER

As mine got older I realised how stressful the day is itself and how I never got to play with the kids and their toys as I had to cook dinner. The dinner would go barely eaten as I was too hot from cooking it and my kids to excited . Now o do Xmas dinner on Xmas eve and a buffet on Xmas day.. much nicer and I wish I’d done this years ago

This is a great idea!!!

Following with interest, also baby’s first Christmas in our house this year!

Elf on the shelf?

@Passthebrownsauce

Elf on the shelf?

😄

Going to a pantomime/kids Christmas show
Decorating christmas tree
Watching Christmas film
Turning on off Christmas lights
Stockings

Xmas Eve at our house means Christmas music on the radio, made from scratch mince pies and sausage rolls. Hubby stuffs the turkey, we play board games or watch a Xmas movie, then at some point someone will say, is it time to open a present yet?? We all get to open one present :) the next morning I am up early to put some breakfast together-usually a full English, although we have also had continental breakfast with pastries, and charcuterie platter in times gone by. We have a couple of cup of tea and then the kids open their stockings. After stocking opening, everyone starts cycling through the shower and the dinner goes in the oven. Once everyone is clean and dressed, we come together again and open presents :) After all the fun, we today up, set the table and then chill,drink some wine until dinner is ready. After dinner we get out any presents that we can play together, or if noone got anything like that for Christmas, we fall back on old faithful-the family annual monopoly game! At this point someone will get into anhuff, accusations will be made that so and so ALWAYS cheats, and game play is very loud, with increasingly shrill iterations of "rent,please!" My daughter usually wins :)

@smaragda

Xmas Eve at our house means Christmas music on the radio, made from scratch mince pies and sausage rolls. Hubby stuffs the turkey, we play board games or watch a Xmas movie, then at some point someone will say, is it time to open a present yet?? We all get to open one present :) the next morning I am up early to put some breakfast together-usually a full English, although we have also had continental breakfast with pastries, and charcuterie platter in times gone by. We have a couple of cup of tea and then the kids open their stockings. After stocking opening, everyone starts cycling through the shower and the dinner goes in the oven. Once everyone is clean and dressed, we come together again and open presents :) After all the fun, we today up, set the table and then chill,drink some wine until dinner is ready. After dinner we get out any presents that we can play together, or if noone got anything like that for Christmas, we fall back on old faithful-the family annual monopoly game! At this point someone will get into anhuff, accusations will be made that so and so ALWAYS cheats, and game play is very loud, with increasingly shrill iterations of "rent,please!" My daughter usually wins :)

That sounds wonderful 🤗

Prep the dinner in advance! We prep the veg the day before. Jamie's get ahead gravy, Delia's parsnips in parmesan in the freezer.

Assemble all toys before so can be played with as soon as unwrapped. Wrap two weeks before.

Buy half the things you want to. It will still be too much.

Baby gate around the Christmas tree (so happy to not have to do that anymore).

Enjoy!

As a couple of PPs have touched on, Christmas dinner can really take over the day and make you feel like you've missed all the fun. Especially when you have a baby to look after as well! So it's good to try to be strategic and not do too much cooking on Christmas day.

We are huge foodies in our house and a lovely Christmas dinner is part of the celebration for us, so I try and prep as much as I can before the day, and keep it simple. I usually do a brined turkey, roasties, pigs in blankets and a couple of very simple veg sides and some cranberry sauce and gravy. Christmas bundt cake for dessert. That's it. Loads of this can be prepped in advance and then on the day I'm not in the kitchen for too long, and the stuff I'm doing is fairly simple and can easily be done whilst chatting with everyone and drinking booze. Plus, there's always loads of food around anyway - we always stock up on cheeses, nuts, crisps, chocolate etc so I find that a simple Christmas dinner is plenty. No need for a full on banquet.

Also don't get the baby too many presents. I know it's very hard to resist. I got totally swept up in it all with my first DC's first Christmas and went a bit mad. At this age they will barely understand what's going on and after unwrapping about 3 or 4 things they will probably lose interest completely and then you'll feel ridiculous if there's a massive pile of stuff left to open.