What pre-Christmas traditions do you and your family have to get yourselves in the mood for Christmas? Tell Cadbury and you could win a £200 Love2Shop voucher NOW CLOSED

[AngelieMumsnet]

In honour of Cadbury launching their biggest ever advent calendar, Cadbury would like to know what gets you and your family into the Christmas spirit in the countdown to Christmas.

Here's what they say "This year we’re launching Cadbury’s biggest ever advent calendar and setting out to bring even more joy to the countdown this Christmas. 24 trucks, 24 doors, opening daily in 24 different locations, we’reringing joyful festive surprises to the nation on the countdown to Christmas. While we’re counting down, we’re also keen to hear from Mumsnetters about what you and your families do in the countdown before Christmas"

Find out about the Cadbury advent calendar by watching the video below:

So, what traditions do you and your family have to get that Christmas feeling? Do you spend an evening putting up a Christmas tree? Maybe decorating Christmas cookies is your favourite family activity? Or perhaps you all gather around the TV to watch a particular Christmas movie?

Whatever your pre-Christmas traditions are, Cadbury would love to know.

Everyone who posts a comment will be entered into a prize draw where one lucky MNer will win a £200 Love2Shop voucher.

Thanks and good luck,
MNHQ

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my kids get to decorate the tree however they want to, I couldn't care less if it isn't symmetrical and delicately places ornaments adorning the branches, and I dont give a hoot that harry Styles was our fairy last year. The kids really look forward to it every year and are always so proud of their efforts

We always watch Love Actually together - it's not Christmas until we've done that!

We start with watching Muppets christmas Carol and national lampoons.... The second one I watched every year with my dad and we all love it :)
Around the 1st we sort out the calendars and the decorations. This year is the first time my Nan isn't with us - she passed away aged 92 in Jan- and I am incorporating all her 50s and 60s decorations into ours. She really loved this time of year and I miss her terribly.
The twinkly lights just elevate my mood so I can't wait for them to go up :)
Christmas eve we go to the crib service and have fish fingers for tea.... Always have

total ban on anything Chrissmassy until December 1st in this housebut we DO have a Christmas cupboard in the kitchen so anything bough during the regulat shop gets hidden in there ...

Mid November we have our first christmas venture - visit to a christmas tree farm to select and tag our tree. Always lots of disagreement until we find the One. We won't pick it up until around the 16th dec though. Then home for mulled drinks and a movie in front of the fire.

We go out to the local fell and choose a Christmas tree from a farmers field and dig it up or chop it down. The kids love running between the trees and trying to choose one, too fat, too small, too bare, too tall! Hide and seek usually ensues.
All followed by a hot chocolate on the fell afterwards, yum!

Probably just the usual here - putting the tree up (about a week before Christmas), I might take a couple of days off work so I can do baking (sausage rolls, mince pies, figgy pudding). I always make cranberry sauce on Christmas Eve. This year we'll let DD "help" us decorate the tree, she's 3.6. Also we make paperchains, with double sided tape & a variety of craft papers cut into strips.

We put our decorations up on the first weekend in December. Then, playing in a brass band, we spend most of our free time in December playing carols in supermarkets, churches, old people's homes etc

We like to do a woodland walk and collect stuff like pine cones etc then make decorations for the house with what we have found

It doesn't sound very Christmassy but we go ten pin bowling on Christmas eve. It means we are out of the house and so there is no focus on having to prepare food. We actually get to enjoy a bit of just us time together.

The children help decorate the tree and then I rearrange the decorations when they aren't looking!

My daughter has an advent calendar that gradually builds up the nativity scene during December, so that, along with tree decorating and Christmas baking, gets us in the mood.

We are evolving our Christmas traditions as our girls grow, they aren't little anymore so we can be much more flexible. The last three years we have gone to the Carol service at Durham Cathedral, it's beautiful and moving with a fantastic atmosphere, we can't imagine not going now. Two years ago it started to snow as we came out of the cathedral at midnight and it was magical. You can't buy that type of experience.

Nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual advent calendars, putting the Christmas tree up etc.

I make a gingerbread house (pieces ready made!) and decorate with cadburys chocolate buttons. I make my annual effort to bake - random biscuits. I take my boys to buy a special decoration each to put on the tree. I make a Christmas wreath - this year I plan to make it out of wire. Led lights and shells we've collected while rock pooling. It may look awful but I'm hoping it'll look like I bought it in anthropology.

In December we will start watching festive movies and shows, listening to Christmas music, put up the tree, and bake biscuits. On Christmas Eve we'll have a special movie, new pyjamas, and track santa's journey around the globe. Christmas with young kids is a lot of fun.

Gingerbread house and make some Christmas cards

We always make Danish cookies to remember our dear Danish friends...bring on the pebernodder!

We always put the tree and decorations up on the first Sunday in December, while watching the Polar Express and having a glass of Sherry and a Mince Pie

Where I live there's an outdoor skating rink that annually opens around Christmas time. We always go there.

There's also a German Christmas market I take the dc to every year to chose a snowglobe and have a marshmallow kebab with a hot chocolate.

Those outings make my family get in the Christmas mood. I also love the annual school nativity and Carol concert.

Avoiding cadburys products is becoming a Christmas tradition as its all gone to shite

We visit neighbours or they visit us for a festive drink and mince pies in the run up to Christmas - children get presents given.
DD who is 3 helps make simple decorations and this year we will make cookies! Also we all go to the Christingle service and take dd to the Foodbank with our donation so she starts getting an awareness of others' needs. DH used to decorate a Christmas box each year when he was a child and presents would be put in it. So we are continuing that with our dd now.

My youngest DS has his birthday mid-December, so we put the tree up on that day, and he puts the angel on top. It's a ratty ancient doll with purple hair and tatty wings, but my Nanna made it for me years ago and it is one of our most precious decorations.
She always leans to one side (the Angel, not Nanna!) and we joke that she's been at the sherry again.
Each of the DCs still at home have their "own" special tree ornaments to hang on, some of which have nothing to do with Christmas as such, but are part of our Christmas none the less - No3 son's blue and orange felt elephants spring to mind and "HippoPiggy" who none of us are quite sure just what she is, but it wouldn't be right if she wasn't sitting in the tree every year near Dumb Belle the mouse and Henry the Hedgegog
By the time the DCs have finished, we generally can hardly see the actual tree for all the sparkly tat and tinsel and stuff hanging from it
Then we all have a snowball to drink (swizzing the DCs into thinking theirs have advocaat in like Mam and Dad's do...) and they get another on Christmas Eve before bed.
We go to the Crib service at church on Christmas Eve, and the DCs usually each get to carry one of the figures up to the crib scene during the proceedings. For the last couple of years DD has said she's "too big" to join in, but somehow when we get there she always does

Plant green tic tacs in icing sugar/chocolate soil on Christmas Eve and when you wake up the next day, candy canes have miraculously grown overnight!!

watching a christmas film on christmas eve

Decorating the tree together, mid Dec - the kids love deciding which colours we're going to go with that year. On Christmas Eve I always take them to the pantomime and then we go to church afterwards - I cry every year when we sing Away In A Manger by candlelight!