Share your favourite Christmas family moments and traditions with Lidl: chance to win £100 NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

Christmas is coming (FAST!) - and the team at Lidl would love to hear all about your family Christmas moments - perhaps from your own childhood or memories you are creating with and for your own children?

Are you a super-organised shopper, a festive fashionista in your Christmas jumper, or more of a last-minute panicker? Do you do ‘stir-up Sunday’ to create your perfect Christmas pudding or cake? Is there a tradition of choosing your tree that the whole family look forward to? What about when you were a child - are there older family traditions you recreate or look back on fondly which help get you in the community spirit?

Whatever your Christmas traditions are, Lidl would love to hear them!

Please post them on this thread and you will be entered into a prize draw where one winner will get £100 worth of Lidl vouchers (note the winner will be sent 4 x £25 vouchers, one voucher can be redeemed per transaction).

Thanks and good luck
MNHQ

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Everything packed food prepped then Christmas Eve a lovelyChristmas film in our Hamas lights dimmed then early to bed leave out carrot n drinks for Father Christmas and Rudolph magic!

As me and my dd love Christmas movies we start in mid November watching them every night with a hot chocolate after bath time. We have our special Christmas mugs and have squirty cream, mini marshmallows, sprinkles - the works! We start off watching our not so favourite films and they get better and better until we finish in the last few days before Christmas with our faves elf, Arthur Christmas and Home Alone. I absolutely love it!!

We have a cheeky elf that starts leaving Christmas stickers around the house when the kids are asleep, in the weeks leading up to Christmas. They're always left in obvious place like door handles they will use first thing in the morning and the excitement is amazing to see (I still do this even though they're quit grown up -it still makes them excited for Christmas!).

My parents had a crazy Christmas tradition. They would remove the living room door handle and hide it every Xmas eve last thing - not sure why but one year my Dad had a few too many sherries and forgot where he put it. As you can imagine there were a lot of sad children waiting to get in on Xmas morning to see if "he had been"!!

Weird parents!!

We have lots of traditions. We do the pudding in advance and make homemade gifts and cards. We do multiple visits to see Santa and have made it a must to go to the Carnival every year. Christmas is always at my house and the same menu is requested year in year out and my sticky toffee pudding is made in batches to serve on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day. Family time is really important and we concentrate hard on spending lots of time together.

We have Christmas dinner and pudding.All made from scratch and with help from everyone. After that, we would sing carols, have a little dance and watch festive movies. This is perfect and relaxing time to chat with family members and be merry.

We have a special tradition on Christmas Eve. Our children get Christmas Eve boxes containing new PJs, some sweet treats and a family movie for us to watch together before the big day. It always puts us in a festive mood!

One of our family Xmas traditions is to cook the pork on Christmas Eve, once all the wrapping and housework is done pop out to the local pup for a quick deink, and then back home to watch a bit of TV and hot pork cobs with stuffing

The DC make a tree decoration every year and we add them to the tree. It's a lovely tradition that I've continued from my parents. Our tree is a teeny bit clashy though .

Our family tradition at Christmas is to walk around the town on Christmas Eve, looking at the lights and decorations. Come home and have prawn sandwiches followed by Viennetta ice cream. Not quite sure where the food combination came from, but it's what I did with my sister and parents as kids I now do the same with DH and our 2 teens. Love it!

When I was a child Christmas was the only day that we spent all day in our pyjamas. I used to think that was great!
In my family we make a new decoration for the tree each year and love reading Christmas stories in the run up to Christmas Day.

It will be DS's first Christmas and I'm making him a Christmas stocking of his own. DSis and I each had a beautiful red fake-fur stocking that our DM made for us, and the best bit of Christmas was getting the stockings out on Christmas Eve, feeling how furry and soft they were, and thinking how fat with toys they would be in the morning!

my DD decorates the tree and we dig out the decorations she made in previous years. my husbands family always have 'tree presents' which are a small present for everyone to open in the evening that are normally under £1.

We live near a small but beautiful park where they invite people to join in carol singing by candle / torchlight one night a few weeks before Christmas. There aren't any streetlights in the park so it's really dark and atmospheric. We wrap up and walk down there with our flask of hot chocolate. It feels really wholesome and festive and connects us with people in the community we don't usually see.

Three/four different "Christmas" celebrations/gift giving occasions at Christmas time to honour my Pan-European roots. Keeping up the tradition with DS, who is obviously delighted. Present number is roughly the same as in any other family, as the gifts just get spread, with biggest generally being given on Christmas Eve (Scandinavian tradition). Also, making Scandinavian gingerbread and a gingerbread house (to be eaten from boxing day forwards).

Every year at bed time on Christmas Eve when I was little, my dad always used to sing ‘when you go to bed, hang your stockings up’ to the verse (dashing through the snow etc...) of Jingle Bells. He then used to make up the rest of the words on the spot. We now do the same for our two! I love it and so do they- very random! We always go to traditional carol services in the week leading up to Christmas too. I’ll teach DS the descants this year so he can join in with me.

Ours is a blend of Traditional British and Caribbean.

-Tree goes up 1st week of December.
-One present each Christmas eve and DH's birthday celebrations complete with cake and a semi-fancy dinner.
-Bucks-fizz and smoked salmon for breakfast Christmas morning.
-Christmas Lunch/dinner tends to be a mix of traditional foods... growing up Christmas dinner always meant a bit of potluck with each member of the family making something very traditionally christmas, but not necessarily Caribbean...so I've always looked forward to Christmas dinner as my family is massive and the variety is fab and makes for an interesting plate.

• Christmas presents are done at the end of the day.
• DH and I since having children get everyone off to bed and will settle in with wine...chocolates, and movies.

-Boxing day is just for leftovers.... we just try to eat it all unsuccessfully so far

I always read "twas the night before Christmas" to the children on Christmas eve, and father Christmas leaves a little thank you note for his drink and snack.

We always go as a family to pick a tree and my sons decorate it, I like to be organised so we have a secret stash for christmas, when we go shopping we pick up a treat to add to the stash.

Visiting family, eating far too much and staying up into the early hours of the night!

On Christmas Eve morning we all make & bake mince pies together, then all watch "The Snowman" in the afternoon and put the final touches on gifts such as bows/ribbon.

I guess it is more of a Christmas/Boxing Day tradition as it depends on the weather but we like to make our own sledges and go sledging on the shingle dunes on the beach.

We have our first full Christmas meal by candlelight on Christmas Eve. We started doing this when the children were tiny so I could enjoy Christmas Day but we love it so much we still do it. We carry the dining table into the lounge and have the Christmas tree lights on, and our favourite Christmas tracks playing quietly in the background. There is still such an air of anticipation at this meal!

Watching Muppets Christmas Carols - THE best Christmas film!

Watching The Muppet's Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve