Read how Mumsnet users make their Christmas magical

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From picking out the perfect Christmas tree and hanging mistletoe above the door, to tracking Santa on NORAD, the Christmas period is full of magical moments for both parents and children alike. Whether you have certain traditions you do every year, or you want to try out something new this time around, IKEA want to hear the ways you make Christmas magical.

Here’s what IKEA have to say: “This season is about gathering your loved ones, being cosy and enjoying time together. Everyone has their own way of celebrating. Whether you put up a tree or simply light a candle, it’s easy to create a home that is designed for magical moments.
We love offering solutions to make it easier and more fun to interact at home, whether sharing a meal, playing games, or just having a chat. When guests are visiting there’s nothing like lighting candles to get the festive mood just right. Try some Christmas scented candles (out of reach from little ones), with the winter spices ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and nutmeg, to help you create a welcoming feeling of warmth and cosiness.”

Which Christmas moments do your children love the most? Do you write letters to and leave treats out for Father Christmas and the reindeer? How do you keep the magic alive as your children get older? Which magical Christmas moments were your favourite when you were a child, and have you tried to recreate them with your own children?

Share how you make Christmas magical on the thread below to be entered into a prize draw where 1x MNer will win a £300 IKEA e-gift card.

Thanks and good luck!
MNHQ

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Last Christmas, our DD was only 2mo, so we are only just starting to introduce new family traditions! One we started last year which we will keep, is making a gingerbread house on Christmas eve, I cant wait till DD is old enough to join in!

Our adult children still all come home for Christmas. Their rooms occupy the top floor of our house and they have their own Christmas tree on the landing, and fairy lights in their rooms. We have a special meal on Christmas Eve followed by much furtive last minute wrapping!

We choose a new decoration for our tree every year

We go to midnight Mass, then come home and are allowed to open one present each before going to bed. (The present is always pjamas although we always pretend it's a surprise!)
There are always gifts of Toblerones and chocolate oranges for different family members. We always cook far too many pigs in blankets (but still manage to eat them all anyway!)
I like to make the home feel cosy and Christmassy but having the Christmas tree lights and lamps on instead of the big light, and by lighting Christmas scented candles.

We just remember it's about family and fun - yes there are gifts and nice food but that's what it comes down to :).

Lots of evenings throughout December with silly little things that make it a little bit more special than usual - hot chocolate and with cream and marshmallows when we come home from a chilly school run, have a day shopping with the kids where they are given a £10 budget and set off to choose a present for each other, going for a walk/drive in cosy pjs to have a look at the lights in town and around people's houses my favourite is Christmas Eve though! We get up to a "gift" under the tree - it contains new pjs, a Christmas DVD and some mince pies, then we head to my Mum's for a mini party and a Domino's pizza buffet for dinner before heading home to watch out DVD and head up to bed.

Which Christmas moments do your children love the most?

They love coming home to the house being decorated with tinsel lights (especially the snowdrops from the guttering and window), they arrive home from school open-mouthed with wonder.

Do you write letters to and leave treats out for Father Christmas and the reindeer?

Oh yes, a list of much wished for gifts, and a mince pie and glass of milk for santa, and some chantonnay carrots for the reindeer

How do you keep the magic alive as your children get older?

Taking them to see a 'good' santa - real beard is a must !!

Which magical Christmas moments were your favourite when you were a child, and have you tried to recreate them with your own children?

Glitter around the fireplace - I do this for my children - I tell them it's left over magic, and they save a bit each year in their 'wish' jar x

Which Christmas moments do your children love the most?
Christmas morning and presents. It's exciting to wake up and go down in Christmas PJ's and have a real coffee and breakfast and unwrap presents.

Do you write letters to and leave treats out for Father Christmas and the reindeer?
We still leave Father Christmas something out even though our son is 13. Carrot for Rudolph,
reindeer food (oats and glitter), mince pie and milk. No letters but DC writes a list for what he's like which we pin on the fridge and keep. Last year ranged from galaxy chocolate bar to an infinity glove.

How do you keep the magic alive as your children get older?
We watch Christmas films and spend time with younger children in our family. My sister fosters so we always have smaller children around. They remind us a lot about what is important.

Which magical Christmas moments were your favourite when you were a child, and have you tried to recreate them with your own children?
Christmas stocking with chocolate coins. It's all about food traditions here, roast turkey and gammon, trifle for pudding. Later we have mini pies and cheese and crackers. Always a lovely table decorated a different way year, the food stays the same. An elderly uncle from my husband's side of the family is our traditional guest. He came because he had nowhere else to go one year, that was 15 years ago.

My treat is a real Christmas tree. I don't let anyone help and I choose what goes on.

Can't wait, even though I'm working, I love Christmas.

We go shopping for our tree the first weekend in December. Each child gets to choose a new decoration every year. We then all go home to decorate the tree. With one child having left home and another at university we still keep this up although the one at uni now joins in via skype. They also love their stockings, the oldest would be very upset if there was no tangerine in the bottom!

We make it special by decorating our living areas super early! Usually we do it in the 26th November when it's my husbands birthday but this year we've already had them up for a week!
We've got the tree up and lots of colourful fairy lights everywhere. For me as a child the build up to Christmas added to the excitement.
We've also been having Christmas discos where we play Christmas videos on YouTube and sing and dance along!

First and foremost, we slow everything down and take lots of time to enjoy little wintery moments together. Early morning walks in the frost, evening quests to look for the best Christmas lights and the occasional leap out of bed to go outside and look at the stars. We try and avoid big shops, for the most part, so no one ends up with 'stuff' overload. We take coat and gift donations to The Salvation Army and make simple sweets and cakes to share with neighbours and friends.

The decorations for the tree and house are a lairy mish-mash of nursery and school creations, happy memories and pretty purchases and we add one new decoration each year bought on a special day out. Our daughter loves the seeing balding tinsel and ageing glitter of her toddler craft projects best. And I love the muddle of baubles we've gathered down the years.

We tie everything up with bunches of colourful ribbons and rely on the real tree and boughs of fir around the room to give that shiver of festive scent. All the Christmas books come out with the advent calendars on 1st December making bedtime super easy for once as she leaps into bed eager for a story. New pyjamas, robe and slippers always appear in the same little trunk on the doorstep after the carol service on Christmas Eve. We hold back things she already needs so the essentials become special, I had the same as a child. Our Christmas Eve film (same copy every year), a bath ball, a tealight and a hot chocolate sachet (from the cupboard) are in there too.

Some of our family traditions may seem silly from the outside (a candlelit bath is ALWAYS followed by Miracle on 34th Street on Christmas Eve and we go ice skating the same day we buy the Christmas Day veg) and I'm not always entirely sure how they evolved but they are all very meaningful for our DD and those traditions are the things she talks about over and above the gifts every single year.

I've made a new tradition of making mince pies with the children for Santa on Christmas eve. I rarely make pastry and so quite like doing it and they enjoy helping and are proud of what they leave out for him.

We love to prepare a plate of food and drinks for Santa and the reindeers.

We make sure to fit in all family members. Everyone is so far away (France, South Wales, Cambridge & Liverpool), but we love seeing everyone and always make sure we do.

One of the things we do that has become a tradition we all look forward to is driving to Ikea to choose a Christmas tree, using the offer they have each year - then returning the next year to spend the voucher. For the record, I have no connection with Ikea other than really liking this ritual!

On Christmas morning, when I was a child we’d tiptoe downstairs as early as we dared and peep into the living room. Before we’d even look at our presents we’d explore the house for signs that Santa had been and there was always incontrovertible evidence that a large, slightly inebriated man had visited in the night. Coal would be scattered across the hearth rug, pictures taken from the walls, examined and discarded, big sooty fingerprints around the fire place where he had hauled himself out, the drinks cabinet raided for the best whiskey, the second layer of the biscuit tin broached before the first was finished....My df was a rigid, rule bound man who couldn’t abide disorder or mess and even now in middle age, I struggle to reconcile the merry chaos of Christmas morning with his otherwise stern parenting. It was absolutely magical. We had some very sparse Christmases back then and Santa brought a single present each, not even a stocking, but the utter wonder of Christmas morning is as vivid now as it was then. I’ve done my best to recreate it for my dc. And ironically it’s not as easy these days with much more money but much less innocence. The highlight of Christmas morning these days is looking outside to see what damage the reindeer have wreaked in their quest for a carrot. We’ve had skid marks on the lawn, hoof prints on the windows, bells that fell off collars, and my prized rose bush eaten by Rudolph. Each year we have a lively discussion about where to put the carrot and what mischief might be averted if we can only work out the safest location. My dc have grown wiser now but they still play along with the game and love recounting the reindeer mishaps of each year. I hope, that long after individual presents have been forgotten, this is the part of Christmas that will live on in their hearts, and maybe, someday, continue into a new generation.

we leave cookies out for father christmas

Christmas decorations - including blow up snowmen. A ;ot of houses in my road are all lit up for Christmas and it's lovely to see all the twinkling lights.

Lots of candles, fairy lights and blankets.

We have amassed a glorious collection of felt animal tree decorations, so we put the 'zoo' on the tree and always get a couple new ones each year.

I like to stay in and have more cosy family time with my children

Actual Christmas is always our family and our kids, like most people. Our broader family (Grandparents, Uncles, Aunts, nephews etc) all always meet up in a rented house about 3 weeks before real Christmas. No "it's DHs parents' year" excuses are valid. Usually 20 of us in a house for 16 for a long weekend. It's always waaaay better than actual Christmas.

This year is our daughters second Christmas so I think she'll have a bit more of an idea what is happening. When there were just two of us (me and husband) we used to watch a christmassy film every weekend always culminating in the muppets Xmas carol on Christmas Eve

For my daughter this year we have purchased some child friendly decorations (reindeer to be near the fireplace etc) so she can be involved in decorating

We also, instead of films, have planned some crafty activities or outings for each weekend-some things like making salt dough shapes and others like visiting a Christmas fair or walking around to see Christmas lights

We love Christmas in our household and follow the same traditions that I grew up with - this makes it special for us. Smoked salmon and a salad for Christmas Eve, Dundee Cake and port on Christmas Day morning, followed by the main meal of the day of turkey and all of the trimmings.

We always go to the same place to see Santa Claus, then pick up our real Christmas tree and then home to decorate all together 🌲
Our whole house is decorated, with lights and traditional decorations. I cant wait!

when we were children we would go for a drive on christmas eve to see all the christmas lights and go to church, on christmas day we would wake really early to see if santa had been and filled our stockings, we would open them on mums bed, had he eaten his mince pie? and rudolph his carrot? was there (fake ) snow on the carpet from his boots, christmas music would be playing, we could smell the christmas dinner cooking in the kitchen whilst we open presents, we would each take it in turn to open one. once presents were opened we would play with them and then take them up to our bedrooms, we would stay in our christmas pj's all day and have dinner around 4pm watching christmas films and singing our favourite christmas song - fairytale of new york

I have two teens and a young primary schooler so the older two are now very much involved in creating the magic for their sibling and carrying on the traditions that we have made over the years.

we all go to choose the tree a couple of weekends before Xmas day and decorate it together.

Our nearest city has Xmas markets so we visit those to buy gifts for relatives then the older two get sent off to buy sibling presents.

Xmas Eve we head into the city to see the lights, have dinner and have a ride on the big wheel then it's home to open their Xmas Eve present (usually new pjs) then the youngest is sent to bed. The older two pretend they are going to bed as well so they all sprinkle the reindeer dust and put the carrot and whisky out for santa.

We always go ice skating and to the carnival in the Xmas holidays as well.

I bloody love the Xmas holidays