Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Christmas Traditions---What Have You Got?

I was talking to a friend today about their Christmas traditions.  She has one where their family all decorates a gingerbread house and they have a neighbor come over and judge who had the best decorated one.  That would be hard to choose, I think! But it sounds like lots of fun, too.

Another friend does a Christmas challenge with her family, so, for the month of December, they all read a special book, or do a service project together, write in journals, read to the elderly, stuff like that, then they talk about what they did Christmas morning.

For us, some of our favorite traditions are when we gather all of our children on our bed Christmas morning and read the Bible story of Christ's birth before we go down to do presents.  We've also done a service advent calendar (which my little ones have really loved this year.) What we've done is for each day leading up to Christmas, we have a service assignment.  For example, one day our assignment is to make someone laugh, (even if you have to resort to telling a knock knock joke!) and then another day we do a secret service for someone and so on.  Then we all talk about the things we did at the dinner table. That has been fun.

One thing I've done this year is to make some Christmas tree ornaments.  As you all know, I'm not a crafty person, and I haven't had much luck on Pinterest, but I found this baking soda recipe for a homemade handprint Christmas ornament that I tried and it has turned out so far! (and it didn't look too bad either!) So I'm recommending this one for a fun family activity making handprint Christmas tree ornaments.  And especially because it has glitter on it and every tree needs a little glitter and glam right?  Get all the details here  (And the picture below is the finished product they showed on the blog, not mine.  Although I might post a pic of mine when it's done. I'm really liking it!)


I hope you're having a wonderful Christmas season.  I'd love to hear what some of your Christmas traditions are!

1 comment:

Debra Erfert said...

Your family is still young, and so you still have ongoing traditions. My kids are grown and the ones that we had when they were growing up don't really apply. In fact, since my younger son married a Paraguayan, we've inherited some of her Christmas traditions, including eating Christmas dinner Christmas Eve very close to midnight. That is a distinct change, and rather fun--eating BBQ so late and making a party of the night. :)