Growing up we had many Christmas traditions. From watching the Grinch and drinking homemade hot chocolate to always opening presents on Christmas Eve to waking up Christmas morning and finding a huge pile of stocking stuffers to going to my grandparents house in our pjs and spending all day on Christmas there. The list goes on and one. Most of which i carried on with my own children. Christmas traditions are a huge part of what makes the holiday special to me so i want to shares ours with all of you.
-Decorating together as a family. We do this the first of November usually.
-Baking Christmas treats from scratch. We actually do this a few times a week throughout the month of December. We makes cookies, fudge, chocolate covered pretzels, reindeer chow, fruit cake, and cinnamon rolls. A lot of those we gift to neighbors, teachers, and family members.
-Watching a Christmas Story, The Grinch, all of the Christmas classics, The Santa Clause, ect and making home made hot chocolate. I also watch The Hallmark channels constantly.
-Opening presents at Brian’s parents on December 23rd, having the Hudson family Christmas on Christmas Eve night, having my parents person Christmas on Christmas Eve day, having our Christmas on Christmas morning then heading to my grandparents to have the Noblin side Christmas, and on Christmas evening going to Brian’s parents for dinner. The Cagle Christmas is on Christmas Eve night so Brian usually hits up theirs then comes back to my parents for the Hudson christmas. We have big families and a lot of celebrations. We love it.
-Reading The Real Night Before Christmas (the story of Christ’s birth) and baking cookies on Christmas Eve night. We set out cookies and milk for Santa as well as carrots for the reindeer. Every year i wrap a gift box with pjs, popcorn, and candy for our kids to open on Christmas Eve night. We watch a movie, eat popcorn, and bake cookies in our pjs before bed.
-Go see Santa at Bass Pro. This year we saw him in Branson twice though so we skipped out on Bass Pro. We’ve decided to replace the Bass Pro tradition with a Silver Dollar City tradition.
-Go look at Christmas lights. Whether that’s in Tulsa or in Branson. We make sure to take the kids to see a lot of lights. They love it.
-Adopting children to buy gifts for. Each year we adopt one child per kid that we have. We let our kids pick out the presents for ‘their child’. This year we also adopted 3 seniors from the nursing home.
-Making a gingerbread house.
-Elf on the Shelf is a tradition that we’ve done for 4 years now and the kids eat it up in a huge way. It’s the highlight of each morning for them.
-This year i started a new tradition of homemade handprint ornaments. I love this so much and regret not starting it sooner. It’ll be neat to watch their hands grow then pass these ornaments down to them when they are grown.
-Going big on stockings! This was hands down my favorite thing that my mom did for us growing up. She actually still does it for all of us including her grand kids and her bonus kids (Brian & Jessy). We’d wake up on Christmas morning with a couch full of stocking stuff that Santa left. I do it for my kids too and always will.
-Church with all of our family for the Christmas service.
We love Christmas so much. We love that it brings families together. We love literally everything that comes with it. Most of all we love what it represents. Christ’s birth. The gift that God gave to us. The gift of cleansed sins and the opportunity to spend eternity in heaven. I hope that whether you celebrate the holiday or not, you find yourself spending time with the ones that you love. If you have any traditions please share them. I’m always on the prowl for new ideas.
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