The holiday season is creeping up fast, and I am trying to get ready for the hustle and bustle of the season. Rocks in my Dryer sponsors a Backward Day on WFMW. Instead of telling you what works for me, I am soliciting ideas for what has worked in the past for you. Alaina asked a good question that I am going to use. Since Morgan is getting old enough to start participating in some holiday activities, my question is very simple...what traditions do your family enjoy for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas? I'm most interested in the traditions that would be good to add into our routine for toddlers but that would also still be fun when they are older. Feel free to leave ideas, websites, recipes, or anything else that you think would be helpful!
One tradition we always did as a family and that I will be starting with Morgan is making paper chains out of red and green construction paper. The day after Thanksgiving my mom would have the strips cut and we would each get 32 (the number of days between Thanksgiving and Christmas). We would use a glue stick and loop the paper together and Mom would help us make a chain of alternating colors that we could then hang on our dresser or in our room somewhere. Every day we ripped off a link as a "countdown" to Christmas. On Christmas Eve there is only 1 link left!
Some variations I have thought of that we might start include:
--write something nice to do every day on the countdown rings, or maybe on every 5th ring
--put a sticker or star on one or a couple of the links and if your child gets the star they get to be "in charge" that day (i.e. pick dinner menu, daily activities)
One tradition I plan to start this year are letting Morgan pick an "angel" off of the various trees set up around town to purchase some gifts for a needy child. She will pick the angel and pick out (and eventually pay for) one of the gifts.
Finally, a tradition I started for my brother, Patrick's sister, Morgan and our neice is to give a new ornament to each of them (my brother and his wife, my sister and brother in law, Morgan and Julia seperately) every year. That way when they are decorating their trees they can think of family. And when Morgan leaves home to be on her own, she will be able to take all of her ornaments with her.
3 comments:
A Tradition we have as a family is to read Luke 2:1-21 at our Christmas Eve celebration. Some years I made coloring books with one of the 21 verses on each page and then for any of the verses that our kids or our nieces and nephews memorized and recited on Christmas Eve they got $.25 ($5.25 for 21 verses)If they memorized all 21 verses they got a bonus on top of that.
We read the Christmas story too, but on Christmas morning (the last couple of years my dad had to read pretty fast because my daughter couldn't wait to get to the gifts!) My mom has also done the ornament for each of us every year, and I still cherish mine.
Since we open our presents on Christmas morning, we always got to open one present the night before--and it was always new pajamas, which never got old for some reason.
Advent calendars are also nice, and some families have a special breakfast Christmas morning (you can have a casserole or cinnamon rolls ready to put in the oven). Good luck developing your traditions.
Alison
Hi! I just wanted to let you know that I will be posting a lot of ideas along this line in the next few weeks. Please come take a look!
Take care,
Martie,
Momma to 9
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