Our Christmas Traditions

Now that Blaire is officially one and my party planning days are behind me, hello Thanksgiving but most importantly, Christmas! It’s truly the most wonderful time of year! Celebrating the holidays with kids is such a magical time and as parents we want to soak up all the moments. I remember when I was a kid how magical my parents made this time of year and how I still to this day remember all our special family traditions. Even though Blake and Blaire are still so little, we’ve already created some family traditions that I hope they can pass down to their kids someday. The holidays are always a chaotic time of year so I’m here to help and share some traditions that you may want to incorporate as a family this year!

I’ll start by saying, don’t put pressure on yourself to start a ton of Christmas traditions all at once when your kids are super little. You can truly start them at any time. In fact, my family has even added some new traditions over the past couple of years (we usually fly down to Florida now if we can, and this year we are!) My favorite tradition by far is opening gifts on Christmas Eve and saving one gift for Christmas Day. There’s something so special about opening gifts under your twinkling tree at night. I also feel like it’s less chaotic than Christmas morning and less wrapping paper I have to clean up before we head out for all our Christmas celebrations :)

Next is, buy a special ornament every year. For Blake’s first Christmas we made a handprint ornament and for Blaire’s we did a mistletoe ornament which was super sweet! As the kids get older, we will start collecting them from places we visit as a family, that way we can commemorate our special memories from that year.

Third, is setting up our nativity set and remembering the true meaning of Christmas. My mom got the kids the cutest nativity kid set (linked here) and when I’m setting up the one on our mantle the kids have theirs to play with as well. It’s also a great time to explain the significance of every piece.

Fourth, is watching the same Christmas movies every year! I can’t tell you the number of times my husband and I have watched National Lampoons Christmas Vacation (“you serious Clark?”) along with Four Christmases and they never get old. We look forward to them every year and know every line :) Blake loved Home Alone last year which is another classic!

Lastly, and something my husband and I began doing last year is writing out a family bucket list for the next year. It’s a great way to get excited and start imagining about all the fun things you want to do as family. My husband and I are planning on taking our kids back to where we celebrated our first-year anniversary or potentially taking our first family Disney vacation. So many great things to look forward too!

If there’s anything you take away from this post, it’s to be present with your kids this holiday season. It’s easy to get caught up and want everything to be perfect, but there’s no such thing as perfection. Creating family traditions is worth more than anything you can buy. In the words of Charlie Brown, “it’s not what’s under the Christmas tree that matters, it’s who is around it.”