Wednesday 4 December 2013

Christmas traditions.

Establishing family traditions is, in my opinion, a very important and worthwhile activity which can really bond a family together as they are unique to your family. A tradition is simply an activity that you always repeat at the same time each year. The recurring nature of the activity is set in stone so that every member of the family knows without a doubt that at a specific time each year the activity will be happening. For example, you may have a family party every summer or even if it was not every year but in fact every 5 years, the fact that you know it will happen and when it will happen is what makes it a tradition for you and your family.
Christmas is a wonderful time to create some fun family traditions as there are so many opportunities available to you. Do you already have Christmas traditions? I would love to hear from you and find out what they are. Maybe this is something new to you, that you have never thought of before. Well now is the perfect time to get your thinking cap on and start some new traditions this year that you and your family can carry on doing year after year.

Over the years we have accumulated quite a few traditions and they are all very special to us. As my older two children are now 15 and 14 I can really see the benefit of those family Christmas traditions as anyone with teenagers will know that teens do not often get excited about things as they are too 'cool' or 'grown up' but my two teens actually get excited about our traditions and they often talk about them in the run-up to Christmas and that really does warm my heart.

Here is a list of our Christmas traditions.

  • Each of my children has a little Christmas tree of their own and every year they pick a new decoration to add to their collection. My older two can actually tell me which decoration was brought in which year which is amazing as my memory is not that good! The idea is that when they reach 18 they will have a little tree containing 18 special decorations that they have picked out over the years. Something really lovely to treasure forever.
  • Once we have decorated the main tree we all gather around the tree and sing a Christmas carol while hubby puts the star on top of the tree. We then do a countdown from ten and when we get to zero hubby switches on the lights and we all clap and cheer. This may sound silly to some people, but it is something that we have always done and so if we were to stop it would feel really strange.
  • Every year I plan a different Christmas related activity from December 1st to Christmas eve and we call it our Christmas countdown. The idea is that we are counting down to Christmas by celebrating each and every day in the run-up to Christmas. We do many different activities such as cooking, games, arts and crafts, visiting Santa and the list goes on.
  • Every Christmas eve we have a 'Christmas eve hamper' which I'm sure many of you also do as it is a very popular idea. I will do a post about our hamper later this month for any of you that have not heard of this.
  • Every year we go into our town centre on a late night shopping night to just walk around and view the lights and soak up the atmosphere of Christmas.
  • Every Christmas eve we all sleep in the same room (hubby, children and myself) so that the first thing we all see when we wake up on Christmas morning is each other.




2 comments:

  1. I love Christmas traditions, and yours sound really lovely. I think that I may start the Christmas decorations one, it would be so lovely for the children to each have a start on their own Christmas tree (although thinking about them being 18 and leaving home is very strange!)

    ReplyDelete