Holiday Traditions from Our Readers

We recently asked you (our wonderful readers) to share some of your Holiday traditions with us and we received some great feedback. Thank you all for sharing these special moments with us. I might just be stealing a few of these ideas for my family! I hope you all enjoy reading this as much as we have… 

My husband and I are both big Harry Potter fans and since we have never lived in a house with a fireplace, we put the kids stockings at the end of their beds.  They wake up and spend quite a few minutes checking the stuff out which gives us a few extra minutes to sleep or make some coffee. 

…Michelle

One of our holiday traditions are the night before Christmas my sons and I make cookies for Santa and we put them on the plate with a glass of milk and write Santa a note. 

…Minta

Each Christmas since my oldest was a baby, I have taken my kids “Christmas tree hunting”. We spend an hour at the tree farm to find the perfect one to cut. Get a cup of hot cocoa. Go to the store so they can pick out their annual special ornament. And, sometime throughout the season, they pick for us all to either do volunteer work at the domestic violence shelter I work at, or another place to volunteer our time; or they find a well deserving child or family, we all chip in some money and buy them secret Santa gift. 

Each year gets more and more great, and my children have all learned to appreciate what we have…although we don’t have much…there are many with less. While it used to be something I would organize and take them to do…now its something they plan all on their own. And our tree has become a very eclectic collection of ornaments of all their personalities.

…Jessi  S

Each year, a new ornament that symbolizes something special about the year gets added to our collection. Last year for example, it was a blown glass fish because my husband became certified in diving. 

I’ve collected children’s story books about Christmas (everything from the Nativity to Santa and Rudolph to the Polar Express) and they only come out at Christmas. Some of them are very old, published in the 1950’s, which is really fun. Every night before bed, we read them to our son instead of the usual story books. That they only come out once a year makes the stories even more special to all of us.

Thanks for letting me share these!

…Sarah K

Our holiday tradition is to go to Christmas Eve service.  Then home to eat some festive foods and take the stockings down and start unwrapping all of the stuff in the stockings.   Everyone gets a stocking of items that only cost a dollar or two per item.  Then everyone is allowed one Christmas present to open.  But the one main big present has to wait to the very last on Christmas morning.

…Teresa M

Every year we make hot chocolate and put on our pajamas and go and look at Christmas lights. One year we drove around on the golf cart and quickly realized what a mistake that was, burr. It’s a very simple tradition that doesn’t cost much and yet we have a blast.

Now that we have kids, it’s more fun for us. The kids ooo and ahhh at the lights and everything is Christmas. Isabella says hi to the Christmas deer, Christmas lights, Christmas bear etc. This year we are planning on going twice since it’s our favorite tradition.

…Twingle Mommy