Christmas - What Are Your Favorite Traditions?

The weekend after Tgiving we decorate the entire yard...excessively decorate...embarrassingly decorate...you get the idea! =)

Christmas is a busy mess. While we do most of what you mentioned its become a herky jerky bounce from one house to the next. Buy gifts, open them and move on to the next house. I would love to slow the speed of Christmas and truly enjoy it...just sit back and enjoy the season. Pffft like thats going to happen.

Many of mine are the same or similar as yours. This is our first year with our complete (new baby) family.

My FAVORITE tradition, I'm so glad that I found it when my oldest was a babe, is that I made a white tree skirt every year I write the year in green sharpie and then do my daughters handprints in red paint, we are excited to add the second daughter to the tree skirt this year. I know in 18 years it will be full of handprints and memories of how tiny they used to be. :)

We make gingerbread men and other goodies to give away.
Christmas music on non stop (yep, I'm one of those ppl who LOVES that!)
Christmas movies
Seeing Santa
They have a big tree at the mall and we go to the tree lighting ceremony
Trimming our tree with cocoa (I'm someone who puts my tree up at the first chance)
My all time favorite is reading the Christmas books-reminds me of when I was a kid.

I love Christmas!! :-)

We have some great traditions, when our children were young we always took the kids to walk through Candy cane Lane, where blocks got together and every house was decorated to the max, our kids are all grown now, but we christmas shop together, we decorate the day after Thanksgiving, and we decorate all out, on Christmas Eve we do smores in the fire place, the day before Christmas my daughter and I do all our baking, and preperations, Christmas morninjg we get up at 5 I put the coffee on, start a fire in the fire place, we gather around the fire place ane we share at least 3 things we admire about each other then we start opening the gifts, when were done we clean up the paper and boxes, set up the buffet tables ans we start cooking, I have Christmas table cloths that I made, we have Christmas china and glases that we set out on the buffet tables and our family members come here as we host Christmas every year. J.

We celebrate Yule and the winter solstice. We start our celebration on the 21st of Dec, with gifts, and a nice dinner, and light viewing. We put up our Yuletide tree and decorate it with lights (since the traditional candles would be unsafe), and we make our Yuletide wreath and decorate it with hand made decore. After that we do one gift each day, along with movies, and family time, until Santa comes on the last day of Yule (Dec 25th).

The tree and decorations go up the wknd after Thanksgiving ~ it is a family affair with music, food and cocoa.
Kids get their picture taken with Santa
Church Christmas Program
Christmas boat cruise on the lake to see Santa's workshop!
We bake ~ cookies, candy, breads
LOVE Christmas shopping!
Watch Christmas movies and read books that have been stored away
Christmas Eve we have a nice dinner, go to church then to my Mom's to open one gift (Christmas Jammies)
Come home, read Twas the Night Before Christmas, set out cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.
Wake up to stocking and presents with just us.
Family is welcome to come out later and we sled, build snowmen, drink hot cocoa and visit.
Then we head to FIL's for dinner.

Watching Elf as a fam.
Watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation as a fam
Watching A Christmas Story as a fam.

Going Christmas light looking

Spending two weeks before Christmas making our own Christmas ornaments, one a night for two weeks, and gradually decorating the tree. It's fun to see the ones me made in years past and the ones we made this year.

Making Christmas Cookies.

Reading the Christmas Story from St. Luke in the Bible

I still force my kids to take a pic with Santa -- and my oldest is about to get married.

We watch "The Nightmare Before Christmas" while putting up the tree.
When we go out to run errands and stuff we always take a different way out and home at night each time so we can look at the different lights in the neighborhoods around us or by the places we're going.
There is a large neighborhood that pretty much every house decorates and has a large wooden "Christmas Card" on their lawn called Christmas Card Lane. We join all the others that turn off their headlights and just leave their running lights on and slowly drive around the streets looking at all the decorations. Sometimes we'll park and look at some of the houses that set up train set towns in their front yard.
Because of travel of various members of the family we don't do a family event until January.
We spend a Huge amount of time at Disneyland! That's where we bring in the New Year too.
Santa/Father Christmas comes on the 25th for the kids. The kids get new PJs the night before so they look good for pictures the next morning ;)
We do something special as a family on Yule.
We also have a number of birthdays within the 2 weeks before and after Xmas so we have birthday celebrations (it is very important in our family to keep birthdays and Xmas separate!!)
All the Rankin/Bass movies come out as well as the Charlie Brown special. The Nightmare Before Christmas seems to be on a lot too (we seem to watch it from about the beginning of Oct to the end of Dec around here LOL) These are favorites in our house.
We try to get to some of the assorted things that go on around the city as we feel like it. We tend to take things very laid back really.

Oh I forgot..the kids always pick things off the trees at the bookstore etc and we shop for them. We will also do Toys 4 Tots and they pick out things to put in there.

We have a friend who hosts a really wonderful Christmas Eve party for a hundred of her closest friends at her house in the afternoon from 1-4pm with fabulous food and drinks. It is such a nice way to start the whole Eve/Day thing. Then, at 11pm we go to church for a candlelight service with all our kids. When they were little, we took them in jammies as it is mostly families. Sometimes they would sleep on the pews. It is such an intimate service and it is one of my favorite things about Christmas.

On Christmas day, we wake up when we wake up and open presents in jammies. The whole family comes together for breakfast, including boyfriends and then our big meal for the day isn't until later afternoon/early evening. No rushing around. It is such a nice, easy day...

Last year, we went to friends house and when she called to invite, she said it is a jammie day...so EVERYONE wore jammies all day. It was so much fun! We decided to do that again this year.

Baking Christmas cookies with my sisters and my mom.
Decorating the tree to "Muppets Christmas".
Dinner and shopping with my father.
Christmas Eve party at my parents, Christmas day with in-laws.
Christmas movies! Love them all, kids LOVE Elmo's Christmas Countdown.
Holiday parades.
Christmas pageants at the kids school.
Reading "Piggie Christmas"- my kids favorite Christmas book!
And, one of my favorites, the kids, even my 2 & 3 year old, packing up old toys to give to needy families.

WOWWWW I wish I was your kid!!! :) We dont have any traditions yet....I'm hoping to make some. My son is 4 now, but this yr his lil sister will be around a month old for Christmas, so I assume i will not be putting up a tree or anything...I think I'll start the traditions next year?. But thanks for sharing, I may steal some ;)

Excellent question! MzKitty - is your last name Griswold?

Let's see, we:
Go on a Christmas lights tour in the car
Stir the Christmas Cake and make wishes
Listen to Christmas tunes continually (not sure my husband likes this as much as me)
Read 'The Night Before Christmas' and the Christmas Story on Christmas Eve
Eat toasted croissants with cheese and ham and drink champagne for breakfast on Christmas morning
Eat the traditional Christmas Cake with wensleydale cheese and whiskey
Light the Christmas pudding
From about November I start putting the extensive collection of Christmas movies on to play.
We usually accuse my dad of hoarding presents, but this year we'll be toasting his memory.

We decorate our house and put up our tree the day after Thanksgiving. That weekend consists of decorating our tree and listening to Christmas music. We take the kids to get a picture with Santa pretty early in the season. Every year we go through 'Christmas in the Park' that has over 300,00 lights and 175 animated figures. We also take our kids to a house that has Santa's workshop in the garage. He has over 200 animated figures in his gargage, yard, and inside his house. It is totally amazing to see and he has been doing this for like 30 years or so. Each year he adds something new to the amazing display.
We also watch The Santa Clause (All three)
A Christmas Story
Miracle on 34th Street (The Original)
My hubby and I watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
We drive around and look at all the Christmas lights in the neighborhoods, and listen to Christmas music while driving.
Christmas Eve we go to my sister's house and have dinner and open a few presents. Now for my favorite tradition of all!!! On our way home from my sister's we are all on the watchout for Rudolph's RED Nose in the sky! This is a tradition that I did growing up and it is som much fun to pass this down to my girls! My husband and I give my girls their Chritmas jammies every Christmas Eve as their one gift to open from us that night. They put their new jammies on and go to bed. Christmas morning is hectic because my hubby works, but we get up and see what Santa brought. Then we open presents at home. Once that is done we go to my Aunt's house for Christmas brunch. Later in the afternoon we go to my hubby's Aunt's house for Christmas dinner. It is very busy, but we love all the family time we get!

Among many, my favorite is driving around looking at Christmas lights and we pop popcorn to take along for the ride. We listen to Christmas music and pass around a giant paper bag full of popcorn to keep our bowls full. Yumm

wow we're just skipping right over halloween and thanksgiving huh lol. I like going over to my grandparents on christmas eve. The whole family is there. (about 35 people) then we go to my parents house on christmas day and my dad cooks two huge meals that I wait all year for! Now that our son is getting a little older we are trying to establish some traditions of our own, but are still not sure what. We are not doing the Santa thing but I still like the idea of putting the gifts out after he goes to bed so he can wake up christmas morning and see them