This giveaway is now closed.
Today I’ve got another giveaway for Simple Mom readers, just in time for the holidays. Dayspring, who runs (in)courage, where I’m a monthly columnist, wants to bless someone with one of their best sellers — this beautiful Nativity Hurricane Trio.
This is a set of three frosted candle luminaries, each set on a wood base, and backlit with metal silhouettes of shepherds, the three wise men, and the holy family.
I love these because they’re unique but not tacky; simple but creative. They look great with just about any home decor, and their subtle display of the nativity scene whispers a subtle reverence.
And this week, one of you will win this!
Here’s how to enter:
1. Leave a comment, telling me — what is your family’s most creative holiday tradition?
2. To get a second entry, tweet about this giveaway — use the “retweet” button at the bottom of the post.
3. To get a third entry, post about this giveaway on your own blog, and make sure you link to this exact post (not the home page, SimpleMom.net), so that it will leave a trackback.
This giveaway is open to anyone worldwide. It will end this Friday, December 11 at 11:59 p.m. EST. I hope you win!
We get together a week before Christmas and bake lots of cookies. The kids gather around the table and decorate them any way they want.
Our favorite Christmas tradition is being able to sit around the tree, drinking some hot cocoa, and playing games together!!
Those candles are beautiful- I hope I win of course, but whoever does get the prize will be truly blessed to have won!!
We got to church on Christmas eve and then open one gift.
After a family gathering on Christmas Eve, we give the kids new pajamas (which they love getting!!) and read Twas the Night Before Christmas. On Christmas morning we lay Baby Jesus in the manger and sing Happy Birthday. Sweet little traditions with sweet little ones.
Merry Christmas!
We always had cinnamon rolls shaped into the cross–to remind us why Jesus was born–and we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. Now, we have started to do this same thing with our children–so they understand the true meaning of Christmas.
After cleaning the Thanksgiving dinner dishes (about 2 pm), we break out all the craft supplies and start making simple homemade Christmas decorations
Not sure how original or creative this one is, but we always make a huge batch of homemade gingerbread cookies to enjoy and share with friends … we go all out and make several different colors of frosting, decorating the cookies with sprinkles, candies, raisins, etc,. They are gorgeous and something we can’t do Christmas without!
Instead of an Advent calendar, we have mini-stockings (strung on a string) for each day leading up to Advent. Inside each stocking is a little sweet treat for the kids, and a “scroll.” After dinner each night, we light the Advent candle/s and empty the day’s stocking. The first day’s scroll has the first verse of Luke 2, and then each day leading up to Christmas, a little more of the Luke 2 Christmas story gets added to the scroll. We read it aloud by candlelight, and by Christmas, even though my kids are young, they practically have the entire chapter memorized. It helps us focus daily on what Advent really is, what we are REALLY waiting for, looking forward to, anticipating, expecting. . .
My husband and I take all three kids to Target at the same time so they can get gifts for everyone. We just did this last night. My husband took the boys and I took my daughter. Then we switched kids. It takes a bit of sneakiness to avoid each other both while we’re shopping as well as when we check out so no one sees what gifts are in the cart. It’s a lot of fun and the kids get to pick their own gifts for each other and for us.
We celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve at my mom’s house with a Birthday Party for Jesus. My mom makes a birthday cake and decorates with birthday party stuff – banner, balloons, etc. One of my nephews (who is 9 now) has a nativity set that narrates the Christmas story and we listen to that and then eat birthday cake. This year, we will be doing a family food/clothing drive and the items will be donated to a local rescue mission.
One of our traditions is opening one gift on Christmas Eve that is a pair of pajamas to wear that night.
The Nativity Trio is beautiful. Just love it.
Not that creative, but we give each of our girls an ornament each year. It’s so fun to hang them up each year and remember the year they received each one. Then one day, when they have their own homes, they will get to take them with them. I still have some of mine that I made when I was in preschool 30 years ago!
I blogged about this on my blog trumbulls.blogspot.com.
One of our traditions is Christmas in July with my husband’s side of the family. His mother started it because winter comes early to Northern NY, and getting on the road at holiday time doesn’t always work out. Now we decorate a paper-mache palm tree with ornaments and eat a BBQ dinner. It also means we can all get together every year, because winter Christmas is spent with the other side of our respective families.
We’re a relatively new family (our children are 2 and 7 months) but we’ve started getting the kids new winter-themed jammies that they can open Christmas Eve and wear to bed in preparation for Christmas morning. Next year we’ll do a Jesse tree with my oldest.
My favorite new tradition, although not super creative, was starting our own Christmas Eve service at home. My kids, then 10, 7 and 4, planned it. My 10 yr old read the Christmas story from the Bible, the 7 yr played carols on the piano for us to sing, and they also asked my husband and I to do a special piece of music. It was such a sweet, worshipful time!
.-= Spring´s last blog ..Let it Snow! =-.
We enjoy the Christmas story before opening gifts and then a big brunch afterwards. I’ve loved reading some of the other ideas posted here!! Wow. Creative people you got going on here.
) Hope your Christmas is simply wonderful!!
.-= Carol´s last blog ..How can God do that? =-.
Oooh! Those are beautiful!
One of my favorite traditions during Advent through Christmas to the Epiphany is our Sharing Jar. One the 1st Sunday of Advent we decide on a charity (could be a large nonprofit or just a local family having hard times). Each day we count something in our home – could simply be the number of table legs or it could have some meaning like the number of people who had a bath or shower that day because there are many people in the world who do not have access to clean water. For each item we count we put a penny or nickle in the jar. On Epiphany we count up the money and donate it.
Every year, my brother and I tkae turns moving each other’s Kindergarten ornament to the back of the tree and moving our own to the front. Every time we walk past my parents’ tree, we take time to make sure our sibiling’s ornament is in the “right” place. I am 36 and he is 33. We are pros at this tradition.
I really want these for our all-year-round decor – not just for Christmas!
This year, on October 31, we had a celebration unlike most of our neighbors and friends. We began a 55 day celebration of Christ’s birth! (One friend called it Advent on steroids.) On that day, we put up our tree, played Christmas music and sang carols all day, baked cookies and made candy. We had so much fun, we have decided to do this every year. We are always looking for an alternative to Halloween, and this seems to be a perfect fit.
Thanks so much for doing this giveaway!
My mom started a tradition of creativity… she made felt stockings for each of us girls (four girls in my family — no boys). For the baby’s first Christmas they just get the stock with their name and a little Christmas tree right in the center of the stocking. Then every year after that she makes a custom felt ‘patch’ with something that symbolizes a specific event/activity for that year. When I loved the rocking horse at church as a two year old, I got one on my stocking. When I had heart surgery at 14, I got a heart on my stocking. When I got engaged, it was a mini engagement ring.
We’ve now carried on the tradition with the first two grandkids and I can’t wait to put a felt car on my son’s stocking this year!
.-= Rachel´s last blog ..Tablecloth =-.
I’m a fairly creative person, so one would think I’d do something fairly creative each holiday. I don’t. I keep it simple and take a break from doing too much. I get creative with my gift wrap, I suppose. I’m big into bows and adorning packages with fun items: wooden spoons on a kitchen-related gift, ornaments tied to ribbon, etc. … Hmmm — maybe I need to get started on a creative holiday tradition!?!
.-= Andrea´s last blog ..Me @ 32 =-.
Growing up in Argentina we used to celebrate 3 Kings Day. That was a much bigger event than Christmas. Now that I have my own family and trying to develop our own traditions I am revisiting that one because it really is about remembering how Jesus was honored.
Our family gathers all the Christmas cards we receive over the season and beginning on Epiphany we choose a card each day and pray for the family represented until we have prayed through all the cards.
We have loads of traditions, many I’ve seen above, and my kids look forward to all of them. I think we’re making great memories. I have had so much fun reading through the posts.
According to my friends, the most unusual tradition we have is PJ Ride Night. One evening after all are in PJs and the kids are in bed, my husband and I run up and down the hall ringing sleigh bells and yelling ‘PJ RIDE!’. We put on shoes, grab blankets, and pile in the van. A stop at a drive thru for chocolate shakes and we drive around looking at lights for an hour or so. The surprise is part of the fun and the shake after bedtime doesn’t hurt, either.
My most meaningful tradition is Jesus’ Birthday Cake for breakfast. We never eat cake for breakfast except Christmas morning. We sing Happy Birthday, blow out the candle together, eat the cake. Then we put the baby Jesus in the Nativity, light the Christ candle in the Advent Wreath and thank God for Jesus, the greatest gift of all. THEN the kids attack their gifts. lol
just starting my little family but growing up we always got pizza and would go look at lights for Christmas Eve.
Wow! These are so beautiful.
My favorite tradition growing up was that Christmas Eve night my brothers would sleep on the floor in my room. I always felt so special being all together on such a fun night. We would lay awake for hours and think about what the morning would bring! I hope my girls will enjoy the same tradition as they get older.
My family doesn’t really have many creative traditions but we do love going to see the lights on Christmas Eve then having a family breakfast the next morning. I’m hoping to start a lot more traditions with my husband this year including having an advent calendar with little gifts and bible verses in it, to open the 12 days before Christmas.
.-= Elizabeth´s last blog ..Oh Tree How I Love Thee =-.
This will be my husband and I’s second Christmas as a married couple and so our second year of Christmas traditions:) We’re still adding traditions but this year we added “Jesus Ornaments” as our most creative tradition. We went to Micheals and bought 5 porcelain star shaped oranaments, painted them with Christmas colors and on one side wrote a name that Jesus Christ is called (exp. “Son of Man”, “Light”, “Rock”, “Saviour”, etc.) and underneath it wrote the scripture reference where Jesus is known by that name. On the opposite side of the ornament, my husband wrote the name of Christ in Hebrew or Greek because He loves studying the original languages of the Bible. We did all this while watching Charlie Brown’s Chrismas Special. This is our new favorite Christmas tradition because it is yet another way to remind us of wonderful Joy in Christ our Saviour and celebrate Him at Chrismastime:)
my parents bought us an ornament every year as a child so i want to continue that with my boys. My oldest son (3 in February) is really starting to be big enough to”get” christmas. Our new tradition, starting this year, will be a birthday cake for Jesus on christmas morning. I think that will really help us all remember why we celebrate christmas!
My husband, ever since he was a child, has had hot dog fondue for Christmas Eve. We have continued that tradition. It’s nothing hugely complicated. It’s just a fondue pot filled with canola or peanut oil and we cook hot dogs sliced in thirds. We have a table full of condiments. It’s easy, fun, and brings him back to his childhood.
When my brother was making his Confirmation, he needed a service project. As a family, we came up with the idea of a giving tree. Staring mid November, we collected names of children in the parish who needed help at Christmas. We handmade the tags and hung them on a tree on the alter. After the 1st weekend mass, all the tags were taken. We realized we had to reach out further so we contacted several local agencies and offered to hang tags on their children’s behalf. Every single tag was taken. That was 21 years ago. Every year we come together as a family and cut the ornaments for the tree, write the 1st name and age with what they asked for, hang them on the tree, sort the gifts and deliver them. It is truly a family project but it wouldn’t be successful if it weren’t for the members of our parish.
These are beautiful.
My daughter is only 16 months, so we’re really just starting traditions with her. This year we started the idea of giving her a Christmas CD or DVD to open at Thanksgiving each year to watch or listen to as we prepare for Christmas. This year she got Veggie Tales- The Incredible Singing Christmas Tree and loves dancing to the music. (I bought a VT 4-pack for $10 at Lifeway… so we’re set for the next three years as well!)
.-= emily´s last blog ..in the bathroom =-.
My grandma makes us an ornament every year. Those ornaments are such a treasure!
.-= Amy @ Finer Things´s last blog ..Make Ahead Meals for Busy Moms: Review and Giveaway =-.
This is not creative but we have started to take a picture every year of my son with a santa hat on and then we make an ornament with the picture.
Our family has a lot of fun traditions, but now as we are blending a family, we are taking some of each and using them as new ones for our “new” family. Our favorite tradition so far is having a family meeting deciding how much we will be donating to “give” to help others. We feel so blessed and our kids are older and can realize the great blessing of truly helping others who need it!
.-= Susan´s last blog ..The Power of Expectations =-.
I love these candles!
We start at least one new tradition each year. However, our favorite tradition is to wake up Christmas morning to homemade cinnamon rolls! It only happens once a year!!
We have almost 4 year old twins and we get them each a new ornament each year that is significant to each child’s personality or interests. However this Christmas seems to be the year we’re starting several new traditions. The family sandwich hug happens right after bedtime stories. The kids pile on dad then I pile on top of them. lol. Lots of giggles. Then the kids love what they call their dusk walk. We put on our coats and head out at dusk to look at the neighborhood Christmas lights. By the time we get back it’s totally dark and all the lights are bright and sparkly.
we don’t have many traditions because we are a new family but when i was younger my mom would pick one of the kids to be her “elf” to help bring down all the presents from the attic. My brother and his family have the cutest tradition of buddy the elf visiting on Christmas eve to drop off a little present for the girls. it is always new jammies and they love it!!
.-= Mary P´s last blog ..Ruby and Belle go to the North Pole! =-.
We’re still trying to determine what traditions we want to start with our family. So I’ll be reading these comments for more ideas.
I think our most creative holiday tradition is our Christmas Eve dinner which takes place sometimes before we head off to church or afterwards. We Fondue! It’s the perfect easy meal and we’ve been doing this my entire life. I can’t imagine not having some sort of fondue on Christmas Eve.
Every year we find a simple but beautiful ornament to make ~ then we make about 15 of them and attach a little card with a verse printed out ~ usually from Luke, but not always. We take them with us when we are out and about shopping or going to the library. We wait until we see someone completely stressed out and we go up to him/her and give an ornament, a smile, a “Merry Christmas”, and then we walk away and pray for God to bless that person in a wonderful way this year.
Our “creativity” is expressed in the form of an old fashioned talent show! It all started because my sister’s husband left her when her girls were just babies, and they were the only children in our immediate family. My sister and I had such great memories of Christmas from our childhood, we wanted to make it special for her girls. So we started a talent show among a family of TOTAL FUDDY DUDDIES. No one wanted to participate, so she and I hammed it up and made fools of ourselves for those girls. The girls, in turn, gave MILLIONS of LOOOOONG ballet, dance, and original song performances and loooooved it. Now they are twelve and thirteen years old, and they still prepare for the annual Family Christmas Talent Show. Even better, my parents jumped in with enthusiasm and bought puppets and a puppet stand and bring their characters to the show every year. (I’m crying as I type this!) Now that I have a son and another child on the way, my nieces are so excited to have young children in the family again to enjoy what has become their favorite family tradition. We are so glad they have good memories from some very difficult years of their (and all of our) lives!
Our most creative Christmas tradition is to make our own ornaments for our ‘All Natural’ tree each year. We cut a tree locally to help our forest service and for ornaments we cut and dry fruit (apples, oranges, lemons, pineapple), string popcorn and cranberries, and use fresh pinecones. The kids have a lot of fun and from cutting the tree to finishing the decorating the whole thing costs about $15!
Baking a cake for Christmas day and singing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus. I also have printed out Christmas carols/poems on paper to put around the table so everyone has a copy and knows the words to sing along.
These are so beautiful! I am just now starting Christmas traditions in our house, my daughter is 2 so now able to understand a little bit about the holidays. I definetly love taking our family picture in our brand new Christmas pajamas in front of our tree. This year I am baking a birthday cake for Jesus to teach my daughter about the real meaning of Christmas. I also really like the Jesse Tree, but may wait one more year to start this.
.-= Heather Young´s last blog ..Imagination Station =-.
My family hides a little green pickle ornament on the tree Christmas day, and the person that finds it gets an extra gift.
.-= Rebekah Ray´s last blog ..What’s gotten into me? I’m on a crafty/decorating streak!! =-.
My children are 5 & 3 this Christmas. This year, and I hope to continue it in following years, I had my 5 year old write Christmas & my 3 year old write Merry (copying from letter’s I wrote) on black paper with silver markers. They then held their words while I took a photo of them in front of latest big project – the winter wood stacks. I will include copies of the photo with each Christmas card & gift this season.
.-= April J´s last blog ..Financial Stress =-.
My kids and I make some kind of simple ornament to share with friends and family. This year we’re making 2 kinds: Christmas trees and snowflakes, both with beads. We also make candy to share. They love doing something creative together and giving it away.
This year we are starting a tradition with our kids that we will bake something and take it to the people that have to work on Christmas Day, police, hospital, nursing home etc.
We host a “Caroling Caravan” party every year. Friends gather at our home to pray and practice a little, then we head out in cars for 4 or 5 homes of families we know who have experienced a loss, are ill, or have special needs children. We carol at each home, on the front porch, leaving a plate of Christmas cookies when we go. Afterward we sing, eat cookies and hot cider at our home. It’s a wonderful tradition and the number of carolers grows each year. Christmas Carols evoke deep memories, a sense of peace and sense of community for all of us.
Retweeted: http://twitter.com/kbksmama
Our family gathers to read each night around the advent candles. My husband reads one of the three advent stories by Arnold Ytreeide. This year it is “Tabitha’s Travels”. They tell the story of a fictional child during the time of Jesus’ birth. The children take turns blowing out the candles…which is surprisingly the highlight of the night.
Yes, i recently saw these on another blog, we love them. Every year i make something for our kids plus their regular gifts. We have a 6 yr old and a 5 month old. One is getting an apron, and the other bows & dress. Both will be getting wall art,one painted on ( warrior) and another papered and taped (butterflies). Plus making baked goodies for neighbors, and doing advent readings.
Most of our holiday traditions aren’t terribly creative. We just do the same things that most people do. Caroling, cookies, pajamas on Christmas Eve, special ornaments, etc. This year we did add the celebration of Saint Nick on December 6th. The kids set out their shoes, and the next morning, they were full of treats!
We spend a day baking bread for the neighbors and then go around at night caroling and delivering it around the neighborhood.
we make wooden things for our yard for christmas
tweeted
http://twitter.com/lmurley2000/status/6534285327
My family is still young (and in the making!) and I subscribe here to learn new creative things to do! But something I started this year is that stockings are for letters, drawings, pictures, and cards to that child/sibling (instead of the regular junk toys/candy). I love those candles!
Favorite holiday tradition: going into the mountains with my family to get a Christmas tree — the whole family joins in on the fun!
I don’t know if it would be considered “creative” but one of my favorite Christmas traditions is that we all open stockings on Christmas morning, first thing. Yes, all of us, the adults too, including the guys! It is so fun to try to fill them during the night and not get caught!
One of our most creative traditions is our Christmas “Ring and Run”. I’ve explained it all on my blog (http://www.alteredstateofmine.com/the-12-days-of-christmas-a-ring-and-run/), but the gist of it is that every year we pick a family to “spoil” for the year. In the 12 days leading up to Christmas, we leave a special goodie on their doorstep related to “The 12 Days of Christmas” song. (For instance, on day 2, this is the rhyme we leave, with Turtle candies and Dove chocolates…)
Tonight we have turtles & doves coming your way.
Eat all the chocolate you may.
Because in your family you have quite a few,
We’ve left on your doorstep more than just two.
We’ve done this for 5 years now and really love it. It helps us all get into a giving frame of mind and remind us what Christmas is really about.
.-= Candy M´s last blog ..Assembly Line Birthday Cards =-.
Our family goes to a Christmas tree farm to pick out our Christmas tree together. Then we go home and decorate our beautiful tree. During the decorating, my husband and I tell the children of the special meaning of each of our traditions – an evergreen tree in our home to remember the eternal life we have with God, lights on our tree to remember that Jesus is the light of the world, presents to show love to each other as Jesus has loved us, etc. The kids really pay attention and we enjoy giving meaning to all the holiday details.
I am hoping to create a new tradition this year, an idea I heard from my MOPS group. As a surprise, one evening I will get the car all warmed up, have some hot chocolate and cookies ready, and then wake up my family to go look at Christmas lights.
A few years ago, we started the “Dollar Store Christmas Shop-a-thon” with our two children, then 3 and 4. We took them to one of our local dollar stores and told them to pick one thing for everyone in our immediate family who we see on Christmas. They took this task very seriously and were thrilled when all of our family LOVED their choices. It is one of their favorite things to do at Christmastime, and my husband and I love to see how they really think about the ones they love and what they would like. One of the best years was when my daughter bought my MIL ” a box of the pink sugars that Grammy takes in her coffee” (Sweet ‘N Low) and my son bought everyone toothbrushes…They are 6 and 7 now and I think this will be a tradition we carry on for a long, long time.
.-= Dineen´s last blog ..Ladies Love Big Guy =-.
Honestly, I am a new mom and am looking for ideas for a creative tradition. I was thinking a lot about something you posted before. It was regarding four specific gifts per person. Each person gets a Need, Want, Read and Wear. As a kid we grew up poor but my mom did her best to make a little feel like a LOT. The life lessons i take from that are priceless and the real meaning of christmas to me is time spent with family and a very special Birthday. My 3 year old is really looking forward to singing happy birthday to baby Jesus- so creatively we are having a birthday cake in his honor. So I guess we do have a VERY creative tradition already! Thanks for listening.
MOST creative…hmmm…I guess I new ornament eachr year for the boys so they will have a set when they move out…
What beautiful candles!
Our family bakes a birthday cake for baby Jesus. We light a candle on it, sing “Happy Birthday” and have it for dessert on Christmas day. It is a great reminder of the real meaning of Christmas.
I have loved these since the first time I saw them! Thanks for the give-away.
Our fav. holiday tradition? Reading a different Christmas picture book each evening while drinking hot cocoa. We buy one new book each year (ok, sometimes I buy more than one at the after Christmas sales!) and we display them on the ledges above our windows all around our home. Special memories, for sure!
.-= Gena Larson´s last blog ..Thanksgiving Prayer =-.
our most creative christmas tradition is making cookies for Santa on Christmas eve. I make a base sugar cookie dough and each child get a portion of the batch. The kids then get to decide what Santa likes in his cookies and add it in. We have added anything from hot candies to marshmellows, and corn chips. You never know where a 3 year olds creativitiy will lead you!
.-= BreannaS´s last blog ..Freezer Paper stencil Shirts =-.
For the last Four years all the girls in my family, that live close by, have been having our own Christmas party. We each bring something to snack on, we play games, do some sort of craft, and then at the end we have been exchanging Christmas plates. Now we all have a set of 12 place settings, so we are going to start doing stemware. It is the highlight of the month for me. To be able to relax and just laugh with your family, and not have all the crazyness of the Holiday season around you.
We love to celebrate our Swedish heritage with Santa Lucia Day!
I have an extremely hideous pair of large plastic “Christmas mice” from my childhood that are a must in our holiday decorating. They are so ugly they are cute!
We have a family Christmas movie night — everyone in their pajamas lying on mattresses and sleeping bags on the floor by the tree to watch a movie that contains Christmas somehow. Besides the TV, only the tree lights are allowed to be on and we usually eat too much popcorn.
we read the Christmas story together as a family on Christmas Eve and have also made Jesus a birthday cake the past 2 years…can’t wait to see my little boy’s excitement this year…he’s 3 now and LOVES bday cake, so I think his reaction this year will be especially sweet!
.-= jodi´s last blog ..Fun at the Fall Festival =-.
Wow, those are beautiful. My husband and I started our first garden this year, and I tradition we’d like to start is giving our family gifts that we grew. They live far away so we have to can everything, but this year they are each getting two jars of marinara sauce and a jar of salsa.
.-= Chelsea´s last blog ..Snow Day =-.
My family’s favorite holiday tradition is having a slumber party under the Christmas tree!
This is such a beautiful give-away. I’m trying to add new simple traditions every year- just as a way to do things together. Last year, I made gingerbread cookies with my kids, and they decorated them. This year, we’ll take this tradition a bit further, and go to fire station to give some cookies.
I inherited my grandparents Christmas tree after my Grandpa passed away and, each Christmas, as I decorate the tree, I feel I am carrying on their memories and traditions by still hanging some of their old ornaments. It means a lot to me to have a nice mix of ornaments on the tree that each holds a special memory.
We have a Cajun feast with my husband’s family on Christmas eve.
Thanks for the chance — the candles are beautiful! Every year, we bake a cake for Baby Jesus’ birthday and sing “Happy Birthday” to baby Jesus and then all blow out the candles!
I love everything about the holidays. Baking goodies, cozying up in a blanket, the smell of pine and cinnamon…it’s all such a treat! The best part of all is spending precious time with loved ones and celebrating Christ’s birth!
we try to do
creative pictures
with
strings of
christmas lights!
Being a single mother I always tried to come up with ways to spend more time with my girls so they wouldn’t feel the loss of a father in their lives. Christmas was always one of the most creative times of the year to do this.
Every year, I would take the girls up to Mt. Baldy and we would collect pine cones (shhhh we’re not supposed to do that) and we would bring them home. If there was snow on the ground it was even better. Made the trip into a more festive event.
We would come home and break out the glitter, glue, beads and decorate the pine cones while drinking cocoa with exactly 10 marshmallows each. After they dried we’d decorate our little tree with them. With the lights twinkling they would shimmer off the beads on the pine cones and it looked like the tree was on fire with little tiny stars.
To this day we still trek up to Mt. Baldy to collect pine cones, and sometimes hike now that they are women of 21 and 18, and we still come home spread out my old beads, sequins, glue and glitter on the kitchen table and spend a couple of hours decorating pine cones. Except now, we give them away to other people we know since our tree is pretty full of them already.
This is our Christmas tradition. What’s nice is my girls have told me when they have families of their own they are going to do the same thing with their kids, be them boys or girls. Shh, they don’t know I have two boxes of them ready to give to them when they do have kids. My Christmas present to them!
These candles are gorgeous! One of my favorite holiday traditions is that my family always cooks breakfast together! Not everyone helps to cook the big dinner, so this is a great way for us to spend time together, without the distractions of everyday life or televisions.
My family all gets together to eat mexican food Christmas eve then goes to church together. We also make Christmas cutout cookies.
My favorite Christmas tradition is gathering by the tree before bedtime and reading the story of Christ’s birth. It’s a sweet time with the family without all the chaos.
This is my first Christmas with my husband. We plan on making a large wreath out of pine tree branches to put over the fireplace. Just waiting for hunting season to end so we can get out there to start this tradition!
My family plays card games for money every Christmas Day afternoon. (And by “money” I mean “quarters” – it’s budget friendly gambling!) It’s not in any way Christmasy, but it feels Christmasy to us because we’ve been doing it for decades!
.-= Stacey´s last blog ..More fun holiday decor! =-.
Every year we choose a night, mid-December, hopefully when there is snow on the ground, and after tucking the boys in as we normally do we make popcorn and get them out of bed and pile them in the van with hats and blankets. We take a drive through Starbucks and then with coffee and hot chocolate in hand we drive all around the area checking out the Christmas lights. They LOVE this.
I don’t know how creative this is, but I made some simple costumes a few years ago for each of our family members and we act out the Christmas story every year on a Monday night. It helps us all get into the real spirit of Christmas.
We bake a Happy Birthday Jesus Cake and have it with our Christmas Eve dinner after church. The kids love the reminder of what the season is truly about. I had so many traditions I remember as a child but I grew up in a house full of girls. I now have a house full of boys and have had to come up with new traditions. The one that remained was playing holiday music while cleaning up the Thanksgiving dishes!
Thank you for another wonderful opportunity to share and hopefully win!
.-= Gail´s last blog ..When Did Christmas Become Work? Organize the Joy Back Into Your Holiday =-.
We have a multitude of traditions from new pajamas and slippers each Christmas Eve to making cookies and popcorn for Santa and his reindeer. Every year we all include a handmade gift for someone on our list, and reach out to those less fortunate than ourselves. Our home also includes 2 trees. There is a larger one in the living room which we call the “grown-up” tree. It is decorated with delicate ornaments. Then, in the family room we have the “kids’ tree.” This one is smaller, but boasts all of the wonderful, silly, handmade and brightly colored children’s ornaments. On Christmas Eve we read the story of the first Christmas and remind ourselves just what this holiday is truly about.
We’re a Christian filipino-american family who has lived in Germany for several years, so one of our Christmas traditions incorporates all of these aspects. My 6 yr old daughter and I bake a birthday cake for Jesus. We bake a traditional filipino cake called Bibingka, then we light our German Christmas pyramid, sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Jesus, then blow the candles out. It’s our own twist on a recent popular tradition.
About four years ago, I decided that I loved nutcrackers and wanted to start a collection to display every December. This year, I discovered the chubby nutcrackers at World Market, and my kids loved them so much that they want to start their own nutcracker collections – they’ve put their names on the bottoms of the chubby ones they got this year, their first for their collections – when they leave our home to start their own families, they’ll take their nutcrackers as well as the ornaments they receive each year.
.-= Kelly´s last blog ..*HOT* Deals for Today (12/10) =-.
We always make a Countdown to Christmas chain, lots of christmas cookies and assorted crafts for her classmates. This year our classmate gifts are mice with candy canes as the tails. I saw it on the internet and KNEW that was what we were doing. DD drew eyes, nose and face on each one….fun!
Our most creative holiday tradition?
I have four children, and the Christmas season is my favorite time of the year – there is so much love, peace, and hope in the air. We have many, many traditions – from baking/decorating cookies to special ornaments each year to a multi-generational family gathering on Christmas itself.
However, this year we have yet to start on any of our traditions. We just returned from an out of state funeral, and my young son will be having surgery the week before Christmas, so it really hasn’t felt like the holiday season yet. We’ll remedy that on Saturday, when we put up our decorations and Christmas tree! And watch “It’s a Wonderful Life!”
If all of my children were younger, I would change one tradition. We have a wooden advent calendar with doors to open…we always put chocolate in there…if my twelve year old wouldn’t revolt, I would change it to a fun holiday activity/good deed everyday.
I’m not sure this is very creative but we’ve had a tradition in my family since I was little. We had 6 kids in my family growing up & I have 6 kids now, so everyone buying gifts for everyone else gets very expensive. To remedy this we would draw names & then exchange our gifts on Christmas Eve. We still do this today. Four of the six of us are married so now we rotate families, instead of individuals. It has become something very fun and my kids have enjoyed us passing this tradition on down to them as well. They always get so excited to open just one gift on Christmas Eve. It also gives us another great reason to get together with our family, which is really the most important part of it all.
I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!
Rachelle S.
.-= Rachelle Smith´s last blog ..Aspensons {2 became 1} ~ AZ Wedding Photographer =-.
In the almost 4 years that we’ve been married, this will only be our second Christmas where I wasn’t either “great with child” (our son was born Jan 8th) or just out of the hospital (daughter on Dec 23rd). So really, the only “Christmas tradition” we seem to have is having babies! (Maybe that’s really an “April/May” tradition, though! ;p )
I should have done it this year, but next year I’m hoping to do a “Jesse tree” of some sort. Maybe I’ll do it this year anyway….it’s never too late, right? And my son is definitely old enough to begin learning the stories and how they all point to Jesus!
.-= Princess Leia´s last blog ..Getting Bolder =-.
I LOVE these candles!!
This is the first year we’ll actually spend Christmas in our own home. Since our kids are young (15 mo and 23 mo), we haven’t really had a chance to start any traditions. This year, I started an Advent calendar with my oldest – we do a Christmas-y activity each day (read a Christmas book, make Christmas cookies, etc). Since I created the calendar myself, I guess it’s “creative”.
.-= Ashley´s last blog ..The Dreaded Deed is Done =-.