8 Christmas Traditions to Start as a Family

It’s that time of the year when every family gets excited about their annual fun family Christmas Traditions that they get to do together. Check out our 8 tried and true traditions to do each year as a family during the Christmas Holidays.

What are some family Christmas Traditions?

These are fun and family friendly activities to do during the holidays. These family activities can bring a family closer together and help every be reminded of the real reason of Christmas. It’s not just about presents, gifts and cookies- although those are fun things to eat, wrap and give to each other.

It’s all about getting your family together and enjoying some much-needed family time. WIth all the unknowns in the world, why not choose to spend this holiday season making more family Christmas memories that can last a lifetime.

I highly recommend that this also be electronic free time too. Yes, I mean no cell phones, tablets or iPads- through the majority of the ideas. 

Fun Family Christmas Traditions

24 days of Christmas books

This is quite a simple process and idea. You celebrate the 24 days leading up to Christmas by reading as a family each night. Head to your local store and buy 24 family books.

They can be about anything, but, I have seen most of the people I have talked to about this, buy Christmas themed books.

We hope that opening up a present each night will help get our young children to understand the concept of presents and what to do with them.

Anyway, you get 24 “new” books and wrap them up each individually. Each night a family member gets to open one up and read it aloud to the rest of the group.

We hit our local consignment shop for books on the regular. I highly recommend that you check them out before going out and buy brand new ones.

For Small Business Saturday, our favorite consignment shop had all children’s books priced at a QUARTER a piece on year!

Yup, you read that right- only a quarter. I’m not gonna lie, Caroline and I were the first 2 people in the store. I had her strapped to me in our FAVORITE carrier (learn more here) and we went to town.

I have also found that you can buy used books on Amazon.

Don’t forget about your Prime Membership– Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial and using your Ebates!

Pajama Drive to See the Lights

So this is pretty self explanatory. Everybody hops in their favorite pajamas with a mug of hot cocoa and you go for a ride through your neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods if necessary.

You get to see what all of your neighbors have been up to this year and you get to find the house with the most extravagant decorations.

Don’t worry, we are working on becoming that house year after year 🙂

Christmas is our favorite time of the year in the Sharp household.

If you’re looking for some cool decorations, check these out!

I love the outdoor decorations, you can find them all over.

Find local Annual festivities

Grab your local paper or newsletter and check out the events going on in your area. Every year our small town has the Centreville Christmas Parade.

We are extremely proud to have it as it is the longest Christmas Parade in the state of Maryland!

We are so excited to go to it each year.

All the stores, schools, event groups and clubs around our area and some throughout the state participate and create floats to show.

I know in our “relative” area, we have the ICE show at the National Harbor.

It’s a neat event to take the kids to see each year. Another one we love to see is the Lights on the Bay.

You can actually see them each time we drive across the Bay Bridge to head to the Western Shore.

I have seen a LONG line each year for people waiting to get inside them. They’re really pretty and they’ve put a lot of time and effort into those decorations.

Fun ideas like this can be found all over the place- I’m sure of it.

Watch a Christmas Family Movie

Each night of December, leading up to Christmas, as a kid, I remember picking out a movie and heading to my parents bedroom.

I’d curl up on their bedroom floor and we would all watch a different movie each night.

Most nights ended with mom snoring before the movie credits.

But, it was something that we did every year and it is something that I cherish and love to reminisce on about my childhood.

Check out our 25 Days of Christmas Countdown: Disney Movie Edition for all the best Christmas Disney movies.

Now a days you can just check out Hulu or Netflix and find tons of Christmas movies to watch together.

Some of our favorite Christmas Movies are:

• The Original Christmas Collection (like the rudolph, snow man, etc)
• The Grinch
• Santa Clause Collection
• Polar Express

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Volunteer at a local Secret Santa Workshop

I remember a local business turned into a Santa Workshop every year.

One year in particular, I remember this clearly because quite a few people I trained with at my martial arts school got together and we went and volunteered and wrapped gifts.

It was nice to give back to the community and feel involved as a group.

This would be a great activity for a family to do together. If you can’t find a workshop, look for churches or places that are donating gifts to families.

You can “adopt” a family and shop for the gifts for that family together.

Giving back this time of year brings extra special cheer to your life.

Advent Calendars

They make these in so many shapes and sizes now. It’s easy to find different ones for whatever will fit your family. Growing up, my mom got the chocolate advent calendars.

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Each day I got to open up a new little door of the calendar and get my yummy disgusting piece of chocolate. It was a tradition and I loved it, no matter the chocolate taste.

But, I know my mom has done the Lego Advent Calendar with my brother and I know for sure there are other cool ideas out there. This year we have one of the chocolate calendars “for Caroline”… who am I kidding- it’s for Dave and I!

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They make these in every shape and size. If you have a family full of teenage girls, you can use this 12 days of Christmas make up set from Ulta!

Check out all the other fun advent calendar ideas for the whole family!

Present Ball

I’ve seen this done throughout the year for various holidays. This is such a cute idea.

It has made it’s viral way around Pinterest and TikTok surely, you can find it there somewhere for ideas like it.

Head to your local store, buy a few small little gifts, simple things like hand lotion, chapstick, fidgit spinners, packages of gum, tic tags, gift cards etc.

Then you wrap them all up in a ball of cling wrap basically.

You keep the more exciting gifts towards the middle and spread the others out randomly. One person starts unwrapping while the next person is rolling the dice trying to get doubles.

Once they hit doubles, your turn is over and you pass the ball around and get to unwrap it.

If you get to a present in that time, you get to keep it. I have heard some families get really into this little game. Sounds like a fun time to me!

Christmas Cards and Newsletter

Sit down as a family and write our your Christmas cards together. This is a top family Christmas Tradition for me.

I had a couple of family members and friends who would include a little personal newsletter with each card every year.

I’m going to be completely honest here- those were the cards I was excited to get from the mailbox!!!!

I wanted to see what everybody has been up to throughout the year.

Just grab your family, your laptop and get to sharing the exciting events that went on that year.

Share where you went on vacation, any awards the kids got, any exciting news like graduation, learning a new skill, sport achievements, life goals, etc.

This brings all of your family together to look back on all of the things they accomplished that year.

You can also use this time for each person to write their goals for the next year. It’s a great family bonding experience.

What are 5 fun family Christmas Traditions?

This is a bonus section of fun family holiday traditions to start this year:

• Create homemade ornaments like Straw Christmas Trees
• Make some homemade Christmas Dunkaroo Dip
• Make some homemade Mickey Mouse Gingerbread Cookies
• Go through a couple family advent calendars
• Read the Christmas Story from the Bible
• Try some of these fun Christmas games

These are just a few ideas for you to get your family to do things together this holiday season.

I could write for days and share even more fun things to do together, but, I’d love to hear what your holiday family traditions are in the comments below?

Are you ready for the holidays? Do you need gift ideas for the female teens or preteens in your life?

No worries, we have you covered. We even have a post on educational and developmental gift ideas for the babies and toddlers on your list!

Have any new moms or moms to be to buy for? We have an Amazon only gift post idea and gift ideas in general for them.

Merry Christmas!
Happy Holidays- whatever you celebrate- celebrate as a family.