On creating family Christmas traditions
Christmas is a very special time for both of our families, and Jason grew up with (at times 4) other kids in the house and a mom who did a great job of making the holidays magical for them, and all about family. All of this really has us thinking about what kinds of traditions we want to continue and create new for our family.
- Childhood favorites: We’re bringing in some favorites from our childhood, like we just ordered Otto a personalized playful stocking that we hope he can use every year (sold out, here's a similar one). For subsequent kids we'll order them something similar, but not matching. I also ordered the cutest baby Santa hat, although that’s partly for us to enjoy how cute Otto looks at it! He does like it, though.
- Christmas tree! This one has been really important to Jason and me, too, toddler in the house or not. Every year that we’ve been together we have cut a tree down, but this year we had to fudge the tradition a little because our favorite tree farm is pretty far away, and we just don’t have time with Jason studying and our limited weekend time together to go up there this year. So we picked out this live tree at Home Depot (I’ll actually be sharing more about that experience and their selection of live and faux greenery later).
- Christmas itself: We live close to all of our parents so we’ll get to do the same classic Christmas Eve traditions with Jason‘s mom and then Christmas morning and brunch with my parents. We are lucky that Christmas Eve is the big day for Jason‘s excited Christmas Day is for mine, so we don’t have to trade off every year or anything. We get to see both sides in important ways every year.
- New traditions: We’re also hoping to create our own new traditions, but it’s been a little hard choosing what we want to add. Visits to Santa was not part of either of our childhoods so we’re not too attached to that option. We did go to ZooLights at the Oregon Zoo this year which was fun, but I’m not sure we'll need to go every year. However those are the kinds of things that we think we should start doing most Christmas seasons, just some kind of special festive outing. Going to a tree farm might satisfy that, or driving around looking at Christmas lights, or other kind of touristy thing.
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| Bundled up the baby and saw the zoo at night for ZooLights! |
- Christmas movies: Next year Otto might be old enough to pay attention to and understand Elf, one of our favorites, and Muppet Christmas Carol, family classic for both of our families. Right now he doesn’t really watch TV or understand what’s happening much, I don’t think.
- Santa mugs: It’s silly but one of my favorite things to pull out of our Christmas decor boxes are my Santa mugs (similar). I have a set of four and when I ordered them it was pre-kids and Jason reassured me that someday we would use them and our kids would all drink hot cocoa out of them. I think about that every year. For now I just drink my tea in the one or two that I unpack each year. But I really love them!, and they are our only festive dishware so I hope these can become part of the traditions too.
I guess I’m saying I’m kind of reaching here and really trying to build traditions, and Jason and I have talked about it but not had any brilliant ideas. We both love Christmas and decking out our house and then spending time with our families, so maybe that's enough? But in our journey as parents we are also trying to create a kid-friendly household and lifestyle and are happy to change to accommodate our kids more.
Sounds like it will have to be something that evolves overtime! I’d love to hear your Christmas traditions, with little kids especially. Always love to hear from you guys in the comments below!
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