Toddlers: 12 - 24 Months

Christmas Traditions/Fun activities for family

Hi,

This is my first year with a house, and we decided we were hosting christmas and my ILs and Parents are coming as well as my sister and DH sister and my BFF (17 Adults, 2 teens, 2 toddlers). I?m trying to come up with activities/traditions that we can do in the day of christmas beside opening presents. We are catholic and we are planning on Meal, Opening Presents and to Turn On the Advent Light. I want more meaningfull traditions, or fun activities, or whatever to do with family, we are planning on 6 hours...

What is your scheddule/plan...

Re: Christmas Traditions/Fun activities for family

  • gingerbread house decorating contest?
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  • imagekellydw:
    gingerbread house decorating contest?

    you could do this with graham crackers....image

    OR: Nativity scenes

     

     

    you could make cookies?  Every Christmas eve we make a batch of sugar cookie cutouts and decorate them, I know some families that really get into the decorating end.

    You could find a random homemade gift you could all come together and make and then "ding dong ditch" a neighbor with an act of kindness.  If its something easy you could do a few.

    Christmas Caroling?

    Make a few different ornaments (or just one) 

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  • Make an ornament, pass around a Christmas book to read (each person reads one page), do a gag gift exchange (huge hit in my family), go caroling.

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  • I used to make "holiday activity boxes" for my niece and nephew each year.  Some of them were:

    Hot cocoa mix and holiday movies

    baking Christmas cookies

    Holiday mix cds and going to look at Christmas lights

    Going to see the Nutcracker

    Gingerbread houses

    "Christmas Crafts" like ornament making or no-sew blanket making

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  • We are Catholic too, and we always go to Mass as a big family on Christmas Eve. It's so fun to all be together and the music is incredible.

    On Christmas, we usually all go to my mom's house. We visit, eat appetizers, my brother makes my (deceased) grandfather's "famous" whiskey sours for everyone, then we eat dinner, exchange gifts, and then all play games (apples to apples, taboo, etc). The teams are usually boys vs. girls, and it's always really fun (and sometimes heated, but in a good way!). We finish the night by getting in pjs, watching movies, and spending the night. The next morning, we have a big breakfast before everyone goes home.

    As our own "little" family, we have a tradition of drinking hot cocoa and driving around looking at lights, and we always read "twas the night before xmas" and "the real story of christmas" (aka Jesus' birth) as a family before bedtime on xmas eve.

    I think playing games and baking cookies sound like a lot of fun! I don't think you need many activities, people expect Christmas to mostly be a lot of visiting.

     

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  • At Thanksgiving, we play Bingo and have a white elephant "steal a gift" exchange. You could do nice ornaments instead of the crappy around-the-house items we exchange. I'm planning on doing the graham cracker nativity scenes with LO and her cousin. You could make sugar cookies ahead of time and have the kids decorate them. You could make hand print/foot print ornaments with the kids, or even fill empty clear ornaments with Christmassy stuff (I got little pine trees, fake snow, glitter, tiny ornaments, etc on clearance last year for LO to stuff  clear ornaments with).
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  • Thanks to all of you, now i have lot of ideas to choose from :) i just want to be extra special, and not just dinner and opening presents (which is great and fun) but i think my family tthat is coming will get kind of a boring feeling since this is our first time attempting this. Priorly we used to travel to my grandparents (all the uncles aunts, cousins, husbands, children, a couple of fake aunts (friends of my parents) and spend it there, so about 60 people in total. Now i want my LO to spend christmas eve in her own home, and the morning of christmas, so we ivited our parents and ILS and my borthers and sister, they were cool but i know is not as much as a party or noisy, loud, old jokes, remembering stories kind of thing. I want them to feel is fun and unique to spend it in a smaller scale of family...
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