20+ Christmas Traditions We Love + Do
After having our daughter, I wanted to take a step back from the feeling of having to ‘do it all’ during the holiday season. It seems that every year, we fill our calendars, spend all our savings, and each year is more commercialized than the year before. We have become very passionate in getting back to slow-living practices, simple living, and the joys of hand-made.
Growing up, we always did your typical ‘bucket-list’ Christmas traditions and I’m grateful for our emphasis on experiences and memories. It helped me realize that Christmas is not about a flurry of activity, getting presents, or running through a checklist. It’s about family and making memories to last a lifetime.
I’ve always had a love for things vintage and old fashioned Christmas traditions have always made me feel nostalgic.
Find a real Christmas tree
Growing up, there were a few years that I talked my parents into picking up real trees. But after our cat kept knocking them down, my mom brought back out her artificial tree. Since moving into our own place, my husband and I have made it a tradition of going out and picking out a tree or cutting one down the day after Thanksgiving. I would love to have one up sooner, but most tree farms don’t open until after Thanksgiving.
Decorating the tree
Decorating the Christmas tree use to be one of my favorite traditions! My mother always turned on National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, brought out each of our ornament tubs, and turned the fireplace on. I, now, love to keep a look out for vintage ornaments or make some with my daughter. We’ve made dried oranges to decorate the tree, salt dough ornaments, paper chains, popcorn garland, and so many other wonderful crafts.
Create Homemade Decorations
This is a new tradition I’ve recently started doing. I love to find ways to bring nature into our home during seasonal times, instead of having countless decorations to store. As my daughter gets older, it also serves as a great activity during craft time.
A few homemade decoration ideas:
3D Paper Snowflakes
Salt dough ornaments
Paper Christmas Stars
Gingerbread Village
Do Holiday Crafts
Holiday crafts is another great tradition that I’ve carried down to my children! My grandmother would come up with so many cute craft ideas for us, like pinecone bird feeders or DIY baubles. Those were always fun and very treasured memories for me. This year, I purchased a winter forest school bundle and the kids and I have been doing a craft a day from the set.
Some fun Holiday or winter craft ideas:
Pinecone bird feeders
DIY ornaments (felt ornaments are super easy or baubles are fun to fill, if you want something a little more challenging try embroidery hoop ornaments or painting small wooden rounds)
Frozen suncatchers
Paper Mâché stained glass/suncatchers
Watercolor: cards, coffee filter snowflakes, cardboard snowflakes
Beaded activities: snowflakes, candy canes
Listen to vintage Christmas radio or holiday stories
This is one of my absolute favorite traditions! You can now find a ‘Holiday Traditions’ radio station on Satellite radio, but this is my favorite one on YouTube. I love to put it on our TV to listen to all day. It’s just a live picture of a fireplace throughout the whole video, however you will hear vintage commercials, Christmas stories, traditional Christmas songs, and more. I also love to look through the thrift store record sections for vintage Christmas vinyl to play through the season.
Send Hand Written Cards
There’s nothing quite like the sentiment of a hand-written card. It shows so much more thought and care to the people the cards are addressed to. Sending holiday greeting cards with family pictures on them are cute too, and everyone loves them, but there is just something more about the effort that goes into hand writing all of the holiday cards.
Take Family Photos
This is a tradition I started with my parents! When it became very popular to send out holiday cards with a family photo on them, I took up the challenge of making a studio-like space in my mother’s dining room. Now, I love to document the growth of my little family with seasonal self-portraits.
Give back
Giving back to the community is a year-long thing, however it can be especially meaningful during the holiday season for all of the families that may be struggling. I know there are a lot of families struggling this year, so I would highly encourage my readers to reach out to your community this year and see how you can give back this holiday season.
Some of the ways I love to give back are:
Donating to a shelter
Participating in a toy drive
Make + donate blankets or old towels to Children’s Hospitals or animal shelters
Send a care package to family, friends, people in the Army
Random acts of kindness
Volunteer, you can find a soup kitchen, co-op, food pantry, or event that passes out clothing/winter gear to those in need
One of my favorites was to make backpacks for the homeless around our city (blankets, mittens, socks, and snacks).
Bake Cookies
I think this is a tradition that speaks for itself. My cousins and I would always make a mess at grandma’s house and the whole family would come together to hang out while the kids made cookies. When our mom wasn’t looking, we’d sneak a taste of cookie dough (which I still do!). Now, it’s a little difficult to get all of us together on the same day. I still want my children to grow up with that tradition though, so we recently started going to my other grandmother’s house and we will bake LOADS of cookies all day.
Exchange cookie-filled Christmas tins
I bet you were asking why we bake such an enormous amount of cookies. I love the old tradition of trading tins around the holidays. I search stores after Christmas for heavily discounted tins, thrift stores, and the dollar store to save up all year. If we were gifted a tin in the year previous, I will write the family name on the bottom of the tin to refill and hand back the next year. This is such a simple and fun (but also delicious) tradition! It’s also a great way to experience the variety of treats around the holidays, whether family recipes or cultural traditions.
Celebrating Yule
The winter solstice is the longest night of the year and, in short, revolves around thanking the Gods, or God, or nature, for what you have as well as celebrating nature and its changes, and the return of the sun. We love to use this day as a way to get out and thank nature for everything it’s provided and will provide. Yule is all about rebirth and renewal, so having candles, fireplace/bonfires, twinkle lights, lighting the tree, or anything that involves light is a great way to celebrate.
Since we are typically already decorated by Yule, we make decorations to take outside. We will make tealight mason jar lanterns to line our walkway, or paper bag lanterns. Then we make bird feeders and popcorn garland to decorate the trees in our yard. We may go for a walk, play in the snow, or anything that allows us to get in some time outdoors during this cold season! Then, we make a smaller version of a Christmas dinner with a Bûche De Noël. To end the night, we may watch a holiday movie or playing games around the fireplace.
Get outside
“There is no such thing as bad weather, but poor choice of clothing.” Many people choose to hide inside because of the cold weather, dreary days, or snow. I think winter is the complete opposite time to hide. If you don’t have proper winter gear, then it’s time to start looking for some at the thrift store because your daily walks shouldn’t stop once the snow starts. There are so many proven benefits to getting out of the house and into nature, but it also aids in keeping keeping seasonal disorders at bay. The Nordic countries have perfected the art of embracing a positive winter mindset, and we should too.
There is nothing more peaceful than a winter hike, but some of our favorite winter activities are:
Going for hikes
Finding a sledding hill
Building a snow person or pet
Collect natural materials for decorations or crafts
Cross Country Skiing
Seeing our areas natural phenomenon like: Mackinaw’s Blue Ice
Make Homemade Presents
This is something we have recently gotten back into. At first, we started making presents instead of purchasing them because of financial reasons. My husband was laid off one year and we were tight on funds, so our Christmas budget was tight. Now, we love the simplicity of it and how much more thought goes into gifting homemade gifts.
Drive around and look at the lights
This is a fond memory of mine! My parents always seemed to find the coolest houses or competing neighborhoods and we would load up after dinner to go look at the lights. Some houses would even have dancing lights tuned to a radio channel! We still drive around to look at the lights now, but we’ve also been lucky enough to have drive-thru light shows or walk-thru light shows. We’ve gone to the Detroit Lights the past few years and we visited every light show we could while we were in Japan in 2019.
Attend a Christmas Parade or Holiday Event
What are the Holidays without visiting a few parades or holiday events? As a student, I was involved with our band and we always hosted the annual tree lighting. We also frequented holiday events by friends and family. Now that we live in Houghton, we all can’t wait to witness the sled dog races!
Here are a few Event ideas:
Mackinac Island Tree Lighting
Frankenmuth Snowfest
Christmas in Ida Festival
Greenfield Village Holiday Nights
Read one Christmas book a night
This is a new tradition that we are starting with our daughter this year. We were gifted quite a few Christmas books last year. So at the end of Christmas, I put them all away with the decorations. This year, we will pull them all out again and read one book a night leading up to Christmas Day.
Card games & Crafts Christmas Eve
Every year, all of our family and friends would meet at my parent’s house for a big Christmas Eve celebration. We would listen to Christmas music, the kids would make crafts and play games while the adults hung out and played their own games. We would watch the Santa Tracker and get our plate ready to leave out for Santa. It was always a fun night!
As our families grew, our celebrations became smaller and smaller over the years. Now it’s just our immediate family and we still play games, eat snacks, and make crafts with Evelyn.
Cinnamon Rolls + Christmas Breakfast
Christmas day is always a huge event at our house because we have so much family to visit. But, we always start our Christmas morning with cinnamon rolls while we wait for my grandma’s Christmas Breakfast. We only get to have this hash brown casserole one day a year, and my grandma makes the BEST version!
Christmas Dinner
Christmas dinner is another tradition that goes back for generations. After we eat breakfast with my mother’s side of the family, we take some time to freshen up and visit my dad’s parents for a big family dinner. I love helping my grandma set the table, she always saves the mashed potatoes for me to make, and afterwards we all help wash the dishes before sitting down to relax. While dinner is cooking, we exchange gifts in front of my grandpa’s fireplace. Sometimes we will watch an old timey movie, but in more recent years we are also having to spend our evenings running out to my husbands family as well.
That’s everything that we love to do every year! What do you love to do every year around the holidays?
