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Holiday traditions are a sweet way to create memories with your kids. Here are 10 adorable family Christmas Eve traditions that we love!
10 Adorable Christmas Eve Traditions to Start with Your Family
Holiday traditions are a wonderful way to spend time together with your family. They are the stuff that memories are made of and many times these traditions are handed down from generation to generation. Christmas time is the perfect time of year to start traditions! Check out this list of some of our family’s favorite things that we look forward to every year on or right around Christmas Eve.
1. Make a Christmas Eve box. Put together a little box of surprises to be opened on Christmas Eve. Our box usually includes holiday pajamas, hot chocolate, reindeer food, and a Christmas movie to watch together!
2. Make reindeer food to sprinkle on the lawn for Santa’s reindeer. My kids look forward to making reindeer food every year. They sprinkle it on the lawn before heading to bed!
3. Make some extra room in the play room before Santa arrives. Have your kids take the Christmas Toy Challenge – no elf required! This one is all about encouraging the kids to choose some of their old toys to donate.
4. Take a car ride around the neighborhood to look at the Christmas lights! We call this “Griswolding.” We put the kids in their pajamas and serve up popcorn and hot chocolate in the car. We crank up the Christmas tunes on the radio and drive around for an hour or so looking at the lights!
This local light display is in Harleysville, PA.
5. After Santa has visited your house, set the crock pot up with this Slow Cooker Candy Cane French Toast recipe and wake up to a breakfast that has cooked itself! (Note: You’ll want to start it later at night and on the lowest temperature so it doesn’t overcook… or put it together Christmas morning, before all of the present opening ensues!)
6. Take pictures of the kids silhouetted against the Christmas tree lights. I have ALWAYS wanted to learn how to do this!! I finally took some time this year to practice and then practice some more.
Here are the settings I used while shooting on manual mode:
ISO – 1600
F – 3.5
SS – 1/10
A tripod is handy, though I didn’t break mine out for this picture. The kids will have to hold still, so if all else fails, I suggest a little bribery. ;)
7. Set up a hot cocoa bar. You can make it as simple or as extravagant as you want, as long as you have the hot cocoa, you’re in business! We love throwing together some marshmallow snowmen for our hot cocoa bar!
8. Have an indoor snowball fight! Our kids (okay, the adults too) can’t get enough of these!
9. Capture the moment with a chalkboard sign. Big or small, handmade or store-bought, chalk or markers – it doesn’t matter what you choose. Write the date on your signage of choice and snap a pic! Photo props also always make a fun addition to photo ops!
10. Make a gingerbread house (or village)! Okay, you can seriously pick these kits up for just a few dollars at stores like ALDI, AC Moore, Michael’s, Walmart, Amazon, etc. Landon and I made this gingerbread house together at his preschool. His teachers had already assembled the houses by simply hot glue gunning some graham crackers onto the top half of a cardboard milk/juice container. So smart!! (I actually dedicated an entire blog post to this gingerbread house hack that you can check out.)
Remember! It doesn’t matter how many traditions you pick or to what extent you do them – the only thing that matters is that you spend some quality time with those who are the most important to you!
Merry Christmas!
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