Tag: Christmas traditions

Creating New Christmas Traditions

how to create new christmas traditions, christmas traditions, christmas on a budget, meredithrines, merelynne

I remember special moments from Christmas that my family did every year. My parents were amazing at making Christmas so magical for my sister and I. 

My Mom gave us pajamas each Christmas Eve to wear opening gifts on Christmas morning. I’m pretty sure I still have a lot of those pajamas in my drawers (well at least the ones that still fit! HA!).  

I love being able to make new traditions with J and our little boy. It’s a hard balance trying to keep traditions alive from when I was a little girl and from J’s family. And yet, we want to create our own traditions that are special to us. 

Since our little guy is only 20 months old, now is the perfect time to introduce them to him.

Here are some great Christmas traditions we love:

Singing Christmas songs around the house. I was not born with any musical talent, so we usually keep our Christmas singing to the house and car where no one else can hear us. But our son loves music. He loves dancing, clapping and even jumping to it. So we like to keep music playing around the house since he loves it so much. This time of year is perfect for us to keep our Alexa turned on to some holiday stations.

Looking at Christmas lights around town. There are a few subdivisions in our town that always go above for Christmas. Plus, there is a park near J’s family that you can drive through and they decorate for Christmas with lights, different scenes and even has music playing on a local radio station. We usually pile in the car, turn on some Christmas music and drive around.

PJs on Christmas Eve. Right now, my Mom actually still gets matching Christmas pajamas for everyone in the family. We head over to my Grandma’s house on Christmas Eve and then my Mom lets us open one gift early – surprise! It’s our PJs. 

Decorating cookies together. Even at 20 months having our little boy help in the kitchen is great. He makes a lot of messes, but he loves every second of it. 

Watching Christmas movies together. Every Thanksgiving day we watch Miracle on 34th Street to kick off the Christmas season.  Afterwards we make sure to include some of our other favorites. Now that our little boy is old enough to watch TV, but gets bored watching our movies we make sure to include some animated ones for him, too.

What are some of your favorite Christmas traditions to do with your family?

Christmas Traditions, how to keep them alive

Christmas tradition and holiday traditions

Christmas traditions are something that I see being passed down from generation to generation.  At some point the story of why or how it got started gets blurred, but it’s all the same.  Because that is how we do it.

It’s no surprising that my family has changed some over the past year.  I’ve gotten married, which you can see the photos here.  J and I moved from the town that I had called the last 7 years home, which you can read about here.  And now we have two families that we would give anything to spend time with during the holidays.

Christmas Traditions Holiday Traditions
On top of all of my changes, my family has gone through some adjustments over the past few years.  My cousins have gotten married, had families, moved away to college, and even my sister has moved recently.  It’s getting harder and harder for all of us to be together for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

However, there are ways to keep them with me even when we aren’t all together.  Our Christmas traditions have become second nature to me.  Some of them I can’t imagine NOT doing during Christmas.  It would just be plain weird and wrong.  I mean really wrong.  But I realized that I have a husband and I’m sure not all of his Christmas traditions growing up were the same as mine.  And I’m sure that we will create our own traditions over the years.

But there are a few holiday traditions that I want to keep alive from my family.  Here are my favorites:

1) new set of PJs on Christmas Eve so we can wear them on Christmas morning
2) watching the new and old version of Miracle on 34th Street on Thanksgiving
3) filling our stockings with knick-knacks and favorite candies
4) mystery gift for one person each Christmas Eve
5) no bake, chocolate oatmeal with coconut cookies like my Grandma makes
6) Theme nights for Christmas Eve (as you can probably tell by the photo)

This year we spent Thanksgiving with my family and plan to spend Christmas with his.  So these little Christmas traditions is how I am going to keep my family close to me even though I can’t be with them.

Cheers!