Every mom knows that the holiday season is an extra-busy, extra-special time of year. Busy because we have so many unique activities and traditions to cram into a relatively short amount of time–all while we manage the normal business of daily living! Special because these extra activities form a basis for focused religious observance and the creation of life-long memories. Even my elderly parents have vivid memories of their childhood Christmases, for example.
With such limited time to work with, we have to get the biggest bang for the moment. Direct feedback from our kids can sometimes help us figure out which holiday traditions are the most important to hold onto, and which maybe aren’t worth the time. Naturally, some traditions are better measured with adult perspective, but it doesn’t hurt to find out what the kids love.
So let’s conduct an experiment of sorts. If we each ask our kids what their favorite holiday traditions are, we might just learn a lot from our kids to aid our own holiday planning. And if we come back here to report the favorites, we might just get some new ideas from each other!
What do your kids LOVE about the holidays?
My adult kids seem to like a new tradition that I started a couple of years ago. I started doing Christmas “Boxes”. I use a banker’s box and fill it with wrapped gifts, then I wrap the box–each person has the one box so there is some mystery because you don’t know how many gifts are in there and the stress is off of me because once the box is full I am done for that person. Of course another tradition is that we always have our stockings filled by Santa no matter how old we are.
We started a tradition 3 years ago – my youngest is 18 now.
Each of us buys a present to put in everyone else’s stockings. THat makes it nice in so many ways: smaller gifts are usually less expensive, everyone gets a few gifts that are surprises (especially Santa!) and it takes the burden off of me to fill them all!
The kids have gotten very creative!
When I asked my 5 year old, he said, “Watching the Santa movies”–those classic, old-school, Rudolph/Santa/Frosty movies they show on TV in December. Of course then my 3 year old answered “Watching the Santa movies!” A little goes a long way, I guess!
(I like those other ideas too!)
We like to make snow flakes in all sorts of rainbow colors with glitter and unique patterns. The kind you cut out with scissors. Then we stick them up on the walls. One year we did the whole downstairs.
Giant chocolate chip cookie making parties during the holidays are another favorite, except on Christmas Eve our kids always make sure to leave Santa health food. They figure he’s getting too much sweets everywhere else he goes.