Holiday Traditions (ALL HOLIDAYS)

New pajamas or "loungewear" (sweatpants etc) on Christmas Eve. Something cozy to use in the winter months.

Love this question! I hope to add some of the ideas you will receive.

We have a Christmas tradition where on the first snowfall (at least we try to schedule it this way!), we all load up into the car, go get some hot chocolate from a place way more sugary than mom makes, then drive to surrounding towns known for their Christmas light displays and oooh and ahhh over them. We all really enjoy it!

We're big on traditions, but here are a few of my favorites. Christmas- We have a gingerbread house night. Everyone makes their own house and we end up with a candy (not to be eaten) village. We also do the year of memories ornament. I buy sets of clear ball ornaments and everyone writes the best things about the year on little strips of paper and we fill it up. Thanksgiving weekend we always put up and decorate our tree, and watch the first Christmas movie of the season. Hope you find some that fit your family!!

A couple of ones we do at Christmas:
* We get hot chocolate and drive around looking at lights
* We decorate the house Thanksgiving weekend for Christmas
* I trace their hands each year and put their name and year on it. Those are then put on the tree. I use whatever I have on hand - felt, fabric, paper, foam, etc. I put punch a hole in the palm part and put a ribbon or hanger in it. It's neat to see how they have grown over the years.
Easter:
* Egg hunt
* Easter baskets
* Church and dinner with family

Those are about the only holidays we have traditions for.

The day after Thanksgiving I put up winter decorations.

First, decide what the religious holidays mean to you religiously - some, a lot, none? Take into account what his father believes and what the relatives believe, and start to plan what you will do and what you won't. (I know this isn't exactly your question, but all that stuff gets in the way and causes a lot of hurt feelings if you don't work it out!) Decide if you will travel or be at home, whether church is involved, what you're going to say about Santa, etc. Start getting the grandparents on board. Otherwise they start overwhelming the child with too much stuff, and then they get hurt when either the child likes the other grandma's gift better, or when the child only wants to play with the box and not the gift! Tell them to scale it back!

Next, make a decision about gifts. If every holiday turns into a big gift-fest and starts getting out of hand 3 months before, the meaning of the holidays is lost. Make sure GIVING is at least as important as GETTING.

We have several religions in our family. One group buys a Christmas ornament per year - that's a nice thing to do for your child. I did this with my stepdaughters, and when they grew up, I gave them all of their ornaments for their own trees. Some years we made them (craft store stuff, things I sewed) and often we bought one ornament for each, either at craft booths or elsewhere, with their names or the year on them. If it was a wooden ornament with their name on it, I put the year on the back or the bottom with a sharpie marker. If I bought them each an ornament and then over the years made another dozen or so, they had a nice starter set for their own trees.

My sister-in-law's family has a pickle ornament - it's green and it blends in with the tree. Whoever finds the pickle on Christmas morning gets to open the first gift. I have no idea where that came from and I don't know anyone else who does it, but they get a charge out of it.

Remember that mistletoe berries and poinsettias are poisonous. As long as you have a little one able to put things in his mouth, think safety.

You can do the 25 book idea, but remember how expensive that's going to get year after year. You could combine that with checking some books out of the library. You also want to be reading all year to your child, so consider the resource of your public library. Or, you could teach generosity by giving away some of those "only read once" books to a charity that will help kids who have nothing. You could expand that to include some CDs - maybe one per week? Music is so important to kids and it teaches many skills as well as providing enjoyment. Maybe every Saturday could be "music day"?

One stepdaughter does an advent calendar with her kids, and they do the "Elf on the Shelf" thing - kind of makes a fun game of the lead-up to Christmas without it only being about gifts.

The Jewish side does 8 nights of Chanukah with a wall hanging with 8 pockets numbered. Each pocket contains some Chanukah "gelt" (the chocolate coins in gold foil) and a small gift. The pockets helped my son count the nights, and kept the gifts small - they could include socks or other useful things, not just gift after gift. There was 1 big gift.

We did Christmas cookie decorating with the Christian side and did a cookie swap with others. We do the Chanukah equivalent as well - making potato latkes in metal Chanukah cookie cutters so the finished treat looks like a Chanukah shape. Decorating is something that everyone can do and it turns the "gimme fest" of December holidays into something that also has a mess-up-the-kitchen-and-lick-the-bowl kind of activity. These home-baked gifts make nice things for all the people you freak out about forgetting - teachers, neighbors, the letter carrier, the Fed Ex guy, the garbage collector, the neighbor who drops by with a gift for you, and so on. We always had the appropriate music playing during these activities (another use for the CDs mentioned above!!)

We always have one night during Chanukah that is a no-gift night (except the chocolate coins) - we have a party, serve traditional foods, and play games (board games, charades, do puzzles, whatever). And of course we lit the menorahs every night - everyone has their own so it really brings so much light into the darkness.

We also used Christmas/Chanukah as a time for giving to others - we always participated in at least one activity that helped others. We didn't give cash because young children don't really understand that, and they can't do it themselves anyway. We did buy gifts and take them to a toy drive where my son got a chance to meet the people running it: radio station collecting for a certain shelter, firefighters collecting for needy kids, whatever. We kept it local, and we could drive by and say, "Look, that's the youth center where we gave X last year." We also regularly cleaned out toys and clothes to donate so that holidays didn't just add to the mess at home, but we also gave new things away too.

On Christmas Day, we Jews would go to hospitals to replace non-medical personnel, delivering meals or making box lunches for late admittances or making huge vats of soup, whatever was needed. We did this through an organized group though - you can't just show up.

For Halloween, we get pretty silly with the decorating. My husband made up funny tombstone sayings and we made our own "stones" to stick in the yard, and we set up spotlights and strings of silly lights to make it festive. We don't give candy so much in our neighborhood, as we have a child who is a serious diabetic and a whole lot of others who have weight or dental or cholesterol problems. We give pencils, erasers, slap bracelets, gel bracelets, rings, stickers and so on. We have a few candy bars tucked away for the really big kids so we don't get "egged" - we live on a low-traffic street and a lot of kids get "imported" here from busy streets. We don't know all of them and really, 12 years old is too old for stickers. But the younger ones love it. We also carve pumpkins but that's frustrating for little ones. Each little kid can choose a pumpkin and then help paint it. There are also wooden decorations that you can just stick into a pumpkin for instant decorating: a scarecrow head, 2 arms, etc. Older kids can glue ribbon around the circumference of the pumpkin (we use a hot glue gun) and stick on Halloween-style buttons -- these can be reused every year.

We ALWAYS made a Halloween costume that could be worn in bad weather or cold weather! There's nothing more disappointing for a child than having a cute costume and then going door to door in a winter coat or a poncho! We often made things out of different colored sweatsuits (adding felt decorations - so brown sweats can be a monkey, green ones a frog, etc.) with room underneath for long underwear. One year my son was a robot - we inverted a big box over his head (holes cut for heat and arms) with dryer hose used for leg and arm coverings. He could wear anything underneath - lots of warm layers. Or you can buy costumes several sizes too large and put stuff on underneath, including coats! If we had to, we used adult sweat bands (wrist bands from the athletic store) around the ankles to keep him from tripping! One year I made him a dinosaur costume but made it baggy enough that he could wear it with layers underneath. Nothing ruins Halloween more than a cold and cranky child!

Thanksgiving - when I grew up, everyone who couldn't cook make the stuffing. I think it started because my mother wanted her mother-in-law contained in another area of the house and not underfoot in the kitchen! But I continued it with my son - almost any age kid can tear bread into chunks and stir it periodically so it gets a little stale (so the stuffing isn't mushy). Any kid can help put the chopped celery in, or the pecans, or apples, or whatever else you use. Older kids can manage the onions. And so on. Since you don't really need precise quantities to make it delicious, it's a good job for kids. My stepdaughters had their own smocks/aprons and did their part - if I had to go back in later and break up some of the huge chunks of bread that were too large, so be it.

My advice is to start small and build it over time. Remember that a 1 year old and a 2 year old have ZERO idea what these holidays are. Don't overwhelm them - just do one thing that you can take a picture of, and start a tradition that will build over time. If you find something you don't love and come up with something else that really strikes you, you can adapt - you aren't committed to something.

Have fun, whatever you decide!

A nice Xmas tradition I've seen on this board, but not one we abide by is to limit gifts to three gifts, one from each of the wise men. Keeps clutter down.

A nice Halloween tradition is to go pumpkin picking, or apple picking if that sort of thing is available near you and take a photo in costume. Set up a separate halloween album. Take Halloween candies and either set in a jar, and dispense one a night, or have a halloween candy binge and throw/ donate the rest.

We enjoy an easter egg hunt. the kids take turns hiding the eggs and play hot/cold helping one kid find them all. then its the next kid's turn.

We don't do this, but some families I know volunteer at a shelter on thanksgiving. We have an adult kris kringle on thanksgiving so we know which one adult we will be buying gifts for among the cousins, all of the kids get gifts (I like to gift pyjamas and silly slippers).

We drink green beer on st. patricks day.

We decorate the mirrors with hearts and kisses on valentines day.

we used to have scones and clotted cream on St. George's day (one I might have to resurrect).

Be inventive, do what feels right, feel free to change and add as the years go by.

good luck to you and yours,
F. B.

Are you married? Consult with your husband, he may have some that he really liked or really didn't.

Most Christmas and Easter traditions are from religious tradition. Advent calendars, following Lent up until Holy Week and Easter. Halloween, we try to cut a pumpkin and make Jackolanterns. Decorate the porch. Come up with costumes. Etc.

Decide how Christmas will go at your house. Santa or not? Does Santa wrap gifts or leave them unwrapped? (think this through, it will be many years of whatever you choose). Stockings filled by Santa? What gifts will Santa bring? (for some people, he only fills stockings, others he brings the "big" gift, etc). Decorate the tree. White lights, or colored ones? Real or artificial? We always have a live tree. Always. And TONS of lights on it.
When will the tree come down? We take ours down in time for Epiphany and burn it at a church Epiphany service.

Some families open ONE gift on Christmas Eve. Some do not. We always go to the Christmas Eve Mass. And after opening gifts on Christmas morning, we go to church as well.

Many people hang mistletoe and kiss if they walk under.

It really is all up to you.
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Oh, and Christmas season is the only time of the year I make fudge. I usually make fudge, decorated sugar cookies, sometimes rum balls, and usually chocolate chip cookies with red/green M&M's in them.

My very favorite tradition, ever, was started by my dad. I have continued it for my DD, and she loves it.

Christmas morning, the living room is absolutely flooded with balloons. My dad had access to helium very cheap, so his were filled with that. My DD is only 3, so we have just been blowing them up and letting them sit on the floor.

We love it. It's cheap, and DD has something fun to play with before opening any gifts.

The most important thing is to find things you enjoy and have meaning to your family. We are on the end of non-traditional and it suits us perfectly.
We watch The Nightmare Before Christmas before going out trick or treating. We also watch it while decorating the Christmas tree later in the year.
For Christmas the kids leave out their reusable large felt bags, stockings and Thomas the Tank gift bags on the table before going to bed. Santa doesn't wrap any gifts and instead uses the reusable felt bags (Michael's carries them). The Thomas the Tank gift bags sound odd but there's a reason. When we moved into this house it was right before Christmas. We couldn't find the stockings at all so we left a gift bag out instead that we had. My oldest was not quite 2 at the time. Every year after that he insisted on having that bag and we got ones for each of our other 2 as well.
We have advent calendars for both Halloween and Christmas because they're both big deals for us. They are both from Disney. They aren't the kind that give gifts each day, just a simple one that you move the marker over a day each day. Saves them from asking endlessly how many days to go.
Leading up to Halloween we make a couple trips to Disneyland for their special Halloween Trick or Treat party and we make a few more trips just to enjoy the regular Halloween going-ons. We spend a lot of time at Disneyland honestly for all the holidays. We bring in the new year there too.
Easter. The Easter Bunny goes to Grandma and Grandpas house and leaves baskets and eggs. He doesn't hide them at our house at all. He does leave a few small gifts at our house though. Mostly books, a couple movies, maybe some clothes and a toy or 2 at most. Santa is the big gift giver in the house.

We have a calendar we made with each day up until Christmas, the kidz take turns taking the snowflake from each pocket day & placing it in the next, each pocket contains something you as your family would like to do on that particular day, IE watch a Holiday Movie, bake cookies, read a Christmas verse from the Bible, make a new decoration for the tree. You fill them up with fun & memories!

Have fun!

I buy a new Christmas book every year (or two books) and inscribe with the year, so we build our Christmas book collection slowly. Then I pack them away and only get them out at Christmas. One of my sisters buys a new nutcracker for her son every year, so they have a very eclectic mix of nutcrackers as their holiday décor!
I do an advent wreath (if you are religious) from thanksgiving to Christmas that sits on the table and we light it as many nights as we can (there are prayers/reflections that go with).
Growing up we had a tradition of "mystery gift" for one of us 6 kids. It would be something big or oddly shaped that sat under the tree for a week with "mystery gift" on it and we wouldn't know who got that year's mystery gift til the morning of christmas. Since there were so many of us, it was only for me once or twice but very memorable when it was!
I always take a picture of the presents santa left- fun to look back later and see what the big ticket items were that year.
Thanksgiving it is always tradition to "name the baby" after dinner- slips of paper and suggestions for the current pregnant person (we have a decent sized family and there aren't too many years in a row with no prego's to play with). I'm looking forward to it this year because I am the prego :)