Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Anyone have any unique holiday traditions to share?
We have one that our kids love, yours may too. We do the Advent calendar, but I was getting frustrated that it was over in a second, so we started doing it as a scavenger hunt. It takes a bit of time to set up, but it's great fun, and it really helped by daughter with her reading. We have about 12 clues for each day, sometimes more, the first one is in the advent calendar, and they go from there. We re-use the locations sometimes, but change the sequence. When they were younger we made the clues simple, now I make them much harder, they have to really hunt. Sometimes they ask their friends over to join in. The "prize" differs daily, mostly a chocolate. This year as they are that much older I am increasing the difficulty of the language, adding some foreign words, etc. They are going to have to work for it. They have been talking about this for over a month, I think they enjoy this more than the Christmas gifts.
We have several. One is we buy a fish and a mushroom ornament each year. The fish is for abundance in the new year (comes from Jesus feeding the masses) and the mushroom is for luck in the new year. Modern Christmas ornaments started in Dressen, Germany and apparantly they believe finding a mushroom in the forest was good luck. We also buy ornaments for each member in the house each year.
I put a round candy cane on my daughter's door knob. It started when she was 3 as a sign that Santa had come. If she got up and the candy cane wasn't there she would go back to sleep. It prevented her from seeing the Santa (I.e. me) putting her presents under the tree. We've kept it all these years.
Fish dinner Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve mass, roast Christmas Day, and some gift traditions ((something scooby, Texas, ...).
We also pick a handful of giving tree gifts and adopt a family each year (meal, gifts for the kids, ...). About 25% - 33% of the Christmas budget.
I make 12 pumpkin pies. Anything less and I only get one slice.
We were very poor, so we waited until Christmas Eve, to go take a free tree from the Christmas Tree lot...so that is my "childhood" memory for Christmas, stealing a tree every year and decorating that night. Fortunately, my own children don't have this memory!
We usually find a family who is not doing well financially, and spend our time shopping for the kids, picking out toys, and clothes, and wrapping special things up for them. My kids love doing that, and feel like that is a very special thing to do, because it really drives home to them, how fortunate our family is to take things for granted. This is how we like to celebrate. And we also go to the homeless shelter and help serve dinner, or vist a nursing home, and take some home baked cookies, and visit, and sing carols.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
