Creative Christmas Traditions for Your Family

Every Christmas tradition is a special tradition. Each family has their own special traditions that they do each year during the days leading up to Christmas. While some of the traditions such as hanging Christmas trees and listening to holiday music are more obvious, there are several creative rituals that you can start with your family and have a lot of fun each year. Here are just a few of those customs:

Twelve Books of Christmas.
As Christmas nears, make an effort to get your children out from behind the television screen and in front of something educational like reading books. Children should be active in contributing toward the Christmas spirit, not simply showing up when it's time to receive presents.

Begin this tradition by collecting twelve to fifteen classic Christmas short stories, such as Twas the Night Before Christmas. Choose a title for each night and schedule the readings twelve days before Christmas day. Write each title on a piece of paper and place all the scraps into a Christmas themed jar. Each night your family will choose from this jar and your family will take turns each night reading the classic tales. For the younger children that cannot read, they'll have the freedom to choose a family member they want to read on their behalf. It's a great way to get the family involved and active in the Christmas holiday spirit.

Customizing Ornaments.
As time goes by, Christmas ornaments get to be more of a memory than a decorative piece. Each year our trees are represented with our past lives through the miniature memories. This year, take a trip to the local holiday shop and have each member of your family pick out an ornament. Go out and some supplies to decorate them.

A night before you put the Christmas tree up, have your family sit down and decorate the ornaments together. The only requirement is that the ornament reflects the personality of its maker. You can use glitter and glue to write words, years, or names onto the ornament. You can create a snowflake effect also. The possibilities here are endless and you have the ultimate creative freedom to design a nice ornament. Each year it will be neat to see what you have produced in the prior years, and down the road you'll have a nice collection of memories!

Light a Remembrance Candle.
Holidays are especially hard when you have to deal with the reality of a loved one that has passed. Christmas time is filled with great memories with friends and loved ones, and you really miss those who have died during this time. A great way to honor the loss of your family is to schedule a date around the holiday time and throw a small party in their honor. You can have friends and loved ones attend the event and bring a casserole or dish with them. At the end of the evening, you can celebrate the life of those by having a few words of prayer and lighting a candle in their remembrance. The candle should be lit every night until the end of the year.

Luminaries.
This is another tradition involving children and their creative minds. Watch the weather and choose a night close to Christmas where the weather is clear. Keep your tradition small, maybe just going to the backyard and having dinner outside. Afterward, spend about an hour by making luminaries to light up the beautiful Christmas night. To make one, all it takes is to decorate a brown paper bag by tracing a pattern in pencil on one side and punching out the design with a hole puncher afterward. Fill the bags with something thick and heavy, such as sand or dirt and place a votive candle in the center. Place the luminaries along the walkway to your home or patio and light them up. It's a great way to spread the holiday cheer to your neighbors.