Fun Family Christmas Activities

Christmastime, with its hectic schedule of shopping, traveling, and entertaining, is supposed to be a time where family comes together. But with so much to do, families have no time left to spend with one another, resulting in stress and frayed family ties. This year, try to reserve some time to spend with your family on fun holiday activities, including those you're obligated to do anyway, like Christmas shopping. Here are five great ideas for holiday-time family bonding:

Ice Skating: Ice skating is one of the most enjoyable holiday activities, and attempting to stay up on your feet with your family supporting you on the slippery ice is a great experience. This is one activity where kids are instantly better adept than their parents, so ice skating together will give your children a chance to excel at something. Authentic frozen lake ice-skating is traditional, but temperature-controlled public rinks are safer. Go to ArenaMaps.com to find a public rink near you.

Snow Day: With new technology and demanding work, people often force their way out of snow days with four wheel drive and a compulsory sense of responsibility to bosses and co-workers. Next time your driveway is snowed in, don't shovel it out. Don't go to work or school. Instead, keep your family home and have a traditional snow day: bundle up, go outside and build snowmen, make snow angels, and have freezing-cold snowball fights. Afterwards, go inside and make hot cocoa with marshmallows in front of a roaring fire.

Christmas Shopping: Christmas shopping with your family is great because it's a holiday chore you have to do anyway. Sit down with your family, schedule a full day where everyone's free, and make a list of all friends, extended family, and acquaintances your family must buy presents for, and decide how much you'd like to spend on each person. This exercise will teach your kids budgeting before they have to worry about Christmas shopping for their own friends, and it's a valuable skill to have. Shopping will go quickly with your whole family helping.

Family Christmas Party: When we plan parties where our friends, co-workers, and bosses will be in attendance, we impress guests with entertainment, gourmet catering, and a clean house. Yet in the day to day lives we live with our families, we don't feel any inclination to impress people who are always there anyway. This year, surprise your family with a Christmas Party- plan music, food, and fun for nobody besides those you love most. Make invitations just like a real party, and for a holiday feel have each person wrap a small gift for a game of White Elephant.

Volunteer together: While spending Christmas with your family, safe in a house and worrying more about affording a plasma TV than about affording food for the day, think of those less fortunate than you and bring your family to volunteer at a homeless shelter. Shelters try to accommodate and feed as many people as possible during the chilly holidays and various organizations desperately need volunteers to prepare and serve food, and by doing philanthropic work together, you'll teach your children the value of helping people who are in need. Google "holiday volunteer+ your city" for more information.

These five holiday family activities will help your brood bond and re-connect during the stressful holiday season. Have a great family-filled Christmas and a Happy New Year!