11 Christmas Traditions With Kids

Do you hang Christmas stockings, or take a stroll through the neighborhood together and sing your favorite carols? What about watchingHome Alone with mugs of hot chocolate (extra whipped cream please!)? Or maybe the kids all open up matching pajamas to wear to bed on Christmas Eve? Maybe you bake holiday cookies, and do a big exchange with neighbors each year? Perhaps you have mad Elf on the Shelf skills that you love to flex on social media. These memories become traditions and are a part of us as each year passes. 

If you can’t already tell, holiday traditions are really, really important to us. These Christmas traditions with kids get passed down year after year, generation after generation, and are the things that help us still feel all of that holiday magic in adulthood. 

There are so many popular Christmas traditions out there, so I wanted to highlight some from our favorite mom blogs, and also share some that are extra special to our family. We hope that by sharing, you might be inspired and start some new Christmas traditions for kids with your little loves. 

Here are a few of our Christmas traditions with kids:

Christmas Breakfast

We prepare homemade cinnamon rolls on Christmas Eve, and just before sunrise on Christmas Day, I pop them in the oven. The rest of the house wakes up to the sweet smell of breakfast. Then with semi-sticky fingers and super sticky faces, the unwrapping begins.  

Decking the Tree

Throughout the year, the boys sleep with nightlights galore, so right after Thanksgiving, we set up the ultimate nightlight - a Christmas tree in their room.

We deck it out with bright tinsel, big colored bulbs, and all of their dad's ornaments from his childhood (40 plus sportscar ornaments that might be questionable on my 'pretty' tree). I love seeing them pick new favorites each year, and I love that their dad's memories are finding a new home. 

11 Christmas Traditions With Kids

 “​​We have a tradition after Christmas every year of cutting up the Christmas cards we received to make gift tags for next year!” - Kristen Hubert,Upcycle My Stuff

 

“A tradition we started is to pick a small toy for each child that they enjoyed and turn it into a Christmas ornament. This way our tree gets filled with memories and they’ll have a collection of ornaments from their childhood when they’re older.” - Anne Aslanides,Easier Motherhood

 

“One of our favorite Christmas traditions is making ornaments out of recycled plastic. This is such a fun way to preserve a child's art in a keepsake ornament.” - Jamie Harmon,As For Me and My Homestead

 

“Making a ​​Christmas Eve Box is one of my family’s favorite Christmas traditions. It is opened on Christmas Eve and the contents are intended to bring the family together for a fun and memorable evening.” - Vanessa Gilic,Maple + Mango

 

“Building a large gingerbread house is a great way to spend quality time with your kids. They helped me with the entire project from picking out the candy to mixing the gingerbread dough. The kids were super proud of this gingerbread house and loved eating it in the end (well, some of it). Gingerbread houses symbolize Christmas, holidays, family and happy times! And they make your house smell amazing.” - Terri Gilson,Food Meanderings

 

“After a couple years of buying real trees each year, the wasteful nature of it all started bothering us. So we agreed to start purchasing fruit trees to decorate instead and we plant them in the yard afterwards! They make for a very Charlie Brown sort of Christmas, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. We now enjoy peaches, apples, cherries, and oranges from our previous “Christmas Trees”. - Jeana Mari,Surf and Sunshine

 

“​​We make a fresh batch of homemade cinnamon ornaments every year! While they last forever, it's fun to make new ones every year to gift and to hang on the tree and around the house!” - Rebecca Pytell,Strength and Sunshine

 

“Every year we take the kids shopping for a new Christmas tree ornament the day after Thanksgiving. It has to represent something special that happened during the year. Then we go home and put up our tree and decorations!” - Alice Anderson,Mommy to Mom

“Every year, we buy a new family Christmas ornament that we have personalized with names and the year. It’s so fun to watch how the family has grown over the years. I began a tradition of making Christmas morning breakfast about 10 years ago and that’s something we all look forward to very much after opening presents.” - Dominique Collins-Bloomfield,Spice and Sugar Mama

 

We hope that these Christmas traditions with kids inspire you to create some new ones for you and your family. Happy holiday season, friends!