18 Advent & Christmas Traditions!
Its technically still the Christmas season now!! It’s Sunday January 2nd and our tree and all of our decorations are still up. At mass we celebrated the Epiphany, (and Nicholas said at brunch today “Mom, it was the passage I read for the Three Kings play they said at mass! LOVED that!) Last night, I was feeling overwhelmed with wanting to clean the house and asked Nick if we could take down the tree today and he recommended keeping it up. I asked why and he said, “to honor the season. & I like the tree, it’s pretty ;)” I’m so thankful he said that, because as easy as it is to get caught up in the culture, I DO want to our honor our liturgical year! I want our home to celebrate the richness of the faith, and if it means keeping up a wilting tree with the little evergreens everywhere, so be it! I shared a lot on Instagram this past Advent about traditions we do in our home (I didn’t even realized how many we’ve done through the years!) and wanted to share them here as a guide for the future :)
My biggest tip is to: START SMALL. Pick ONE or TWO traditions this year or next and then every year add to that! There are so many fun ways to build the family culture during Advent :)
Advent Wreath: Lighting the Candle during dinner is one of my favorite things! The boys love it and we always keep it in the center of our table.
Advent Calendar: We do this in different forms, this year used one from Ignatius Press and unfortunately didn’t always read it every day, but when we remembered to we would move the little lamb through the calendar.
Advent Books: Reading picture books about the birth of Jesus, having my Christmas books out that I’ve collected through the years! (I’ll have to share my lists eventually ;) there are a ton of great mom blogs to follow for good lists - Shower of Roses has an excellent one!) This year I read Charles Dickens “The Christmas Carol” to the boys, and we listened to it on audible, I LOVED that! I think we will make that a tradition too :)
Reading a Chapter of Luke a day: maybe at the end of the night with the family rosary or with breakfast, I loved this idea of reading one chapter a day for the 24 days.
Getting a real Christmas Tree! Decorating as a family playing Christmas music & then saving a Christmas tree trunk each year! This year I actually went with the boys to the local Christmas tree place and it was SO much fun!
Getting Family Christmas Pictures - this year one of Nick’s friends took our pictures at Longwood Gardens and then we used them for Christmas cards. I love us dressing up in nice Christmas outfits together.
Singing Christmas Carols together! I remember when Nicholas was 3 years old a friend gifted us a Christmas Carol book and every night before bed we would sing them together. I LOVE this tradition so much. The boys memorize them pretty easily and I tried to have us sing “O Holy Night”
Christmas Family Date! Usually Longwood Gardens as a family! This year it was SO much fun, we took the boys to see the trains and the lights, one year they sang Christmas Carols too. Our tickets started at 4pm and we stayed until about 630 and then got dinner on the way home.
Saint Nicholas Day - December 6th - We love celebrating this especially because of our Nick’s in the family ;) We put kids shoes out & usually try to leave out cookies too! We usually give the kids candy (I want to add a book and orange next year)
Saint Andrew Novena! - Beautiful prayer, I printed it out for us and we said it throughout Advent.
Christmas Eve Mass! We love this tradition, at our parish they dim the lights and sing Silent Night at the end, so beautiful.
Visiting Family: we usually go to my in laws on Christmas Day & visit with my family that Christmas weekend! It’s a tradition to exchange gifts with the grandparents and eat together, and the kids always have a blast. We do pollyanna with our adult siblings and gift things for the cousins as well :)
Visiting Mall Santa: We call Santa, St. Nick too, and try to get the annual picture with Santa. I wasn’t a huge fan this year, not sure I’ll keep going ;)
Displaying Nativity Scene!
Christmas Cards - I ordered them right after Thanksgiving on postable - which was a life-saver this year!
New Years Party during Christmas Season - our second son birthday is on New Years Eve and we usually have a family party to celebrate on New Years Day.
Christmas show (movie or theatre) this year we took the older 2 boys to the Fulton Theatre showing of “The Christmas Carol!” That was so much fun!
Local Christmas Parade! Our city of Downingtown has an afternoon parade around the second week of December usually around 3pm. We park on the roads and the boys watch the parade go by, I love that tradition so much :)
There are so many wonderful things about this season to celebrate together and find JOY as the Mom, without getting caught up in the secular stuff ;) My biggest lesson is shopping before Advent and really entering in! Always take time to pause and reflect on what went well and what you want to change for next year. Motherhood is definitely about surrendering our plans a lot ;) but also about trail and error, keep trying and hanging in there. You got this mamas!
Love, Alex
